CCNA exam experience

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to this forum and would imagine you have had
simular post before. I just wanted to share my test experience
so others may benefit.

I failed with a score of 780 and I'm pretty sure it was do to
time management. I took the 640-801 had 90 minutes and
56 questions. The first part I was making good time, but
got a little bogged with some conceptional questions, acl
drag and drops, and the simulation. I had 10 min. left when
I started the sim. I wasn't to familiar with sim interface so
it took some doing to get around in it. I found the problem
and fixed it and was just getting ready to click next when
time expired. I was really dissapointed that I let the time
slip by. I will take it again in a few weeks.

I felt good going in to the exam and I still think I probably
would have passed if I had those questions back. The
sim was the 51st of 56. So for all the CCNA hopefuls I can't
stress time management enough. I'm usually a quick test taker
but was trying to be very thorough and never really considered
the time. Don't dwell on something to long because when you
get behind panic starts to set in and you can't get anything done
when things start to unravel.

My advice is to split the CCNA exam into two chunks, that is INTRO and ICND. I did this and to my amazement, (I will take screen shots of my test results if you people don't believe me!) I managed to pull a 1000 on both my INTRO and ICND. I wasnt even going to attempt to try a full blown CCNA exam on my first shot, although thats what Ill probably do when I renew my certification in three years.

I'm going to retake it next week. I'm not going to dwell as
long on the few at sacfrice of the many.
Thanks for the advice. Who know's I may have to do that.
Two classmates of mine did the two parts. The Intro they passed
easily on the second part they both failed. One ran out of time,
the other got stuck in simulation and had to scramble to
finish.

Simulations are what gets everyone in the tests that are ill-prepared. You MUST know how to handle every concept covered in the cisco text seamlessly, either in real life application or by simulations. I fall in the latter and I have seemed to do just fine. If you are involved in a cisco academy class, I would suggest taking a look at packet tracer which is a free simulator for those enrolled. It doesnt handle EVERYTHING(RIPv1 and 2 are the only routing protocols it supports) but it will prepare you for most of the sims they throw at ya.