Could you pass it again?

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So all the hours that have been spent studying for certs and passing the exam. It’s impossible to remember everything you learnt. As time goes by if you don’t recall and use some of that information it gets buried deeper in your brain. Quite often it only takes a little jog of the mind to bring back most of it. I find myself wondering; what if you re-sat the exam for a cert you already passed, say over 12 months ago.... could you pass the exam again without doing any study?

I did my 70-290 about 20 months ago, I am tempted to dig out the Transcender and have a bash....

 

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Would be hard, i think whats important is that by passing the exam/test previously, it shows you understood the material, therefore can pick it up with a little study if needed, rather than it being alien to you

 

I can say yep! it certainly would be a challenge, however as Jon stated it's more like you having a little revision to bring things into perspective.

 

My son told me about a show on TV called "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" The idea is that an adult competes against a fifth grade student, answering typical test questions that are given to children between the first and fifth grades. If the adult wins, they get a million dollars. No adult has beaten a fifth grader to date, including a fifth grade teacher.

Sure, the adults get some of the answers right, but they're expected to get them all right (such as who was the 7th President of the United States...and they don't have Google available).

I only have my son's word that any of this is true, but I use this as an example to illustrate that we only tend to retain that information that we find useful and disregard the rest until we need it (and then have to look it up). That's probably an exaggeration, but I bet not much of a one. It's why we don't recall enough of our elementary education to be able to answer questions we once knew in our childhood.

 

yes we have that program over here its calle "are you smarter than a 10 year old". Sounds about right from what you've described.

 

For some of them i'd say absolutely yes, and others would be absolutely not. I think it depends on whether you use the material on a daily basis.

 

Could I pass again? - I think I could, but I would suffer in the categories I don't regularly see.
But I think Jon's right in that you don't need to know the material like the back of your hand, but at least where to get the details when needed.

Saying that, as you get higher-end certs, you're likely to keep enforcing earlier concepts and key facts to the point where they'll be engraved into you. For example, I'd expect a CCIE to know most of the emphasized CCNA & CCNP topics very well.

 

I'd agree with this - also, if you are using something time and time again, you'll be able to do it with your eyes closed.

Physical repetition is what helps the brain to remember, along with colour, location, style etc. (see mind maps for more details). If you no longer repeat it, you'll no doubt put it to one side. I can relate to this whilst doing my A-Levels Maths and Further Maths - doing calculus (differentiation/integration) is no problem and can do it without fail, but doing group theory would really hurt my head and more than likely get it wrong - difference being, calculus was done many times a day without fail for 5+ years, group theory did it for 1 year adhoc.

 

Yep - had lots of practice with that.

One word of warning... be absolutely SURE that you're abiding by the vendor's retake policy. Some vendors will NOT let you retake an exam that you have already passed.

 

I think the question was more hypothetical than anything, Michael.

 

Indeed. I wouldn’t want to go and spend £88 on an exam I had already passed, but may see what score I get on a Transcender. I think it’s interesting the way information gets retained in your head, the more you use it the easier it is to recall. I find key words help me remember stuff. Example, about three weeks ago a colleague from another team at work came and asked me about giving one group of users permissions to change members of a distribution group. We discussed the pros and cons, then he went away and got caught up in something else. Two weeks later he came back and said, you remember what we were talking about the other day, what did we decide? Now I couldn’t even remember the conversation (nor could he really, hence coming back to see me) until he said one word that was used in the conversation (I think it was Taskpad) then it all came flooding back and I could tell him what I had said, what he said and what we decided. My point is I guess that all the stuff you learn during study for certs goes in, and can be retrieved, even if it’s not used very often. All it takes is a little reminder. I wondered if the wording of an exam sim question would be enough to aid recall of some of that information.

 

I reckon if I was to go and do my essentials exam again I would get a higher passing score, only because I have actually been doing proper IT work since just passing the 601.

I am not sure about the 602 because I aced it, my hardware knowledge and experience was quite good before I started studying the A+, I just needed to update myself on new technologies.

 

could I pass again? Probably not.

I'm the sort of person that can easilly hold around 60% of the material in my head, but can never quite get that little bit extra that is needed for passing exams. I have to cram very hard to pass them.

 

Yes, but there's always one person in every crowd who'll say, "You know what? I'm gonna do it!" This warning is for That Person.

 

YEP - absolutely!!!

Just give me six months or so to re-read the books

 

I would pass all exams as well. The reason? My daily job is to help people pass these exams, getting the concepts clear, explaining the hard parts.

 

I reckon I could pass all of the ones I have done again without studying, apart from the 70-291. I think I would defo need to hit the books again for parts of that exam.

 

Nope. I couldn't. I use very few of those skills on a daily basis now. The areas I do use I know much better now than I did then, but won't get me past a certification test.

This is the difference between chrystallized knowledge, and short or long-term memory. If you use knowledge every day those pathways become very low-resistance circuits in your brain and are easily accessed. If you don't use something every day it becomes much harder to access, and sometimes must be physically refreshed by study or some type other of mental stimulus for the circuit to become active again.