A few questions about MCAD/MCSD

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Maybe some of this was answered in the 'Resources' sticky but the link is down.... just a few unrelated questions I can't find the answers to really:

• Is it possible to take only the exams without purchasing any training? Can someone give me some links because if this is possible I'm finding it hard to locate a provider... (I need to know this because I've looked through some sample papers and it's just revision as I've been a dev for three years now, also I can get self-study materials through my employer and I can't afford training)
• Can you upgrade from MCAD to MCSA by doing the extra exams, or must you retake the whole set at once?
• I'd like to move into a solution architect role eventually, but I think I need a couple more years of pure dev experience (I am not in a pure dev role at the moment - getting certification is part of my plan for getting into one); should I consider looking at the MCTS or the MCPD instead of the MCAD / MCSD?

Any tips would be very welcome

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi and welcome to CF!

*

What you can do is self-study... buy books and the hardware/software you need and learn at home at your own pace and time and save lots of money. If you ever need help forums like this one can help out if you post your problems.

You would have to do the whole set again.... this isnt suggested anywhere as its like two different worlds you trying to be an expert in... it can take years to get certfied (one guy on here took 3 years for MCSE im on 1 year and not even MCSA yet!).Getting certified even studying full time takes time and you need to make sure you know more than you need to know to pass the exam. I suggest you look at what you want to do and choose one of them of now and concentrate on that.

Microsoft suggest you start MCTS and then MCPD now.... those older certs will be ok now but in 2-3 years time?

Have you got any experience in IT or work in it right now?

 

Yes I have 3 years experience in VBA for Excel + Access & SQL server and before that 2 years experience (not in MS technologies though - in Unix shell scripting / Oracle / a little bit of VB6).

I have been looking at the self-study course for exam 70-306 (Developing Windows based applications for with MS VB.NET) and if this book covers everything that exam at least will be a breeze..... it's a book by Matthew A. Stocker and Microsoft, does anyone know if it's any good. On the other hand I have done no web-based developing at all so that will be much harder.

I don't understand why you say the MCAD and MCSD are worlds apart, they are basically the same but the MCAD has 3 exams and the MCSD has 5, right?

OK I will take a closer look at the MCTS/MCPD then.

Thanks for your quick reply

 

you said MCSA not MCSD

MCSA is Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator

looks like you got the two mixed up... or a typo!

 

oops sorry yeah i always get mixed up cos the job role the MCSD relates to is usually called 'solutions architect'....

edit: here in the UK that is...