HAs anybody has passed MCSE course and have a good recomendation ?

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Hi Guys,

Anybody has passed MCSE exam and have a good recomendation of MCSE training Center?

Please help me coz I need to get them by end of this year...

Thanks
Noor

 

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Hi Norasul,welcome to CF.

Firstly, I'm assuming that your new to IT? So what you need to know is that the MCSE is not simply one single course or exam, but a collection of seven different ones.

You can find more information about it here

One thing that you need to realise though is that although you could feasibly take and pass all seven exams in one year you will need to have lots of hands on experience in working with the technologies, and personally I don't think that a year is enough to complete it.

There are many different training providers out there who can offer you the courses, but unless you have a few thousand £'s to spend on them you may be better looking at the self study option.

Buying the books that you need, alongside a few lab PC's will help you to gain the knowledge you need and will end up costing you far less than going with a training provider, and you may find that you will retain more of the information because you are working at your own pace rather than at the pace of the course instructor.
The downside to the self study route though is that you will have to motivate yourself as you will not have any fixed deadlines, unless you schedule exams and then work towards the deadline. But be awere that you may not be ready and may have to reschedule.

I hope that what I've said helps, and if you need any more advise there are many knowledgeable people around here who will be happy to help you.

 

Self study. I did my MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA, and A+ that way. I signed on with a "school" here in the US that was "self-paced" but that's just another term for self-study. I've found more help by Googling, the MS KB, and forums such as these, than I ever got through my instructors. The school was a huge waste of money.

Teach yourself. Save all that money on courses and spend it on books and lab equipment and you'll come out ahead in the end. And if you don't want to keep your lab equipment when you're done you can sell it to someone else just starting out and recoup a portion of your expenses. Otherwise you can convert it to a mixed Linux and MS lab and just continue on with your studies as that's what you'll need to do to stay current in the IT world anyway.

 

There are a few MCSEs here but most of the membership is somewhere in the training/learning process. BTW, you might want to pop up to the New Members Introduction forum and say a proper "hello". Tell us a bit more about yourself and how you found our forum.

 

Hi

I completed the MCSE journey some time ago.

Having done it I always recommend the self study route. As you will save yourself several thousand £, € or $ and when it comes down to it, it is the work that you do that will get you through the exams. The training company does provied backup but in the end they have access to the same materials that you do.

There are a number of very good books that will help you study. Sybex are the ones I love others like other publishing houses.

 

I'd like to point out that Sandy has, as said on another thread, 20 years in IT. That means Sandy can study exam specific books and be just fine and dandy, because Sandy understands all the concepts and has a working knowledge of what actually goes on in real world IT. Thus all he needs is the exam specific knowledge. He is just validating with a certification what he basically already knows. Sure he may pick up some specific tasks and what not that he didn't know before, but his understanding of how they fit into the IT world gives an understanding far and above what a newbie will get out of the same material.

Newbies need as much background information as they can get. They need to deeply study the concepts and ideas used in computing to really know what and how a real world MCSE works at and on when doing a real job. Just studying exam materials will never give that understanding.

 

Interesting point ffreeloader. But one I would feel is not valid. I have the pleasure of training up a new Systems Engineer in the Department. He is a bright new graduate in Chemistry, so about 1000 miles from IT, next month he takes his first IT cert and I am sure he will pass.


OK he is being let loose on the kit under supervision and getting practical experience (if we "**** up" a major UK system fails with about 250,000 users (not a typo I really do mean 250K)) - but he is working his socks of learning the theory at night in his own time. Perhaps he is luck to find himself in such a role but he really is working hard at his studies.

 

Actually it reinforces my point. Your bright new graduate is getting hands on experience in a very complex environment, has mentors at work teaching him, and studying theory at night. Thus he is getting far more exposure than any MCSE exam specific book will ever teach about the theory and practices used in IT.

A newbie who is studying on their own, or from a training company does not have the advantageous position your trainee has for learning. Their study must range much further than what is on an MCP exam to get even begin to get the same type of coverage someone who is being mentored on the job is getting. If you stop and think about it you'll realize how much theory and practice is being taught to your trainee on a daily basis just in the course of him doing his work, as I'm sure you make sure he thoroughly understands each job before you turn him loose on his own doing something.

 

Noor, unless you are extremely gifted when it comes to learning complex technical computer jargon, you are not going to be able to pass seven difficult Microsoft MCP exams in order to attain an MCSE in four months I would go farther and say it would be a small miracle!

When I wasted my $9500AU, I was led to believe that I would be the perfect MCSE candidate and it would take me about six months. That was salesman nonsense. In reality the course was far more difficult than I imagined, in fact the exams were harder than any exam I had encountered throughout my life, including school, City and Guilds Radio TV and Electronics, college or whatever. I have been into computers for over 25 years, I have worked with Windows 2, 3.1, 3.11, DOS 4, 5, 6.2, Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP, Novel 3.12, Macs, Mentor Pro, PicLan etc. I was a network admin for seven years before starting my MCSE.

It took me three years and I studied very hard!

Pete

 

Thanks a lot guys. I really appreciate your view. Could you please let me know, where is best place to do the hands on learning? I am not going to take it alone with th eself study. I want it real environment. Test lab with all the simulation. Any idea in UK?

Let me know guys.

Reagrds

 

The best is to find a place where you can work and learn at the same time. Much easier said than done.

I don't know of a school or training company that provides a big lab to learn in. I worked in a commercial setting for what is the equivalent of a couple of years, then I started studying on my own after the company went bankrupt and built a lab in my basement to learn in.

I don't see how anyone can do the learning in a trainer/learning institution setting and get as much hands on time as you can in your own lab. Any learning institution will push you through at their pace, not your pace, and if you need more practice or time to really understand all the concepts, tough, you're not going to get it there because of financial considerations. You'll need a lab to work with one way or the other as far as I can see. I've picked all this stuff up really quickly from what I can see by comparing my level of knowledge to others who have been around about the same time I have, and yet I could not have done this without a home lab. It would have been an impossibility, and I've spent 3 years working my butt off anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a day, 5 and 6 days a week. And to tell the truth I know that I will have a lot to learn in any environment I land in.

 

I don't know what your background is but I had a very positive experience at The Training Camp in the UK - www.trainingcamp.co.uk. I was not doing the MCSE but an MCAD in which you sit 3 exams in 7 days. There were some guys there on an MCSE course doing stacks of exams in a two week period. If you are looking for a good training environment I would start there.
Having said that I would agree with a lot of what has been said above. There is no way that I could have passed the MCAD exams without having a pretty good amount of industry experience with a lot of the technologies beforehand. They say that they vet course applicants beforehand to assess their suitability for the courses, be sure that you are honest and be aware that they are a commercial organisation. You are the one that has your interests closest to your heart. I imagine that the MCSE is not cheap and it would be a lot of money to throw away.
I can vouch that the Training Camp is a good training provider, but they do just use the materials that are out there for anyone else to buy. What they provide in addition is very good instruction and complete isolation from the outside world. The pace is very fast though so regardless of your experience levels I would do as much self study before you go as you can (they do provide a certain amount of pre-course reading material anyway).
All of the people on the MCAD course had a pretty good level of experience and not everybody passed.
Good luck however you do it

 

There may be some good bootcamps out there, but they are not for newbies. No newbie could absorb what is touched on in a boot camp. It's just not possible, so it would be a waste of mony for any newbie to use a boot camp.

Let's take the Sybex books for example. They average about 700 pages each, and a boot camp is going to take a person through seven of them in two weeks. No one without several years of highly applicable experience, say in an enviroment where they daily use Active Directory, Exchange, DNS, DHCP, RRAS, manage desktops and servers, design Active Directory environments, etc... can even begin to grasp the level of detail that will be thrown at them. They will be covering at least 350 pages a day of material if the school runs 7 days a week. If it doesn't, they are going to be covering more like 500 pages a day. No human being can comprehend that much new material in that amount of time.

 

Well they might be able to comprehend it for long enough to pass an exam the next day but I agree with the sentiment that they will not be able to retain all that information once the course is over. I believe it is far better to learn at a sensible pace, make sure you understand the topic before moving on to another most likely more complex one.

Pete

 

Well, I'm gonna nit pick word meanings on this.

To comprehend something means you understand it, you grasp the details and concepts well enough to use it in the real world. For a newbie to get his head around 350 to 500 pages a day of what is being taught in an MCP class is impossible. When he was studying for something like 70-216 that means he'd have to pick up something as "simple" as "anding" and subnetting in about 15 minutes or so. I'd say that's impossible. I picked it pretty quickly, but it took a lot longer than 15 minutes or so, I can guarantee you that, and most people will really struggle with such important concepts as subnetting and "anding".

I'd agree that someone might be able to memorize enough to pass a test, but really comprehend them? Not a chance.

 

Okay then, we can nit pick ;)

google *define: comprehend*

Result = [size=-1]get the picture: get the meaning of something; "Do you comprehend the meaning of this letter?"

Otherwise I think we agree

Pete
[/size]

 

I see no real differences in the two definitions. "To get the meaning of" says that you understand something well enough to explain it to someone else, or in other words, "grasp the details and concepts well enough to use them in the real world". I can't see someone picking up anding, class networking, and supernetting well enough in the amount of time that would be allotted in a boot camp to be able to explain how it works to someone else. I spent days getting to a solid understanding of that stuff. They would have only minutes. Granted, there are a lot of people brighter than I am, but that's a whole lot brighter, and I'm not completely stupid. In fact, I've never met anyone who claimed to have understood the basics of networking in less than a day's study.

If you think someone could do it that's fine with me. I just don't see how it's possible. I can see them memorizing definitions, but fitting it all together and understanding it, comprehending it, is something else altogether in my mind.

 

Okay, maybe I should have said get the gist

I remember studying for 216 too and I can still remember the feeling of brain strain creeping in whilst I sat there in the MOC class becoming more and more confounded. I listened and watched the instructer, a self confessed TCP/IP wizard, writing all this stuff on the board. One minute I was with him, then suddenly I was lost and being in a class he just kept going because there was other stuff to cover before the end of the day. I was okay with the basics and even anding but throwing in VLSM made my head hurt. It took a lot longer for me to grasp than some of the younger guys but as far as I know, I am the only one from that class that went on to actually get the MCSE

Pete

 

It's interesting how learning changes as you get older. When I was young, I'd just memorize everything. I had a mostly photographic memory so that was easy.

Now I learn concepts, and once the framework of understanding is there I can remember the facts. It's just the opposite of how I learned when I was young.

 

Hmmm same goes here. I wonder if all those pints of Young's Special had anything to do with it

PS Young's Special is a nice but quite strong English real ale.