scjp test problems
Below is a letter that I just sent to Sun regarding the exam that I just finished an hour ago. Has anyone else had this happen? I passed anyway, but what a disaster...
-mark
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I just sat for the SCJP exam, and 10 or 11 of the 12 Drag-and-Drop questions did not work- meaning that I could either not see the entire question or that the items to be dragged and dropped were blank (in most cases, both of these problems occurred). I was told by the Prometric test administrator to write comments for each of these problematic questions, and that I would receive full credit for them when Sun sends me the official certificate in the mail. Is this actually the case? If not, how do you remedy this situation?
Remedy aside, I want to express my extreme disappointment that such a widely administered a certification test - for programming(!!), no less - would be this buggy. I invested a lot of my free time over the past few months to study for this thing.
nope, sounds like the first person having problems out of the tens of thousands (if not more) who've taken the exam.
In fact it sounds almost like someone trying to blame his failure to pass the exam on the exam itself rather than his lack of preparation...
Learn how to read, jwenting- I passed the exam with plenty of room to spare, in spite of the problems with the test software. Do yourself a favor and - per usual - save your flamethrowing for non-English speakers and/or people who aren't wittier than you are.
>Learn how to read
wooow.. calm down a bit..
first of all congratulations for your new certification,, and maybe your bad luck was just your mate that exam..(^_^);
now just forget the exam and enjoy being a sun certified java programmer....(^_~);
Thanks for the congrats. And I'm plenty calm. I just think jwenting should be prepared to absorb some of the abuse that he evidently likes to dish out so much.
Anyway, below is the email that I just received from Sun regarding the Prometric bug. If you don't want to have to deal with this (i.e., being frustrated by a faulty test - and then having a final score that you didn't actually earn), I highly suggest that you contact your prospective Prometric testing center by phone before scheduling your exam to ensure that this won't happen to you.
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Thank you for contacting Sun Certification Customer Support.
We regret to learn of the difficulties that you met during your exam experience.
In rare cases, candidates have experienced a problem with the operation of the drag and drop questions. This is due to a glitch in Prometrics exam delivery software. The software is being upgraded to resolve this issue. Until Prometric resolves this issue with the drag and drop questions, Sun has decided not to penalize the candidate by forcing a reschedule of the exam. Instead, we give you credit for the questions that are not operating correctly. Even if all twelve of the drag and drop questions are faulty, the other sixty questions are adequate to gauge your knowledge and understanding of the certification material.
Thank you for your feedback and congratulations on your successful certification.
Please let us know if we may be of further assistance. Thank you for choosing Sun products and services.
All software contains bugs (*), and this isn't a bug in Sun's stuff but the 3rd party they contract out to.
Let this be a lesson to never outsource important projects :)
(*) Once read that there's on average at least one bug per 100 lines of code, and that number is for professionally written, production grade code. IT doesn't take into account all the hobby projects and school assignments pressed into use because they're cheaper than buying something (or appear to be at first glance).
