CCNP - Failed BSCI

Author

Failed BSCI

peterd

2004-10-19, 9:24 am

Hi Guys,

I need to re-cert before the end of January and as I took the BSCN just before the BSCI came in three years ago I decided to do both the BSCI and BCMSN exams.

I did ok on the BSCI until the scenario question came up. I'm not very good at this so I practiced OSPF over and over assuming that's what I'd get...

and on the question I typed:

router ospf n
neighbour x.x.x.x 0.0.0.0 area z

You can probably see the error but at the time I couldn't, and it just rejected the line with an arrow pointing at the first '0'.

This totally threw me as I'd expected it to accept any errors without comment and score no marks. So I skipped the question.

Here's the odd bit...

I assumed I'd get one of these but during the rest of the exam it came up with three more. As I had no idea what was wrong I made the decision to skip them all and I scored 716 needing 776 to pass.

Have Cisco gone over to a form of 'adaptive testing' or was I just unlucky?

My main query is, if I'd got the first one right, would I have got the other three questions on the same topic?

They were all the same question but with different addresses, etc. If I'd got one right then I'm sure I'd have gotten them all right and scored heavily.

As it was I scored 85% on two of the elements and just 36% on the configuring. Basically I failed the exam on getting one word wrong.

Well, that and total incompetence!

The rest of the exam was straight-forward. A mix of all routing protocols, possibly slightly more on OSPF than the others.

So I'll try again at the end of the month and if I fail again I'll look for job pushing a broom...

Regards
Peter

JimmyD

2004-10-19, 10:09 am

It seems like you are starting to recertify pretty early. I had to renew by the end of September, so I took the BSCI at the beginning of September.

The simulation questions are weighted more heavily than other questions. The help system works in the simulatior, so if you run across something like that you can type a question mark to remind yourself how to spell.

All of my simulation questions were different. In fact, one of them was to set up an entire network - not just one router.

smrkdown

2004-10-19, 10:28 am

So how many sims did you skip? You still got a pretty high score for skipping simulation questions.

peterd

2004-10-19, 11:07 am

Hi,

it was four sims in total. This was the difference between a pass of 800+ and a fail...

I'm not very good at these things as I rarely touch a router. I expected to have problems with this element but I hoped to get away with skipping just one question and then only if I had to.

I'll be better prepared for next time, in two weeks.

The annoying part is that I'll have to waste a couple of weeks more on BSCI when I'd like to get onto switching and have three months study before that exam.

I guessed that this particular type of question was fairly well rated as it's something that Cisco thinks important to test on.

I noticed at the start of the exam it said that some questions carried no score. Most odd! Total waste of time, IMO.

An interesting point about the help element working, I assumed that it was case of getting it right first time or it's no points for the answer.

If we have access to the help option then why do they bother with this type of question? It doesn't prove anything.

Regards
Peter

smrkdown

2004-10-19, 12:39 pm

I never used the help option on the exam, but I believe is is limited so you can't just ? your way through the sim.

Sponsored Links