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Home > Archive > microsoft.public.cert.exams.mcse > August 2002 > Is practical experience a requirement?
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Is practical experience a requirement?
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| Jonathan Black 2002-08-10, 11:23 am |
| Is practical experience a requirement for the mcse, or can you become an
mcse just by passing exams?
I am a programmer who wants to switch to being a systems engineer.
I thought that I might just take all the mcse exams as a start before
getting my first job.
Is this possible?
Thanks
Jonathan
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| A MCSE just means that you passed the exams. You could pass them without
any experience, but it would be tough. Where you need the experience is
when you look for a job. If you don't have any experience, it will be tough
to get a job.
Jim
"Jonathan Black" <jonathanblack@barak-online.net> wrote in message
news:u2wK6CJQCHA.1648@tkmsftngp08...
> Is practical experience a requirement for the mcse, or can you become an
> mcse just by passing exams?
>
> I am a programmer who wants to switch to being a systems engineer.
> I thought that I might just take all the mcse exams as a start before
> getting my first job.
> Is this possible?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jonathan
>
>
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| Jeffrey L. Woods 2002-08-10, 3:23 pm |
| In article <u2wK6CJQCHA.1648@tkmsftngp08>, jonathanblack@barak-
online.net says...
> Is practical experience a requirement for the mcse, or can you become an
> mcse just by passing exams?
You're describing the phenomenon known as the "paper MCSE". Microsoft
discourages this, and so too do employers.
While you probably *can* learn enough to pass the exams just by studying
books or tapes (or G-d forbid, cheating with braindumps), you won't last
two weeks at your first job without that practical experience. You may
know the book answer, but the test questions (as we often debate here)
are not truly indicative of real-world needs.
> I am a programmer who wants to switch to being a systems engineer.
> I thought that I might just take all the mcse exams as a start before
> getting my first job. Is this possible?
Possible, yes. Not recommended.
Spend the $800 on Ebay, and buy a subscription to MSDN for a year.
Spend the $1000 to build two decently configured machines. (If you
can't build a machine from parts, you've no business being an MCSE,
IMO). Set them both up in multi-boot mode, so you can have all sorts
of scenarios, and truly LEARN how things are done:
Win 2K Pro -> Win2K Server
Win XP Pro -> Win2K Server with Active Directory
etc, etc, times a dozen
You'll never pass the design tests, nor the truly useful electives like
SQL Administrator, without hands on, either.
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| 70-228 2002-08-10, 4:23 pm |
| "Jeffrey L. Woods" <jeff@telix.com> wrote in message
> Spend the $800 on Ebay, and buy a subscription to MSDN for a year.
> Spend the $1000 to build two decently configured machines. (If you
You absolutely don't have to spend that much on machines. Really old
machines (400MHz+, 256mb) will do fine. They aren't going into a production
remember. They'll only be serving one person after all so don't waste too
much money. You'd be MUCH better off having 4 machines at $100-150 each than
only 2 at $500 each.
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