New Wiley Engine (Admission Tests)

Looking for our mock exams/online materials? Wiley switched away from Efficient Learning to Admission Tests (https://login.admission-tests.wiley.com/wel/login). The link from Efficient Learning takes you there. (In fact as of early December, logging in at least partially routes you back to efficient learning)

You can still start out in the same way.

To register the book

  1. The website in the back of the book: http://wiley.com/go/sybextestprep
  2. Choose “See Oracle titles”
  3. Pick the book you are reading and click “Register or login”
  4. Click “get Sybex PIN” which takes you to a pull down of books
  5. Scroll down to the letter “O” and choose the one you are reading.
  6. Enter your name/email and answer a question found in the book (ex: what is the second word on page X”
  7. You then get an email. It says the email could take up to 24 hours, but I got mine immediately.
  8. Go back to the “Register or Login” screen and enter the PIN
  9. Choose “Activate”
  10. You then get prompted for a username/password. If this is your first time logging in, choose “forgot password”
  11. A progress bar launches to show progress towards setting up the account. This took about three minutes.

Once you’ve registered (at least for now)

  • You’ll see your products at admission tests. (It says on the FAQ that they will be available thru April 30, 2024), but mine is available longer)
  • Click on your test bank and it takes you back to efficient learning. At least for now.

Microsoft and open book certs

Microsoft announced that they will be making some exams open book. You can only use Microsoft Learn (not a search engine) and the Technical Q&A is disabled. There’s a few more restrictions:

  • You will have access to everything in the learn.microsoft.com domain except Q&A and your profile.
  • Extra time will not be added.
  • The exam timer will continue as you search Learn for whatever information you need.
  • This resource is only available on role-based exams, not fundamentals.
  • This resource will be available in the same languages in which the exam is available.

My take

I really like this. I took one certification exam that was open book – the TOGAF part 2. In that exam, you are given a PDF of the TOGAF documentation. It was super helpful as you didn’t have to memorize. You did have to be good (and fast) at looking things up. That makes it important to practice looking things up in the docs.

I think Microsoft Learn is the same. Learning how to look things up fast is a useful skill. I also like that they aren’t allowing it on the fundamental exams. That was like TOGAF part 1. You proved you learned the concepts in part 1 and then got to use the docs in part 2.

Good job Microsoft! This allows testing concepts rather than facts and trivia.

What if Oracle did this

I think it would be nice if Oracle allowed use of the JavaDoc during the exam. You’d still have to learn all the concepts, be good at identifying compiler errors, the output of code etc. But you could look something up if you forgot an API.

Happy Book Birthday! OCP 17 Practice Tests

Our Java 17 Practice Tests book has been released! This is a major rewrite of our Java OCP 11 book with hundreds of new and revised questions! If you already have our Java 17 Study Guide, you can purchase it individually, or you can buy it as kit.

The Practice Tests OCP 17 book contains 11 chapters helping you review and reinforce each objective. It also includes 3 full practice exams. All questions in the practice test book are unique from those in the complete study guide.