VCAP-DCA Exam Experience
December 06, 2010 
Sean Crookston 
I was planning on waiting until after I got my results on the exam but I changed my mind. I obviously cannot reveal details about anything that would violate NDA but I’ll do my best in giving some tips that may help.
The test was definitely every bit as challenging as everyone has said it would be…not that I doubted them. In the end there were some things I just could not figure out and I used every last second of time to go through everything.
Overall I feel somewhere in the middle about where I’ll end up. I go into most tests trying to get everything right, but that definitely was not the case here. On the other hand it would be ridiculous to think I could get everything correct on a test of this nature with the amount of time limited as it was.
My Recommendations(which overlap much of what others have said)
-Be prepared to be at an authorized Vue training building. What I mean by that is I didn’t think I’d have to wait around for a half hour to sign in, get my picture taken etc. I’ve taken tests at other locations and it only took me a few minutes to get in the door. The only thing you are allowed to bring in is your photo id, no water, no coat, nothing else.
-Know the blueprint up and down. I felt like I did and I still had some things I either was confused about, unsure, or didn’t have time to complete. Nothing on the exam is not on the blueprint….but then again the blueprint covers just about everything. Don’t just study the complex things in the blueprint, make sure you understand how to do even the simple things, which you may not do very often or may bore you because you think they are easy.
-If you don’t know something or know it is going to take a significant amount of time to complete, skip it and come back to it. I think this is something I realized early on and others had posted similar experiences of this. By doing this I was able to have over 90 minutes left after seeing all the questions once. With the questions all in my head I was able to think about some things as I waiting for certain tasks to complete.
-Sort of along the same lines, multi-task. If something is taking a long time to complete move to the next question to start working on it. It is hard to explain the interface and I’m not sure what is NDA, but it allows this.
-Forget your normal password for your lab/production environments….maybe it is just me but I typed in the wrong password many many times which cost me a bit of time.
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Thanks for all your contributions. I have been following your website, and all the brown bags. I am sure you will have passed, as most of the early beta testers like William Lam and others, felt that they did not complete everything and ended up passing the exam.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Could you provide a few examples of what high-level topics you got confused on or stumbled over during the exam? (Without getting into NDA specifics)
I don’t know what I can get into or not so I will only say that you really just need to focus on the complete breadth of the blueprint and to make sure you know how to do the things you may not get to do very often.
Good luck! I have been following your blog and I really hope you pass ! Unfortunately I still have a loooong was to study myself…
Thanks and appreciate the support. I spent a long time studying myself and it definitely is a wide range of knowledge to have to sit for this test.
Thank You for all the great information Sean. I’m taking the exam tomorrow, and your study guide has been invaluable. Good luck with the results!
Thanks and best of luck with your exam.
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