Strategies for Different Testing Formats

Before you choose a test-taking strategy, you must determine what type of test it is ”case study, fixed-length, short-form, or adaptive:

  • Case study tests consist of a tabbed window that allows you to navigate easily through the sections of the case.

  • Fixed-length tests consist of 50 to 70 questions, with a check box for each question. You can return to these questions if you want.

  • Short-form tests have 25 to 30 questions, with a check box for each question. You can return to these questions if you want.

  • Adaptive tests are identified in the introductory material of the test. Questions have no check boxes and can be visited (and answered) only once. You do not have the option of reviewing any questions after you have answered them all.

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You'll be able to tell for sure whether you are taking an adaptive, fixed-length, or short-form test by the first question. Fixed-length and short-form tests include a check box that allows you to mark the question for later review. Adaptive test questions include no such check box and can be visited (and answered) only once.


Case Study Exam Strategy

Most test takers find that the case study type of test used for the design exams (including exams 70-219, 70-220, 70-221, and 70-226, among others) is the most difficult to master. When it comes to studying for a case study test, your best bet is to approach each case study as a standalone test. The biggest challenge you're likely to encounter with this type of test is that you might feel that you won't have enough time to get through all the cases that are presented.

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Each case study provides a lot of material that you need to read and study before you can effectively answer the questions that follow. The trick to taking a case study exam is to first scan the case study to get the highlights. You should make sure that you read the overview section of the case so that you understand the context of the problem at hand. Then you should quickly move on to scanning the questions.

As you are scanning the questions, you should make mental notes to yourself so that you'll remember which sections of the case study you should focus on. Some case studies may provide a fair amount of extra information that you don't really need to answer the questions. The goal with this scanning approach is to avoid having to study and analyze material that is not completely relevant.


When studying a case, read the tabbed information carefully . It is important to answer each and every question. You will be able to toggle back and forth from case to questions, and from question to question within a case testlet. However, after you leave the case and move on, you might not be able to return to it. We suggest that you take notes while reading useful information to help you when you tackle the test questions. It's hard to go wrong with this strategy when taking any kind of Microsoft certification test.

The Fixed-Length and Short-Form Exam Strategies

A well-known principle when taking fixed-length or short-form exams is first to read through the entire exam from start to finish. Answer only those questions that you feel absolutely sure you know. On subsequent passes , you can dive into more complex questions more deeply, knowing how many such questions you have left and the amount of time remaining.

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There's at least one potential benefit to reading the exam completely before answering the trickier questions: Sometimes information supplied in later questions sheds more light on earlier questions. At other times, information you read in later questions may jog your memory about facts, figures, or behavior and help you answer earlier questions. Either way, you'll come out ahead if you answer only those questions on the first pass that you're absolutely confident about.


Fortunately, the Microsoft exam software for fixed-length and short-form tests makes the multiple-visit approach easy to implement. At the top-left corner of each question is a check box that permits you to mark that question for a later visit.

Here are some question-handling strategies that apply to fixed-length and short-form tests. Use them if you have the chance:

  • When returning to a question after your initial read-through, read every word again; otherwise , your mind can miss important details. Sometimes revisiting a question after turning your attention elsewhere lets you see something you missed, but the strong tendency is to see what you've seen before. Try to avoid that tendency at all costs.

  • If you return to a question more than twice, try to articulate to yourself what you don't understand about the question, why answers don't appear to make sense, or what appears to be missing. If you chew on the subject a while, your subconscious may provide the missing details, or you may notice a trick that points to the right answer.

As you work your way through the exam, another counter that Microsoft provides will come in handy ”the number of questions completed and questions outstanding. For fixed-length and short-form tests, it's wise to budget your time by making sure that you've completed one quarter of the questions one quarter of the way through the exam period, and three quarters of the questions three quarters of the way through.

If you're not finished when only five minutes remain , use that time to guess your way through any remaining questions. Remember, guessing is potentially more valuable than not answering. Blank answers are always wrong, but a guess may turn out to be right. If you don't have a clue about any of the remaining questions, pick answers at random or choose all A's, B's, and so on. Questions left unanswered are counted as answered incorrectly, so a guess is better than nothing at all.

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At the very end of your exam period, you're better off guessing than leaving questions unanswered.


The Adaptive Exam Strategy

If there's one principle that applies to taking an adaptive test, it could be summed up as "Get it right the first time." You cannot elect to skip a question and move on to the next one when taking an adaptive test because the testing software uses your answer to the current question to select the question it presents next . You also cannot return to a question after you've moved on because the software gives you only one chance to answer the question. However, you can take notes, and sometimes information supplied in earlier questions sheds more light on later questions.

Also, when you answer a question correctly, you are presented with a more difficult question next, to help the software gauge your level of skill and ability. When you answer a question incorrectly, you are presented with a less difficult question, and the software lowers its current estimate of your skill and ability. This continues until the program settles into a reasonably accurate estimate of what you know and can do; it takes you, on average, somewhere between 15 and 30 questions to complete the test.

The good news is that if you know your stuff, you are likely to finish most adaptive tests in 30 minutes or so. The bad news is that you must really, really know your stuff to do your best on an adaptive test. That's because some questions are so convoluted, complex, or hard to follow that you're bound to miss one or two, at a minimum, even if you do know your stuff. So the more you know, the better you'll do on an adaptive test, even accounting for the occasionally weird or unfathomable questions that appear on these exams.

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Because you can't always tell in advance whether a test is a fixed-length, short-form, or adaptive exam, you should prepare for the exam as if it were adaptive. That way, you will be prepared to pass no matter what kind of test you take. But if you do take a fixed-length or short-form test, you need to remember the tips from the preceding sections. These tips should help you perform even better on a fixed-length or short-form exam than on an adaptive test. When studying for the 70-291 exam, be prepared to encounter any of these three test formats.


If you encounter a question on an adaptive test that you can't answer, you must guess an answer immediately. Because of how the software works, however, you might suffer for your guess on the next question if you guess right because you get a more difficult question next!



Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Exam Cram 2 (Exam 70-291)
MCSA/MCSE 70-291 Exam Cram: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0789736187
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 118
Authors: Diana Huggins

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