Strategies for Different Testing Formats

Before you choose a test-taking strategy, you must know whether your test is case study based, fixed length, short form, or adaptive. When you begin your exam, you'll know right away whether the test is based on case studies. The interface will consist of a tabbed window that enables you to easily navigate through the sections of the case.

If you are taking a test that is not based on case studies, the software will tell you that the test is adaptive, if in fact the version you're taking is an adaptive test. If your introductory material fails to mention this, you're probably taking a fixed-length test (50 “70 questions). If, on the other hand, the total number of questions involved is 25 “30, you're taking a short-form test. Some tests announce themselves by indicating that they will start with a set of adaptive questions followed by fixed-length questions.

You'll be able to tell whether you are taking an adaptive, a fixed-length, or a short-form test by the first question. If it includes a check box that lets you mark the question for later review, you're taking a fixed-length or short-form test. If the total number of questions is 25 “30, it's a short-form test; if the total is more than 30, it's a fixed-length test. Adaptive test questions can be visited (and answered ) only once, and they include no such check box.

The Case Study Exam Strategy

Most test-takers find that the case study type of test used for the design exams (70-219, 70-220, and 70-221) is the most difficult to master. When it comes to studying for a case study test, your best option is to approach each case study as a standalone test. The biggest challenge you'll encounter is feeling that you won't have enough time to get through all the cases presented.

Each case provides a lot of material you'll 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. Be sure you read the overview section of the case so that you understand the context of the problem at hand. Then, quickly move on and scan the questions.

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

When studying a case, carefully read the tabbed information. Also, 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. You might want to take notes while reading useful information so you can refer to them when you tackle the test questions. It's hard to go wrong with this strategy when taking any type of Microsoft certification test.

The Fixed-Length and Short-Form Exam Strategy

A well-known principle when taking fixed-length or short-form exams is to first read over the entire exam from start to finish while answering only those questions you feel absolutely sure of. On subsequent passes , you can dive into more complex questions, knowing how many such questions you have left.

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

Marking questions makes review easier, but you can return to any question by clicking the Forward or Back button repeatedly.

As you read each question, if you answer only those you're sure of and mark for review those that you're not sure of, you can keep working through a decreasing list of questions as you answer the trickier ones in order.

Reading the exam over completely before answering the trickier questions has at least one potential benefit: Sometimes, information supplied in later questions sheds more light on earlier questions. At other times, information you read in later questions might jog your memory about Directory Services Design facts, figures, or behavior and help you answer earlier questions. Either way, you'll come out ahead if you defer those questions about which you're not absolutely sure.

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 fall quickly into a rut. 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 awhile, your subconscious might provide the details you lack, or you might notice a "trick" that points to the correct 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, you should budget your time by ensuring that you've completed one fourth of the questions one fourth of the way through the exam period and three fourths of the questions three fourths of the way through.

If you're not finished when only 5 minutes remain , use that time to guess your way through any remaining questions. Remember, guessing is potentially more valuable than not answering because blank answers are always wrong, but a guess might turn out to be right. If you don't have a clue about any of the remaining questions, either pick answers at random or choose all a 's, b 's, and so on. The important thing is to submit an exam for scoring that has an answer for every question.

At the end of your exam period, you should guess rather than leave questions unanswered.

The Adaptive Exam Strategy

If one principle 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 whatever question it plans to present next . Nor can you return to a question after you've moved on because the software gives you only one chance to answer the question. You can, however, take notes because sometimes information supplied in earlier questions will shed more light on later questions.

Also, when you answer a question correctly, you are then presented with a more difficult question 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; you will answer (on average) somewhere between 15 and 30 questions as you complete the test.

The good news is that if you know the material, you'll probably finish most adaptive tests in 30 minutes or so. The bad news is that you must really, really know the material 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 the material. So the more you know, the better you'll do on an adaptive test, even accounting for the occasional weird or unfathomable questions that appear on these exams.

Because you can't always tell in advance whether a test is fixed length, short form, or adaptive, you will be best served by preparing for the exam as if it were adaptive. That way, you will be prepared to pass no matter what type of test you take. But if you do take a fixed-length or short-form test, remember the tips from the preceding section. They should help you improve on what you could do on an adaptive test.

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