What to Expect at the Testing Center

When you arrive at the testing center where you've scheduled your exam, you must sign in with an exam coordinator and show two forms of identification, one of which must be a photo ID. When your time slot arrives, you'll be asked to deposit any books, bags, cell phones, and other items you brought with you. Then you'll be escorted into a closed room.

All exams are completely closed-book. Although you are not permitted to take anything with you into the testing area, you are furnished with a few blank sheets of paper and a pen (in some cases, an erasable plastic sheet and a marker). Immediately before entering the testing center, try to memorize as much of the important material as you can so that you can write that information on the blank sheets as soon as you are seated in front of the computer. You can refer to these sheets of paper during the test, but you'll have to surrender them when you leave the room. Because your timer does not start until you begin the testing process, it is best to do this first while the information is still fresh in your mind.

You will have some time to compose yourself and write down information on the paper you're given. When you are ready, the exam coordinator will load the appropriate Microsoft certification exam (such as Exam 70-315), and you'll be permitted to start.

All Microsoft certification exams allow a certain maximum amount of time in which to complete your work (this time is indicated on the exam by an onscreen counter/clock, so you can check the time remaining whenever you like). All Microsoft certification exams are computer-generated. In addition to multiple-choice questions, you might encounter select “and-place (drag-and-drop), create-a-tree (categorization-and-prioritization), drag-and-connect, and build-list-and-reorder (list-prioritization) questions on many exams. The questions are constructed to check your Web development skills using Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Visual Studio .NET. Often you'll be asked to give more than one answer to a question. You also might be asked to select the best or most effective solution to a problem from a range of choices, all of which are technically correct.