Taking a Citrix Certification Exam

After you complete your preparations for the exam and are ready to actually take the test, you need to register at an authorized Citrix testing center in your area. All Citrix exams are administered by Thomson Prometric. You can register online for a Citrix exam at http://www.prometric.com or by calling 1-800-481-EXAM (1-800-481-3926) in Canada or the United States. Outside the United States and Canada, you can call the regional Prometric offices at [phone]. These offices cannot schedule exams, but they can assist in locating a Prometric training center in your area. Web-based registration is the quickest and most convenient way of scheduling your Citrix certification exam.

Each Citrix exam typically costs $100 (US) and must be booked a minimum of 24 hours prior and no more than eight weeks in advance. Cancellation charges may apply if you do not give adequate notice. Typically, notice is a minimum of 24 hours prior to the scheduled start of the exam. You can cancel online or by contacting the testing center directly.

When scheduling a test, you need to provide the appropriate personal identification to verify who you are, the name and number of the exam that you will be taking, and a method of payment. Online registration requires that you create a personal user account that can then be used to book all future exams. On the day of the exam, you must provide appropriate identification to verify who you are. Typically, two forms of identification are required, with at least one of them being a photo ID.

Plan to arrive at the exam location at least 1520 minutes early so that you can get seated, relax, and prepare prior to the start of the exam. All Citrix exams are completely closed book. No study aidsor anything else for that matterare permitted into the testing area. This includes coats, bags, or purses, all of which must be left with the test administrator before entering the room. The best advice is to leave these items at home or locked in the car. The fewer distractions that you bring with you, the better focused you can be on the exam itself.

In the test room, the test administrator logs you in to your exam, verifying that your user ID and exam number are correct. After you review the introduction information, the exam begins.

The 223 Citrix certification exam has 79 questions, and native English speakers have 105 minutes to complete the exam. Non-native English speakers have an additional 30 minutes (135 minutes in total) to complete the exam. The testing software itself is Windows-based and presents a single question per screen. In the upper-right corner, a display shows the time and number of questions remaining.

Specific questions are typically a variant of the multiple-choice format, and the relative difficultly varies from question to question. The specific question usually falls into one of three categories:

• Select the correct answer With these typical multiple-choice questions, you are asked to choose the one correct response that most appropriately answers the given question. In some situations, different answers may be correct under slightly different server configurations, so make sure that you read the question carefully before selecting your answer.

  You will not find traditional true/false questions on a Citrix exam. Instead true/false-type questions are posed as multiple-choice questions, asking you to select the truthful (or most truthful ) statement from the list of statements provided.

• Select all that apply (or don't apply) These types of questions ask you to select all of the answers listed that correctly apply to the question given. None to all of them may apply, so be sure to read these types of questions very carefully. In many cases, subtle wording has been purposely used to trip up those who aren't paying attention. Partial credit is not given for these types of questions. Unless only the correct answers are given, you receive no credit for the question.

• Complete the sentence or fill in the blank These types of questions ask you to complete the sentence with the appropriate word or words. The correct answer is most often chosen from a list of different words in multiple-choice format.

When your test is scored, no added penalty is given for a wrong answer compared to giving no answer at all, so answering every question asked is worthwhile even if you are not sure of some and must guess. To the best of its ability, Citrix has attempted to make the questions as fair as possible and to ensure that all questions have a single correct answer. Of course, mistakes do happen, and a "poor" question may find its way onto your test, presenting you with a poorly worded or ambiguous question that may not have a clearly correct answer.

In this situation, the best course of action is to answer the question to the best of your ability and try to follow up afterward in an attempt to determine what the correct answer actually should be. You are not allowed to leave the exam area with any written information, so you cannot write down the question for review later. You can attempt to remember the question and follow up afterward to determine the correct answer. Clearly ambiguous or incorrect questions can be reported to Citrix, which can correct the problem for future exams. Do not expect to have a test score reversed or corrected based on the results of a single question. If you have properly prepared for the exam, a single question should have no bearing on whether you pass or fail.

After you complete the exam, the testing software responds with your score after a few seconds, and informs you whether you have passed or failed. The 223 exam requires a minimum score of 67%, or 53 correct out of 79, to pass the exam.

If you don't pass the exam, the key thing is not to become discouraged. We have all had days when things just didn't quite go as well as we had hoped. Take some time after the exam to review areas where you struggled during the exam. Maybe a particular area caught you by surprise, or you felt you had a stronger handle on it than you actually did. The best method in this situation is to return as soon as possible to the study process and brush up on the weak areas in preparation for another exam attempt.

You can reschedule a new test through Prometric as soon as available if you so desire . We recommend that you attempt to schedule time in sooner rather than later so that material you have already studied is still fresh in your mind. You are required to pay the full fee to take another test, but there is no penalty with regards to certification for retaking an exam more than once.