Hi,
Let's see if i can clear some questions for you...
1. You can never be to ambitious. Ambition is not a dirty word you know.. You have to specify a goal to achieve in order to be ambitious. If your goals are set to high then no matter what the ambition you will only frustrate yourself. Ofcourse Master Certification
should be an option. I assume we are talking about MOS 2010 here. How long it takes to study depends on your knowledge. Which application do you use frequently and which ones do you feel comfortable with. I'd suggest taking one which suits you well. Start
with that one and then progress one by one. The pre requisitions state that you should have at least 6 months hands on experience. I'd say that's a must.
2. You do not have to take the regular exams in order to take the expert exams. You can take the exam in any order you'd like. I suggest taking a regulare one first though because that way you get an indication of how the exam works and what it is all about.
It prepares you better for the expert exams.
3. A typical exam takes 50 minutes and costs about 90 dollars (for prices you have to check the website of certiport
www.certiport.com or a testing center). Exams are hands on so no multiple answer questions but questions which consists of a taks which you need to perform with the application in front of you.
4. The 'step by step' series for each application is good material to start with. Also take a look at the 'inside out' series. For practice tests you can take a look at [measure up]
www.measureup.com and at the earlier mentioned website (look for prep exams).
5. Difficulty? This also depends on your knowledge. The difficulty resides in the fact that the whole package is being tested. So you will be asked questions about features and techniques that you might never have used before for instance backward compatibility,
xml and autorecovery. So only looking at the objectives doesn't cover the knowledge point for taking the exam. That's what the hands on experience is for.
6. All the regular exams besides Access (which will be in february 2011) are released. So you could start with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The expert exams are just out of the beta period so they will take some time to be released (march 2011?).
7. Lot's and lot's. Certification is application based so most of them are categorized for instance Software Developer, Database Administrator, Web developer, Windows ect. To much to mention. Take a look here:
www.microsoft.com/learning and look under exams by name or product.
Final comment: don't take certification to lightly. You do have to study and by putting in the effort you will find out that it is actually fun.
On the certiport site you can find additional info about testcenters for Academics maybe the have discounts as well?
hope this helps a bit ;-)
Maurice
Maurice
