Microsoft Certifications

The certification marathon is complete.  The process was long and extremely difficult.  The exams themselves are very detailed and require some fairly in-depth knowledge of the specific environment / technology being covered.  I received the following six certifications:

• MCTS - Accessing Data with .Net Framework 4.0
• MCTS - .Net Framework 4 - Web Application Development
• MCTS - WCF Development with .Net Framework 4.0
• MCTS - .Net Framework 4 - Windows Application Development
• MCPD - Designing and Developing Windows Applications using .Net Framework 4.0
• MCPD - Designing and Developing Web Applications using .Net Framework 4.0

I learned many new things in regard to each of these items.  Had a bunch of 'light-bulb moments' for possible directions or possible fixes to existing items.  I want to set the proper expectations as well; these certifications were hard to achieve.  In my group, only two of these tests had the entire class pass the first time.  Our failure rate was around 25% on the first take and some as high as 50%.  These are not exams that you go into with a working knowledge of the platforms and pass.  They are much more in-depth than just a working knowledge.  The WCF exam is probably the most difficult test of all the TS level exams.  The MCPD exams are even tougher that the TS exams.  You are presented test scenarios that are the equivalent of business requirements and then must answer a set of questions on technical implementation.  The trick on those is that very few of the answers are absolutely wrong, so you have to choose the one that is 'best', based on wording of the questions.  For instance, there are a couple of questions where you are presented with four 'correct' answers, meaning they all fix the scenario, but the question asks for the single answer that would limit the regression testing the most.

For those of you keeping score, or just wondering, I passed all of my exams the first time (passing grade was 700/1000) .  My average score was just above 870/1000 with a high of 978/1000 (MCPD Windows).  I hope to leverage the new knowledge and intense training on some new platforms very soon.