Best place to do my MCSE?

Buchanan0204 · 5 Oct 2011 at 04:12

Anyone ever done it and recommend it? I'm looking to pursue a quality career in this industry and feel being Microsoft and Cisco certified would increase my chances of employment.

Is it best to actually attend a college or something similar to do this or is it best to do it from home?

How much is the average?

Cheers for any hints or tips in advance!!

Clav · 5 Oct 2011 at 07:52

Download the brain dumps, spend a month memorising the questions, pay for an exam in the local MS certified centre.

edit/ I suppose some explanation is in order.. The Microsoft way of doing things that you need to learn for the exams is often a generous country mile away from what happens in the real world. Some of the questions and answers literally make no sense but you need to give them the answer that they want in order to pass. With this in mind just memorise the questions and answers to get your cert which look good on your CV, then get a job and properly learn the trade.

A good and widely recognised beginners qualification is comptia's A+, Net+ etc (theres a whole family of + certs) some of the course is a bit outdated these days but they do give a good grounding in the world of computing as well as customer service, call handling modules as well. If you want to attend a course in a college then I'd recommend this over an MCP

Hellsmk2 · 5 Oct 2011 at 07:55

Clav said:
Download the brain dumps, spend a month memorising the questions, pay for exam in the local MS certified centre.

This is what not to do when looking to move into IT. An MCSE with no experience is a person that should never be employed.

The best way to go about it is to get an IT job and study for it at the same time.

Also, don't bother with the MCSE as it is out of date now. Look at the MCTIP instead.

Kiyoshi · 5 Oct 2011 at 08:25

Clav said:
Download the brain dumps, spend a month memorising the questions, pay for an exam in the local MS certified centre.

Do not do this.

That is the absolute worst thing a first post could have recommended for somebody asking how to 'pursue a quality career in this industry'. Even if you do somehow get offered a job given you only know the answers to ~50 IT related questions (but let's assume you do), you will certainly lose that job very very quickly when asked something even slightly different to the specific questions you have memorised parrot fashion. Brilliant start to your IT CV.

Really, possibly the most awful first response that could have been given.

I recommend you look at self learning for the Microsoft exams. Buy a book for about ~£30 and book the exam yourself through Prometric. My first recommendation would be Microsoft 70-680 Windows 7.

Buchanan0204 · 5 Oct 2011 at 18:12

Kiyoshi said:
Do not do this.

That is the absolute worst thing a first post could have recommended for somebody asking how to 'pursue a quality career in this industry'. Even if you do somehow get offered a job given you only know the answers to ~50 IT related questions (but let's assume you do), you will certainly lose that job very very quickly when asked something even slightly different to the specific questions you have memorised parrot fashion. Brilliant start to your IT CV.

Really, possibly the most awful first response that could have been given.

I recommend you look at self learning for the Microsoft exams. Buy a book for about ~£30 and book the exam yourself through Prometric. My first recommendation would be Microsoft 70-680 Windows 7.

Thanks for that info. I'll look into it. What's MS 70-680?

Deception · 5 Oct 2011 at 18:51

Buchanan0204 said:
Thanks for that info. I'll look into it. What's MS 70-680?

Here is a list of the MCITP Exams that Microsoft offer. The 70-680 is amongst that list:

MCITP Career

ninjabib · 5 Oct 2011 at 19:02

If you want to get into IT i'd do the Comptia ones, i've done A+ and N+ and also did ITIL foundation but thats crap but a lot of places ask for it in job descriptions by me. Also start off with the entry level MS certs mentioned above.