MCSA in Win Server 2012 complete. On to MCSE in SharePoint 2013...

After months of reading, videos, practice, a 9-day "boot camp" course, more study, and feeling like I must have read every Technet article in existence - twice - I've finally passed all three exams to earn the MCSA Windows Server 2012 certification. And I even passed one of the exams on the first attempt (it took two attempts for each of the others :)

OK, so that's done. But my reason for working to get the MCSA was really because it is required in order to earn the MCSE in SharePoint 2013 (along with passing another couple of exams). Whew! On to the next chunk of studying!

To start with, I'm going through the video courses on Pluralsight; they've got 12 hours or so of videos covering the material for the 70-331 exam (Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint 2013) and then another series of videos for the 70-332 exam (Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint 2013). Once I've viewed the 70-331 videos at least once, I'll work my way through the Exam Ref from O'Reilly.

I'm hoping that by the time I've been through the videos, poured over the book, and read any related Technet articles (along with mucking about in SharePoint), that perhaps there will be some practice tests available. I'd purchased a 3-pack from MeasureUp for the MCSA exams; granted, the MeasureUp practice exams are not as challenging as the actual tests, but when I start going through them they are a definite challenge. I like Transcender exams better, since they are hard. But it appears that neither MeasureUp nor Transcender nor Kaplan currently have practice exams for 70-331 / 70-332. I did buy the SecondShot exam vouchers, so if I fail an exam the first time (which is what usually happens to me with Microsoft exams), then I can take the exam a second time at no extra charge. But I'd rather have the added confidence that comes from practice exams (and the initial humiliation when first going through them).

But no need to worry about that for now. I've got a lot of work to do!