UCertify Preparation Kit for IT Certification

Whenever I make a decision to attempt a Microsoft certification, there are three things that I do:

1. Buy a book that covers the syllabus for the certification.
2. If I have spare time and the money, I would book myself on a course.
3. Look for a suitable certification preparation kit.

Most of the time I would end up doing (1) and (3). Learning from a book is always never easy for me. I usually try to allocate time after work in the evenings to read a chapter but most of the time I need something more to stimulate my thinking, test my understanding and work through exercises and test questions. I find that certification preparation kits help me accelerate my learning and understanding of a subject.

Recently I was presented with the opportunity to review a certification preparation kit from www.ucertify.com. The kit is for Designing and Developing Web-based Applications using Microsoft .NET Framework. And before I started to review the product, I made a check-list of what I would expect to find in a certification preparation kit.

Check-list

• A clear roadmap and certification objectives.
• A lot of practice questions with review and explanation regarding each question.
• Link to articles for reference.
• Bookmarking questions and note taking.
• Ability to monitor progress and performance.
• Challenging mock tests.

uCertify.com Preparation Kit

I like the layout structure. It is clear and I can get to all the modules with a single click from the same screen. I like how the core module, the practice questions takes up two third of the screen and the other supporting modules are laid out on the right and bottom of the core module.

The Diagnostic test is excellent way to measure how much you know and identify topics that you need to pay more attention to. However, I don’t know if 15 questions is sufficient to use as a benchmark to identify weak areas. But overall, the Diagnostic test is a great module.

The core module has other valuable tests like the adaptive test which closely simulates the actual testing method and the quizzes are great at helping me remember better. It also helps me to think quicker.

Tracking your progress

This is essential in a certification preparation kit because it is an indicator to show if you are improving over time or not. It acts as a gauge of your performance. Without the tracking modules, I would have to find some other way to track my progress.

Other Supporting modules

The supporting modules are divided into six key sections:

1. Exam objectives
2. Flash cards
3. Study notes
4. Articles
5. Study tips
6. How to

I personally found the flash cards, study notes and articles modules extremely useful.

Flash cards
The flash cards help me remember what I have studied. Sometimes I wished I could print out the flash cards and bring them around so that I can look at them during my lunch break and try to go through the topics in my head.

Study notes
The study notes are useful for noting my thoughts and I like how the test questions and notes are integrated.

Articles
The articles are relevant and useful. I thought that it would be even better if I could add links to external articles and expand on the articles database.

My opinion on the product
I think the uCertify Preparation kit is a good investment. Imagine paying thousand of dollars to attend a course when it will cost you a fraction of that to invest in a preparation kit. That does not mean you study less but it gives you an additional tool to win in the world of IT certification.

uCertify allows you to download a free trial before you buy and they claim they will refund 100% of your money if you are not certified in your first attempt.

Other than Microsoft preparation kit, uCertify provides a wide range of other preparation kit like Oracle, Cisco, Sun Java, CIW, etc.

The website is www.ucertify.com