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Post-Pass Brain Dump

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2018 12:31 am
by concepts
I thought difficulty was on par with most of the AREs, though there was a greater breadth of material covered. Content seemed totally fair, but zomg, they should hire better writers. Had just enough time to finish, no time to review marked questions. And I blame that on time spent deciphering the language, not my command of the concepts.

I used TWE, an older version of Woo, and plenty of primary sources. I'm going to go against popular consensus, and say that I preferred the Woo study guide over TWE's. I found it much more concise and to the point. I found the TWE study guide to contain a lot of incidental trivia which actually made topics seem overwhelming, and more confusing than they should have been. I thought TWE : Woo was oddly similar to Kaplan : Ballast. On the other hand, I found OMCES quite helpful, and Woo's mock exams - not so much. The OMCES was formatted extremely well for practicing recall in a multiple choice format. (Though yes, as others have often said, the OMCES questions are more straightforward than those on the actual exam.) Overall, I found both sets of material worthwhile, and am glad I had access to both. I did think the links in the TWE were quite useful. Just that regarding these investments (I'm thinking time as well as money), I think Woo Study Guide + OMCES were most valuable.

One thing I'd read in the forums, and I think bears corroborating: no need to sweat the minutiae. I believe CAB understands that architects can look things up for reference, but that we ought to have a basic command of our processes and responsibilities.

Re: Post-Pass Brain Dump

PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 8:37 pm
by beansprout
Thank you for your advice. I was not aware of Woo's study guide. I just purchased it and it is wonderful.

The language is also much better than his practice tests I took a year ago...