Microsoft Certified Curriculum (MOC): I have access to Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) as a Certified Trainer, and therefore have an advantage, and can also shed light on its high value in preparing for exams. Here are my top 3 recommendations for Microsoft study material: While you will encounter questions on skills not listed in the page, I have never failed an exam for which I was comfortable with this skill list.Īs a Microsoft Certified Trainer, I have experience collecting and assessing which resources are the best for learners to get the most out of. This is, of course, a pretty fair bit of work, but it is better than not having any idea what to study. I make sure I understand the details of each skill in the list. I break out every skill that is listed into an Excel spreadsheet or a table in OneNote.

Each sub-objective has a set of skills listed in paragraph form. The objectives shown in the screen shot break out into sub-objectives. This is the first place I go when studying for an exam.

For example, here is an exam description for AZ-104: Azure Administrator Associate. Microsoft publishes exam description pages for every exam they administer. However, breathe a sigh of relief because there is one place to go to find out most of the topics that will be on an exam. No matter how much you study, you will likely encounter questions you have never seen any material on (more about this later). So, how do you know what will be on the exam? The scary answer is that you can’t, at least not everything. Every question is a trick question so they are pretty hard to guess at. The exams dive into minutia, asking questions that people with years of experience can’t answer. Microsoft certification exams are usually hard, really hard. Taking a Microsoft certification exam “cold” is a good way to end up retaking a Microsoft certification exam. You do not need to follow this approach, but you definitely need an approach. In fact, as I started thinking about it, I have never failed an exam for which I have gone through the process that I am laying out herein. Over the years I have developed an approach to taking exams and have generally passed many more than I have failed. I can’t say that I am ever excited to take an exam, but I have done well on them. I have taken a lot of Microsoft certification exams over the last 20 years.

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