cwi seminar and exam

Date 03-26-2008 18:01

On the day of the exam, wear a watch; the exam room may not have a clock. I was well prepared for the exam, but I started out slow on all three parts and had to pick up the pace at the end of each part in order to answer every question. I might not have been able to finish if I had not been able to monitor the time myself.

Bring a flashlight with you for the inpsection portions of Part B. Lighting in the room where I took the exam was poor. AWS gave us each a keychain flashlight as a souvenir of the test, and that flashlight worked OK, but you will feel more confident going in if you have your own light.

If noise bothers you, get over that right now. Elevator music played in the room where I took the exam through the whole day. No one knew how to turn it off. Sit in the middle of the room, away from the proctor's table. Some people are rude and inconsiderate, or maybe they just don't think, and they will carry on loud conversations with the proctor after turning in their exams - that's not the kind of distarction you will need in the closing minutes of the exam.

By James Corbin (**)

Date 03-29-2008 03:39

I'm sorry you experienced distractions. Yes some people taking the exam do try to have a conversation with me, I'll ask them to keep there comments to after all tests. No I don't keep a clock for everyone to see only an alarm to let all know the 2 hours is up along with the usual 30 & 15 minutes to go warnings and by request only a 1 hour warning.

If you can't find or don't know an answer quickly put a check mark on your answer sheet by the question number and go on the next question. In that way you can go back quickly to review the question again. Don't get crazy with the tabs they will get in the way of thumbing through the code from the back (the index) quickly. You cannot have loose papers in your code book but you can write in your code ahead of time with cross references to other areas. Highlight some of the index for quick finds along with highlights in the rest of the code book. DON"T write in your code book during the tests. STUDY

Hope this helps