I recently took my CCNA final exam and passed but the result I got was much lower than I expected (873).

On the netacademy CCNA4 practice exams for the final CCNA exam, I got 92%+ on both and felt the real final one was much easier, I'm confident that I got at least 48/53 questions completely correct, including one of the two sims I KNOW I answered correctly.

Does anyone know if on the sims questions where it has multiple questions inside it, do you only get the overall questions correct if ALL answers are correct, or will you get marks for each individual question within that?

Also, what's with Cisco's scoring mechanism, I mean it doesn't even tell you the % you get, OR the number of questions you got right...seems like they're up to something...

Sorry for the rant, I feel sick.

I wasn't tremendously impressed with my result or anything, but hey, a pass is a pass

Nobody else sees your score.

I was a bit curious about the sims too, do they count shortcut commands and stuff? I don't know, I'm sure somebody on here does though

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The sims are scored so that you get points for each part you get correct, so a partial score is possible. That's why it's a good strategy not too spend too much time on them if you get one early on in the exam - if you know that you've got part of it working but can't get one last thing then at least you know that you'll get some marks for it if you move on.

As far as I know this is the only question type this applies to. All other types, multi-choice, drag & drop, simlet, etc, are all or nothing.

However, I do know that not all questions are weighted equally. So all those questions you are sure you got right may be only weighted a couple of points each, and the ones you got incorrect may have been the big scorers.

Further, a couple of the questions may be pilots and weighted zero! These are new questions being trialled - the responses are statistically analysed to determine if they rate being included in the question bank. Sometimes these are obvious - I recall getting one on switching/STP where the given topology didn't completely match the question text. But normally I doubt they would be noticed as being different.

And finally, although your final result is given as points out of 1000, the minimum possible score is 200. I don't know if your answers are actually scored out of 800, than added to the 200 you get for logging in correctly; or whether your responses contribute to the 200 minimum.

So all this means that although you may be fairly certain that you got a particular number of questions correct, your final score depends on how the total points were allocated and tallied.

Aubrey

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The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler, "Future Shock" 1970

Yep the marking system is shrouded in mystery. Have a look on this forum for the discussions we have had on the marking already. Don't stress though. Put the hours in using the real gear and/or sims and you'll be fine. I'm glad Cisco are making it a bit tougher. I met another CCNA the other day and he was watching me configure a router and he was impressed "you really know your way around a router". I said aren't you a CCNA too. I came to the assumption that he had basically used brain dumps / memorising questions to pass, which I'm not a fan of.

Thanks for the info guys, I feel much better now after sleeping on it, I guess I'm just going to have to make up for it by doing good on CCNP

I guess what makes me feel sick (but I know it's wrong especially between friends) is knowing I put in so many more hours than anyone on my course, get higher in all end of chapter tests, practice tests etc than them and then have my friend (took exam at same time), which I've helped revise and taught so much to get higher than me in the real thing, by about 60 points.

one other question, are the questions the same for everyone (i.e. over a given time period) or are they randomly selected from a pool for each individual sitting their exam (I don't mean adaptive)?

Well if it helps to make you feel better, just think that not only do you now have your CCNA (nobody asks you what score you got), but you also know more about those areas of networking than the others in your class as shown by your class results.

As for the range of questions each CCNA candidate gets; I would think that the CCNA question bank consists of a number of pools of questions based around topic areas and weighting and there's some algorithm that creates an inidivdual exam for each candidate by drawing questions from each pool. The algorithm probably mixes and matches all the criteria so each candidate gets an equivalent exam. So while a number of candidates over time get presented with some of the same questions it's a low probability that any two of them would get an identical exam. This is pure speculation on my part, but this is how I would do it , and the CCNA has been around for some time so I would assume that the exam construction process has some sophistication.

Aubrey

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The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler, "Future Shock" 1970

thanks eeadams, looking at things that way does make me feel a lot better. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

shalom

I had a question in my final CCNP exam (ONT) that had TWO spelling errors.

Needless to say I left a nice comment for them ..

One thing I've noticed and this is not exactly ego inflating, is that there are quite a few repeat questions if you have to take an exam multiple times.