Comments on: CCIE R/S Lab Sample Open-Ended Exam Questions

By: Weekly Open Ended Question #1 | AlwaysTheNetwork

Weekly Open Ended Question #1 | AlwaysTheNetwork — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:43:00 +0000

[...] the CCIE questions are going to be, but I’ve found some resources with sample questions, like INE’s CCIE Blog. The plan is to post one question a week with you guys (hopefully) answering in comments. I will [...]

By: ducktak

ducktak — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:37:36 +0000

Passing Lab exam first try today, thanks for Antony’s Core Knowledge notes, no RFC, port number stuff asked.

By: FailedAtFirstAttempt

FailedAtFirstAttempt — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:09:58 +0000

Hi Aharis,

I confirmed with the CCIE lab manager and was told that the proctors are well trained to grade the open-ended question. Actually I believe there is no need to write the answer in more than 1 sentence as the proctor will read your answer and grade it.

By: FailedAtFirstAttempt

FailedAtFirstAttempt — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:04:22 +0000

Hi Antony,

Thanks for the prompt feedback.
I am thinking of giving it another try on this coming june. Have been reading and sharpening my core knowledge and hopefully after the addition of “additional resource link” and “question number” feature in your Core Knowledge.

By: Anthony Sequeira

Anthony Sequeira — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:01:38 +0000

Hi FailedAtFirstAttempt!

Keep at it – next time should be your final time!

We are adding questions almost every day to the Core Knowledge product and being sure to attempt to cover all areas. By the weekend we will hit 450 questions.

Thanks for the feedback.

By: FailedAtFirstAttempt

FailedAtFirstAttempt — Sat, 02 May 2009 03:13:27 +0000

I attempted my first attempt on March and also got 0% on the Open ended question. Personally I think the open ended questions are an advantage if you really lucky and got the questions that you have well prepared for, since there is a large pool of questions. I actually go back to ccie support to clarify why did I failed this section and was told that I only managed to score less than 3 correct questions. They can’t discuss the exam content with me as this is bound by NDA. I agree with some in this forum as there is less transparency in this case. I believe grading an open ended questions is very subjective and NDA is another hurdle

But if you managed to pass this section, then it’s an advantage to you, since you only need to gain another 59 points to pass the lab exam. One of the ccie candidate whom I spoke to agree that the lab portion is easier than the previous before the introduction of open ended questions. Anyway he gained his ccie number after the introduction of this open ended question which is after several attempts :p

Anyway, I personally think if you want be a CiscoCIE expert, you need to be bound by whatever certification requirements released by Cisco. No complain about it :p

FYI, I also bought interworkexpert Core Knowledge product and was quite disappointed because it also did not cover intensively on all the topics

By: Kike

Kike — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:30:14 +0000

Totally agree with AHarris. What I did was first explain the scenario / technology and then reply to the question. One more thing, in one of the questions I had to explain a technology, I explained it in 3 different ways, using around 10 lines, when we are suppose to reply in just one or two lines but it is graded by humans, in my case I took the exam in Brussels, it means that a Belgian guy (who normally speaks french) graded an Spanish guy (me) in English… so… try to make the other person understand what you mean, no worries about writing too much. At least it was what I did. I don’t remember replying one single question with less than 4 lines.
Hope this helps

By: AHarris

AHarris — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:57:30 +0000

I haven’t added anything in awhile, but I will give this advice to all when taking the test. Some say elaborate, and some say be brief\concise. I would recommend you take a middle approach. When I answered the questions in one sentence. Then in a second sentence gave an brief description of the technology\scenario. This worked for me. However, if you type in anything extra and you’re wrong it could possibly cost you points. Just keep in mind that the questions are being graded by humans (I think), that understand the topics inside-out.

By: JCF

JCF — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:13:49 +0000

I recently took the R&S lab.
I believe based on % and recalling the point totals that I passed the lab.
However , and we all know what is coming next, I failed the core tech section, so I failed.

What puzzles me is that I thought I answered 3 of the 4 correctly. I even verified that I may have gotten all 4 right.

2 of the questions were very very vague.
Anthony’s docs are very helpful, do not get me wron.
For these 2 they were not. I have started to read the configuration guides ( all of them ) for my next attempt in May.

By: abhi

abhi — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:50:47 +0000

Thanks Anthony… I would definetly go with this product.