Re: How many hours a week should I study?

Hey Kevin,

Depends on too may factors to answer directly, IMHO. E.g. your
experience with the material tested, your natural speed and accuracy
(or, as in my case, lack thereof), etc. I did my R&S CCIE in seven
months, six of which were dedicated to lab prep (the other obviously
dedicated to the written). I did from 12 to 18 hours a day, seven
days a week. So let's just split that and say 15 hours/day, which
works out to about 105 hours/week x ~26 weeks, or 2700+ hours. But
then, I did not just prepare to pass the lab. I broke things and
debugged the hell out of everything along the way. I did loads of
packet capture and analysis. Took reams of notes. I stopped to read
most all of the config guide as it applies to the blueprint. I
continued to read books along side of doing practice labs. Took
several online classes (nearly all of them at least twice, some three
times or more). Attended one live boot camp and did one online too.
So maybe it could have been less than ~100 hours/week and I *may*
still have passed, but I have no regrets in this regard. I personally
could not have done it in 30 hours/week for those same six months, but
that's not to say that you can't. Heck, check this guy out:

http://ccie-in-3-months.blogspot.com/

(you'll need to navigate your way through his archives down at the
lower right to follow his full story)

Guys like Petr Lapukhov seem to need only to schedule and sit their
labs in order to pass them (he's CCIE 16xxx, yet he has four of them -
and has for some time!).

For the rest of us, I would say it's nice to have a goal for
completion, but regard that as a floating point out in front of you
that sometimes moves closer in and sometimes moves further out. Focus
more on learning and learning well than finishing. If you take
shortcuts to achieve your timeline goals, you'll suffer down the
line. Once you earn that number, you *are* expected to be an expert
(and in more than just R&S technologies, LOL!). Personally, due to
financial considerations, I had a hard date that I had to stop
preparing for the lab as a full-time job; I did not have a hard date
for earning the number, per se. Fortunately, in the end, the two
dates more or less coincided for me, as I was both flat broke and
totally burnt out! ;~)

Best wishes for your prep,

Scott

On May 2, 2009, at 3:00 , kevin dalby wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I have a quick question. I am just starting out and putting my
> schedule
> together. I would like to finish in 6 months and was wondering how
> many
> hours a week should I set apart to study. I am currently targeting
> about 30
> a week but frankly am feeling like that might not be enough.
>
> How many hours a week on average did everyone put in to get their #.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> PS. This is an amazing resource, thanks Paul.
>
> IE
>
>
> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Subscription information may be found at:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Sat May 02 2009 - 15:47:15 ART