jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences

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Today I passed the Core Spring 3 certification exam with a score of 92%.  This blog entry is similar to Jeanne’s SCEA part 1 experiences – a place to share all the information about the process.  For SCEA, it was an place to weed through all the information out there and organize it a bit.  For Spring, it is the opposite.  There is an information shortage out there.  Not much is written up and most of what is out there goes with the 2.5 version of the exam.  As a result, this entry is much longer and has been split into a series of posts.

  1. Background information
  2. About the test (includes Scope of the test and Spring 2.5 vs 3.0 exam)
  3. What did I read and how were the resources I tried
  4. My study plan
  5. Skills guru mock exam
  6. What I would recommend as a study plan

Background information

I took the Core Spring class the week of July 20th.  It comes with one free attempt at the test.  Retakes are $150.  Luckily, I didn’t need a retake.  Based on what I had heard about the 2.5 test, it went deeper than the course and required a lot of studying.  As a result, I decided to wait a month from taking the course before taking the test.  Now that I know what the test is about, I know I could have taken it a week or two earlier.  Or even earlier if the voucher arrived sooner.

In late 2013, Jakub Staš added noted some changes in the exam.

Update May 2017: no longer need to take a class to take the exam

Next page: About the test

Note to those who are thinking of asking for a copy of the class materials:

The Core Spring course material is copyrighted by Spring Source. I cannot share it with others.  Please do not waste your time e-mailing me to request them.

85 thoughts on “jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences”

  1. Hi Jeanne,

    Thanks for your notes, Today i gave up my exam and cleared with a good score.

    Antony

  2. Pingback: jeanne’s togaf foundation cert in 3 weeks experiences | Down Home Country Coding With Scott Selikoff and Jeanne Boyarsky

  3. I know its been long since you added this post. Just checking if you have any sample tests in pdf or other format that we can use . The JavaBlackBelt and other sites are no more. (except Skill Guru).

  4. Hello Jeanne ,
    I am working on form on Spring 3.X version. So I want to know that which book I should refer for the Spring Certification Exam. I am taking exam date of next Month. Please tell me step to take a date for the exam. I am in India Pune. I know the test center in my city. Please Guid me ???

  7. Bhushan: Any book is fine. “Spring in Action” happens to be the book I used. You would be fine with just the official manual too. I learned more by learning from multiple sources.

  8. hey jeanne
    i am going to give the enterprise integration with spring exam
    is there any guide for it?

  9. Hii Jeanne ,
    I am following your blog. And your step which you mention. But the problem is you mention one that 4 day training. Actually I contact to SpringSource People training center which is at Bangalore in India. And then ask for Huge payment like 1180$ . Actually its almost 59000 according to indian currency. And I am paying from my pocket. My company doest provide these kind of facility. So what should I do?. I am really confused. And I have to a certification. please contact me on . In that training what kind of things they coveres. Is there any online free training is available. or in some less amount so i can affort. waiting for your answer.

  10. And one more thing, I have basic knowledge of spring like DI, Spring-Jpa, the basics of the life cycle. Please guide me.

  12. Bhushan: There are many ways to learn spring. However, the vendor requires you take the expensive training in order to sit the exam. The only cheaper option is to not get certified. I wonder why the certification is so important to you?

  13. thanks jeanne.
    i guess i’ll just have to make do with the study guide they provided

  14. Hey bhushan
    i had completed the core spring course from springpeople bangalore around a year back.
    agreed its very expensive (it cost me much more than what it costs now) but it is totally worth it.
    the major advantage are the projects they give ready made.
    each set have a incomplete one and its completed one
    so you can try to do it on your own but if your stuck then you can check for the solution
    the best thing about these projects is that they are really good and extensive real world projects
    if you try to learn it online then there are only a few simple examples which give a very direct solution
    and if you want to learn from just books
    there are small things that we tend to ignore or miss which causes errors to pop up
    for me the course was totally worth it
    and the instructors are very knowledgable and helpful. Any doubt that you might have they can help resolve in a jiffy.

  15. Hi Rohit,
    Thanks for sharing your experience. Can you please able to tell me that they are going to provide staying facility in that and certification also? or just they provide a training.

  16. Hi Rohit,
    And I took a training from Seed Infotech. Currently I am working in Spring only. So I have some knowledge about the topic which they mentionin the Course. : Dependency Injection, AOP, Transactions, Spring MVC, Spring Security.
    After this what do you think?
    Still They offer me course in 39000. How much you paid for it?.

  17. there is no accommodation that they provide but they would help you find one i think.
    the topics you mentioned are more or less than mjority of the topics
    there are some advanced topics too like JMS, remoting etc but not too detailed
    The detailed study of the advanced topics come in the integration course.
    i cant recollect how much i paid but i think it was around 70K

  18. Hi Jeannes,

    I would like to thank you for the detailed guide for Spring certification. Following it helped me with passing spring core 3.0 certification with 90% score.

    Thanks again,
    Manish

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  22. Consider replacing the term “J2EE” with “Java EE”, Java 2 was eons ago and Oracle officially references the enterprise edition under the name “Java EE”.

  25. Hi Jeanne,

    Thanks for providing this information. Just a quick question – is the mock test that you created available anywhere else (as the JavaBlackBelt site you linked to no longer exists) ?

    Thanks!

  27. Pingback: SpringSource Certified Spring Professional | Jakub Staš

  28. Hi Jeanne,

    Why The “My study plan” page return a 500 Error? how can I access the following informations?

    Thanks

  33. Hello
    Hi jeanne, this post helped me a lot for my spring core certification, do you have a blog post or any information about mock test or study guide/notes for the spring web developer exam, is you can share that it will help out a lot of other (including me) who are in process of the spring web developer exam

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