Update (11/05/2020): Read The 1Z0-819 Exam page to learn how you can easily our Java 11 Study Guides to prepare for Oracle’s 1Z0-819 Exam, as well as the 1Z0-817 Upgrade Exam.

I wasn’t as fast as Scott who took the exam two months ago (the day after it came out). I waited until I was done with “FIRST robotics season” and a vacation before thinking about taking the first half of the new Oracle Certified Professional: Java 11 Developer certification. I passed today with an 87%.I’ll be taking the second half in a number of months.

Jeanne vs Scott’s exam

A lot changed since Scott took the exam. I think he got a lot of experimental/unscored questions. The exam was still harder than the OCA 8. But it wasn’t insanely hard like he got. Key differences:

• Scott had a lot of “pick 3 or 8” type questions. About 75% of the questions I got were pick one out of four or five choices. I got exactly 4 questions with seven choices. One was “pick 3 or 7” and three were “pick 1 of 7”. I got about 6 questions with 6 answers. Two were “pick 2 of 6” and the others were “pick 1 of 6”. I got about 12 “choose 2 or 5” questions.
• I got 7 questions on modules. Which is what you’d expect statistically. Scott had a lot more but I think that was because the topic was new and Oracle was testing questions.

What is still harder

• Overall, it is longer than the OCA 8. It took me 75 minutes to get through all the questions on the first pass. Then I spent 50 minutes reviewing (and memorizing). During that phase, I fixed one incorrect answer and changed a correct answer to an incorrect answer so it was a wash.
• The scope is larger than the OCA 8 and the questions go deeper. This makes sense as this is a professional level exam.

What else was interesting?

• The instructions say press control to cross out answers. This didn’t work. (I had this problem before so it might be my exam center.) – update: this worked on part 2, so it was probably just the mouse at my testing center
• The exam results are supposed to be available within 30 minutes. I didn’t bring my phone to the exam center. When I got home, the email with the results was from “30” minutes ago. It took me a little over half an hour from when I ended the exam until I go home so he results were available fast!

How I studied

Even though I’m the author a study book, I find I still need to review. More so for part 2 of the exam, but it still helps for part 1 seeing the details.

• Read our OCA 8 book
• Re-read the basic parts of Manning’s Module System book. I was the tech development editor for this book and also helped with some of the finishing touches.
• Do all questions in our OCA 8 book and K&B’s 8 book.
• Do about half the questions in our Practice exam book for OCA 8 and the mock exam. (I ran out of time to do them all. This was mainly about practicing speed and confidence anyway. I do know the material.)
• Did the official practice questions. (It would have been better if these were split between part 1 and part 2)