CCNA 200-301: Exam Experience and Study Resources

I’m writing this blog post to share my own opinion about the CCNA 200-301 exam, and also the study resources I used during my preparation.

It will be a short one.

Study Resources

First Resource

Without any doubt, I would highly recommend Jeremy’s IT Lab course, which is free on YouTube. I used this course as my main study material. It is long, and very hard to keep up with once you get into heavy episodes such as OSPF and STP.

But here’s my take: when you read “Day 26: OSPF” in the title of an episode, IT DOESN’T MEAN YOU NEED TO FINISH THE VIDEO IN A DAY. That’s not possible, at least not for me.

It took me about a week and a half to study the three OSPF episodes. You may spend less time or more, but just don’t try to swallow all the details he gives you in a single day.

But he is a GOAT. Thank you, Jeremy.

And I don’t even need to mention the flashcards and labs he gives after each episode: they’re a must if you want to understand things well enough for the exam.

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Playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxbwE86jKRgMpuZuLBivzlM8s2Dk5lXBQ

Once you finish the playlist and all the labs, you can move on to the second resource.

Second Recommendation

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Next, you need some knowledge of wireless technologies. I highly recommend studying WLCs as much as you can; you won’t regret it when you get to the exam center.

For this, I used CBT Nuggets. Their CCNA course is great, but I only studied the wireless part, taught by Jeff Kish, and it was detailed and excellent.

CBT Nuggets is paid, but they offer a free one-week trial, and that’s what I used to study wireless.

CBT Nuggets free week: https://www.cbtnuggets.com/signup

Third Recommendation

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I personally love paper books, so I bought Jeremy’s two-volume book, Acing the CCNA Exam. It was great, and I recommend it to anyone who is seriously into networking, as it covers much more than what you need for the CCNA.

You can also get 31 Days Before Your CCNA Exam; it was great too.

I think both books are also available as e-books.

Jeremy’s two-volume book: https://www.amazon.com/Acing-CCNA-Volumes-Jeremy-McDowell/dp/1633435709

Fourth Recommendation

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Now, enough studying: go to the CCNA community on Reddit. I WROTE THIS BLOG POST JUST FOR THIS TIP.

Browse the community and read people’s exam experiences and the comments, so you at least have some idea of what you’re going to face on exam day.

Reddit CCNA community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ccna/

My Personal Experience

I found some questions easy or normal, and some insanely hard, which I didn’t like. For example, I got a question where I spent 5 minutes just reading the question, checking the exhibit, and going through all the possible answers! Bro, that’s a journal, not a question.

Also, be prepared to read some questions more than twice. I had trouble understanding a few of them, and no, it wasn’t because of my English: I found native speakers on the Reddit community pointing out the same thing.

That said, this only applies to a question or two; the rest are in a normal format.

I should point out that I had 72 questions and 4 labs.

Non-native English speakers living outside the US/UK get about 170 minutes instead of 120.

One more important point: the exam starts with the 4 labs, and only after you finish all of them do you move on to the multiple-choice questions (single and multiple answer).

Labs

As I mentioned, labs come first.

The labs were easy to normal, at least for me; I didn’t face anything outside the CCNA scope. If you’ve practiced Jeremy’s labs, you’ll find them as easy as drinking water. Trust me.

So in short: practice Jeremy’s labs, and you’ll do fine.

DON’T FORGET the write memory command after you finish configuring each device. If you did everything required and just clicked submit, you will get no points. It’s all about saving the running config to NVRAM.

Please don’t forget this tip. It looks obvious, but it isn’t when you’re stressed or excited.

Questions

I can’t say much here, except that you should be ready for any question format.

For example, don’t expect only direct questions. Yes, there are direct questions, but there are also a lot of troubleshooting questions.

So instead of only memorizing protocols, their ports, and which transport protocol they use, you should also understand how each protocol works, because you may get a question that focuses deeply on one protocol.

Final tip: you really need to master routing protocols.

Price

It depends. If you’re still at university, ask your networking teacher whether they have a Netacad instructor account. If they do, they can add you to a class, and if you pass CCNA 1, 2, AND 3 with a score of 85 or more, you’ll receive a 56% discount from Cisco.

So the prices are:

• With the discount: 132 USD
• Without it: 300 USD

You can buy the voucher directly from cisco.com or Pearson VUE. Pearson VUE accepts euros only.

If you have a USD card, go with cisco.com, which is what I did. If you have euros, go with Pearson VUE. If you don’t have a USD or euro card, just ask a friend who does.

Paying directly in MAD will just make it more expensive.

And that’s it. I hope I covered everything.