CCNA 200-301:Exam Experience and Stduy Resources

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

it will be a short blog.

Study Resources

First Ressource

without any doubt, i would highly recommend Jeremy IT Lab course which is free on YouTube. i used this course as the main studing material. it is long and very hard to follow up when you get into heavy episodes such as OSPF and STP.

but here’s what i see. when you read “DAY 26 OSPF” in the title of the episode. IT DOESN’T MEAN YOU NEED TO FINISH THE VIDEO IN A DAY. because it is not possible, at least for me.

it took me about a week and a half to study the three episodes of OSPF. you may spend less or long, but just don’t try to swallow all those details he give in the same day.

but he is a GOAT. thank you Jeremy.

and no need to mention the flash cards and labs that he gives after each episode, because those are must, if you want to get it well enough for the exam.

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

so after you finish the playlist with all labs, then you can move to the second course.

Second Recommendation

now, you need to get some knowledge in wireless technologies, and i highly recommend to study the WLC as much as you can, you won’t regret it when you go to the exam center.

and for this matter, i used the CBT Nuggets, their CCNA course is great, but i studied only the wireless part by Jeff Kish and it was detailed and great.

CBT Nuggests is paid, but they give a free week trail, and that is what i used to study the wireless.

CBT Nuggests Free Week: https://www.cbtnuggets.com/signup

Third Recommendation

i personaly love paper books, so i bought Jeremy’s two volume book, which is named “Acing the CCNA”, it was great and i recommend it to anyone who is into networking seriously, as the book covers much more than what you would need for the CCNA.

you can also get the “31 days before CCNA”, it was great too.

both of those books are available as PDFs as well, i think.

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

Fourth Recommendation

now enough studying, and go to CCNA community on Reddit. I WROTE THIS BLOG JUST FOR THIS TIP.

just go and browse this community and see people’s experience and read the comments, to at least have some expectations on what you’re going to face on the exam day.

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

My Personnal Experience

i personally found the exam to be easy/normal on some questions, and insanely hard on some questions. which i didn’t like. for example, i face a question that i spend 5 minutes just to read the question and see the exhibit and read all possible answers! bro, that’s a journal, not a question.

also people should be prepared to read the question more than twice, because i faced some troubles to understand some questions, and no, not because of my bad English as i found some natives on the Reddit community point to the same thing.

but i can say that these would be on a question or two, but the rest of questions will be in a normal format.

i need to point that there’s 72 question. and 4 labs.

for non native English speakers whom are living outside of US/UK, they will have about 170 minutes instead of 120 minutes.

also one important point, when you first start the exam, you will start with the 4 labs, when you finish all of them, then you will start with multiple-choice multiple-answer questions.

Labs

as i mentioned, labs are first.

and labs are pretty easy to normal, at least for me, i didn’t face anything out of the CCNA scope. if you practiced on the labs by Jeremy, you would find it as drinking water. trust me.

so in brief, just practice on the Jeremy’s labs, and you will do fine.

DON’T FORGET THE: write memory command after you finish the configuration on each device. if you did what is required and you just clicked submit, you will get no points. it is all about saving the running config into the NVRAM.

please don’t forget the above tip, it looks obvious but it is not when you’re stressed or excited.

Questions

i can’t say much here except, people should be ready for any format of questions.

for example don’t wait for direct questions only, yeah there is direct question, but there’s also a lot of troubleshooting questions.

so instead of remembering only protocols and their ports and what transport protocol they use. you should also be aware of how that protocol is working, because you may find a question that is very in-focus on a protocol.

final tip, you really need to get mastered in routing protocols.

Price

well it depends, but if you’re still in university, you can ask your networking teacher if he has the Netacad teacher account, if he does, he can add you to a class to pass the CCNA1,2 AND 3 with a score of 85 or more. then you will receive a 56% discount from cisco.

so the price are as follows: - with discount: 132 USD - without it : 300 USD

you can get the voucher from cisco.com or pearsonvue direclty. pearsonVue accepts EURO only.

if you have USD card go with cisco.com, which was my case. if you have EURO go with pearsonVue. just ask a friend if you don’t have any USD/EURO.

as paying directly with MAD will made it just more expensive.

and that’s it, i hope i included everything.