One person has taken it 19 times and still hasn't passed. Around 8,000 people take the CCIE lab exam each year. You can't do that with the lab exam because you need hands-on practice." Network engineers must pass the written exam before they are eligible to take the lab exam, which is available at 10 Cisco facilities worldwide. People generally try to study for it by sitting down with a book and reading it. "The written exam is easier because it's in a more traditional format," Reid says. Each year around 12,000 people take the CCIE written exam, which is available at testing facilities run by Pearson VUE or Prometric. The written exam, which includes multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, is relatively easy, and people usually pass it on the first or second try. "We target the material at an expert level. "Over the life of the program, the overall pass rate has usually been 26%," says Mike Reid, senior manager of CCIE programs for Cisco, which won't reveal the pass rate for last year. The most popular track is routing and switching. The CCIE is offered in five tracks: routing and switching security service provider storage networking and voice. It has two parts: a written exam and a practical lab test. The CCIE has been considered the most difficult certification in the IT industry since its launch in 1993. It was such an incredible feeling of achievement." "I got an e-mail from my proctor saying congratulations while I was at the airport waiting for my flight home from the exam," Healy says. 15025, is program manager for technical training and certifications at Microwave Data Systems in Rochester, N.Y. Rus Healy was speechless when he found out in August 2005 that he had passed the CCIE lab exam on his fourth try. If you had told me that I would fail the CCIE four times before I passed it, I would have said that was not possible," he says. "Everything I had ever done, I had excelled at. "The CCIE was infinitely more difficult for me than anything else I've ever done," says Sequeira, a senior technical instructor for Thomson NETg in Scottsdale, Ariz., who holds CCIE No. CCIEs talk about how physically taxing the process is and list it among their greatest accomplishments. The lab exam is so difficult that it has taken on mythic proportions in the network industry. The lab exam also costs big bucks, with the purchase of workbooks, preparatory courses, racks of Cisco equipment, exam fees and travel reaching as high as $20,000. They did it to me all five times that I took the exam." Sequeira passed the lab exam in January, joining the ranks of 12,967 network engineers who have aced the grueling hands-on test.ĭoctor, lawyer? Non-techies don't appreciate Cisco networking examįor most, passing the CCIE lab exam requires studying as many as 1,000 hours and maintaining a laser-like focus that leaves spouses, children and hobbies by the wayside. They could throw a topic at you that you have no experience with.
The fear of the unknown is what you consistently face in the CCIE. "With piloting, you conquer fear by eliminating the unknowns. The CCIE exam is "absolutely more stressful than doing loop-de-loops in a plane," Sequeira says.
But nothing in his thrill-seeking exploits prepared him for the pressure of taking the Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) lab exam. The 35-year-old network instructor from Tampa, Fla., once purposely stalled a single-engine plane and sent it into a tailspin five times in a row as part of his efforts to earn his pilot's license. But nothing in his thrill-seeking exploits prepared him for the pressure of taking the CCIE lab exam.Īnthony Sequeira knows a little about stress.
Anthony Sequeira knows a little about stress.
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