EX200 wrong exam result

[rwazan]

hi all,

i just got my second attempt results for the EX200 exam, and i am confident that 20 questions out of 22 were answered correctly. however i have failed. 

this was pretty shocking as i have been working and practicing redhat for a long time, that i can teach the course.  and even if i retake the exam again i will do the tasks as i did the last time. as i am pretty sure the tasks have been done correctly, during the exam i was checking everything, and i was getting the same results that the exam was asking about.

i am requesting someone who can help me with this issue that i am facing.

hopefully someone will take it into high considrations and respond promptly.

below you can see my score results,

Exam domain number:     2

Passing score:          210

Your score:             157

Result: NO PASS

Performance on exam objectives:

                OBJECTIVE: SCORE

                Understand and use essential tools: 88%

                Operate running systems: 14%

imposible to get this score 

                Configure local storage: 0%

imposible to get this score

                Create and configure file systems: 33%

imposible to get this score

                Deploy, configure and maintain systems: 25%

imposible to get this score

                Manage users and groups: 75%

imposible to get this score

                Manage security: 100%

                Manage containers: 0%

imposible to get this score

,,,,,,,,,

'i also can prove what i did in the exam, but i dont want to publish the exam questions

[Andrey-Asoskov]

Hi,

there is a link in an email that you've received to dispute your score. You can try it but chances are low.

Just keep in mind that there it is a robot that checks your results so the exam is not always about getting it solved but about understanding what is expected from you, how robot checks it and what is written between the lines of a task. As we know in IT one task could be done in many ways so the goal is to undewrstand which one is the most correct.

I've done several exams where I solved all the tasks and is pretty confident about them but got only around 75%. Even RedHat'ers sometimes fail on their exams :-)

[Tracy_Baker · Accepted solution]

---

@Andrey-Asoskov wrote:

Just keep in mind that there it is a robot that checks your results so the exam is not always about getting it solved but about understanding what is expected from you, how robot checks it and what is written between the lines of a task. As we know in IT one task could be done in many ways so the goal is to undewrstand which one is the most correct.

Umm, no. The exam scoring boils down to this: Did you meet the task as specified or didn't you? It isn't something as esoteric as a "robot" (which is more likely a script) trying to "understand what is expected of you." There is no "most correct," there is only correct.

That's it. It does not matter how you get there.

For example, let's say you were told to put the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) into the /tmp/example.txt file. You could:

vim /tmp/example.txt and, once the editor is open, type in Hello World and then write and quit the file.

Or you could do this: echo "Hello World" > /tmp/example.txt

Either way ends in the same result -- and that's all the grading script (or robot) cares about.

@rwazan 

As to the OP's concerns. Not to put too fine a point on it, you probably earned the score you received. I understand that you think you did things correctly. While it is possible that the scoring mechanism (a script, a robot, or whatever) may be scoring things incorrect when they're actually correct, it is highly improbable.

Furthermore, it is not "imposible to get this score," because you did. People get 0% in sections all the time.

Saying that you, "can teach the course," doesn't really mean anything when it comes to taking the exam. Trust me, I know because I do teach the classes (I'm the lead Professor at my college for our Red Hat Academy). Even though I teach the material, I still failed the RHCE twice before finally earning it.

(I failed because [1] I went into the test with too much hubris, thinking I knew more than I did and [2] I didn't pay close enough attention to the details - to the specifics in the instructions that were given. Once I slowed down and really read and understood the questions is when I passed.)

You should be using the link Red Hat provided you in the email they sent you with your results to ask your questions about the exam score -- that's why it is there.

[Andrey-Asoskov]

I would recommend you to take any of the difficult exams (the ones that have numbers higher than 400) and you would see that the tasks are not always defined as simple as put that text in that file. Sometimes it's more like configure that. For example file audit. And you can do it several ways. On a syscall level or on a file level. Both ways are applicable. Sometimes the pretty big task is defined just with a few lines and you have to guess the rest of the details.

Of course scripts could be wrong as they are created by humans. You can check grading scripts on RHLS courses to see that they are not perfect. There are many messages regarding that on that forum. But with RHLS courses we have so many testers (users) that can check the script and report to RH. With exams I guess only a few people have an access to scripts and an error could be there for years. 

What if they use just bash scripts and grep to check the result? And what if you use in some part of a task a special symbol that breaks the whole logic of checking. And it could be fully ok with task definition. They can tell you that you can use any name. Are we sure that they defined an exception for cases like this?

[rwazan]

@Tracy_Baker thanks for your response.

but since you do teach the course, you know all the needed verification for each and every task that you have been asked to do during the exam. " basically what you are saying, after a candidate finish the exam, he wont be able to tell how did he do in the exam ??!!", sorry but i dont agree with that, its even i know i did well or not.

what would you say if you did the verification, and you didnt get any errors, however you get the requested results that you have been asked in the question. are you still going to say that i think i did things correctly.

and regarding "highly improbable", it dose not mean impossible, it means low chance to happen, in other words, it may happen to me.

last thing, when i said that its is impossible to get this score, because this is my second attempt during one week, my first attempt i got 186, how could it be logical that i get less score in the second attempt. 

first attempts: 

Exam domain number:     19

Passing score:          210

Your score:             186

Result: NO PASS

Performance on exam objectives:

                OBJECTIVE: SCORE

                Understand and use essential tools: 75%

                Operate running systems: 57%

                Configure local storage: 40%

                Create and configure file systems: 50%

                Deploy, configure and maintain systems: 62%

                Manage users and groups: 75%

                Manage security: 50%

                Manage containers: 0%

[wfjr]

"There is no "most correct," there is only correct."

I can 100% guarantee that this is NOT the truth. And using a very close example as to what you said about scripting (leading to the same result), but I cant go into further details as per NDA.

[exceed]

Where do you get this information ?

If you do any of the labs in the official Red Hat training for the course you will get a fail even though you did the task correctly, but not how it was expected to be done. It is worth mentioning however that sometimes it does make sense that you do it the way they expect it because it shows that you have understood the subject. 

Sometimes it seems like you could use the telinit command or a similar old command and it would work because its a symlink to the appropriate systemctl command, but you are not suppose to do that even though it works and in that regard I get why you would get a fail.

If you configure a service and it works, but you did not understand that you were suppose to use a better configuration I think that is questionable, but I think a Red Hat certification might be you having to know, learn and understand the optimal way of using RHEL and not just finding a solution that works. If you, as a certified Red Hat professional get a job at a company it would be in your, the company and Red Hat's best interest that you apply the best practice for using RHEL, at least in my opinion.

It certainly is concerning that you always have to know the expected solution since you will probably get it wrong a least a few times when you might have a solution that works properly or is even better.

[sss]

Deleting, Posting under wrong user :)

[JS_Learning]

Hi @rwazan ,

I want to try to help you as well. First of all, I can read that it's a very unpleasant experience for you, a shocking one. It's true and legitimate reaction, and as a candidate myself, who have been in your position before, I know it can be hard. In fact there's a separation to make between your expectations and reality.

FYI, I don't have much time right now, I'm working on a project.

So just to realign your expectations, and again, I'm trying to help you here: 

1. When you say "dont want to publish the exam questions". You can not because, like all of us, you signed a NDA. Doing so would breach that and would not resulting in helping you. What you can do, like mentioned before is to use the official form to send your feedback to the team: Official comment forms to send feedback on Red Hat certification exams . Also, you can not expect much answer from that (again, @Andrey-Asoskov told you that earlier). One of the problems is that if the team would discuss any question/answer, they would give you an unfair advantage against other candidates. One of the thing is that they are listening, and sometimes they fix issue(s) if any.
2. You are hoping that "someone will take it into high considerations": It's a learning forum here, there's only one official way to feedback about exams, is the form given above. Therefore, while your concerns are legitimate, you are currently expressing them in the wrong place.
3. You wrote several times "impossible to get this score". That would worth discussing further. Why do you think it's impossible?

Going further, I am also under the NDA; so we can not discuss the exam specifics.

I can only share a few notes. FYI; I also failed EX200 the first time, and some questions were technically wrong (yes, I am 100% sure). Some other questions I misunderstood. The point is anything about right/wrong, fair/unfair is not going to help you, what you need is to focus on the exam and passing it.

1. You need to read each questions carefully and in the right order. Often there are dependant questions, meaning you fail the first, you will get zero at a later one. Sometimes before to answer a question, you need to make sure, it's not going to conflict with a later question.
2. Sometimes, by getting more familiar with the exam questions and setup, it gets easier (such as when you try the exam again).
3. Sometimes you need to interpret a question, sometimes you need to just do something that seems "what the examiner wanted". No crystal ball here, sometimes it's luck.
4. The score given are an indication to help you partially. Sometimes that is actually not helping and confuse the learner/candidate. In fact nothing said that " Manage containers:" (example) is about question x +y +z. Sometimes that topic "Manage containers" is spread among several questions. Sometimes not. The point is that is an indication and we do not know what it is refering to exactly in the exam. It's still useful to look and next attempt you can try to carefully look at related topics, among the questions.
5. You have been given example above about "the result" vs "what you did". As said, sometimes it's a fine line between what you understood and what needed to be done. Unfortunately, it's not always perfect either here, there could be interpretation issues. I only found that sometimes for me the only way is trial/error (yes, sometimes that implies failing an exam entirely).
6. You are not so far from the passing grade, that's rather positive. That means that probably, you can get more points by fixing/doing differently/rethinking some topics were you scored low.

I really have to focus on my tasks now. Remember those hands-on exams can be very hard sometimes, even when they are about simple technical topics. it's not only assessing your skills but also your capabilities to deal with an unknown setup, unknown requirements, etc...

And as a last note, most likely, any frustration/anger/unfairness/whatever would only be wasting time and focusing you away from the actual exam "challenge", the questions/answers. I want to highlight that I failed a few exams due to that, even when I was right and there were some technical mistakes/problems not due to me.

Good luck in advance for any future attempts,

[rwazan]

@JS_Learning  thanks for your response, i already used the link but i didnt get help, so i was trying to find someone here that may be encounter the same problem.

and when i said i dont want to expose the question, what i mean by that, that i can prove for any of the exam support team that i still remember the hole exam and i can show them what i did. 

FYI this is my second attempts, my first one i got 186 !!!! 

and there is no luck in a practecl exam its  either you know the solution or not. 

my only reason that i posted here, because even if i retake the exam for the 3rd time, i will solve the tasks using the same methods that i used in the second exam.

again many thanks for your help, and good luck in your project.