Shortest route to an MCP.

March 16, 2009 5:08 PM

Hi there! As part of the contract for my new job, I have to get an MCP. As I understand it, the MCP is a title given to anyone who has a microsoft certification. Which is the easiest and fastest certification to get that'll qualify you as an MCP?
posted by PowerCat to Technology (3 answers total)

If you really just want to scrape in, do the Microsoft 70-270 exam. Take a week or 40 hours and read two of the hardback books cover to cover, twice if you can. Do all the practice questions and if possible, try and get some practical experience.

Above all, learn the "Microsoft" way of doing things, even if you think you know better.

The qualification is purely exam based. It's pretty easy, but more MCP's up the scale get tougher as there is more stuff to remember.

There is the whole cramming vs learning thing. I tend to cram and then forget most of the nuances after a short amount of time, but remember that when i get an interesting challenge, I know where to start to solve it thanks to the MCP. Maybe that's the point. :)

Oh and one other thing. Try and do as many mock tests as you can, but delay doing them until you've got a firm foundation of knowledge.
posted by rc55 at 5:39 PM on March 16, 2009

Response by poster: I thought 70-270 wasn't in any certification as of now?
Is an mcp simply doing one test, or is it getting a certification?
posted by PowerCat at 7:09 PM on March 16, 2009

MCP is passing a single microsoft test. To my knowledge 70-270 is still a test.. I don't believe they have been phased out for the vista stuff yet but I could be wrong.

Here is the latest on the cert process. I think that MCP = MCT now so any of these tests should satisfy that requirement as well.
posted by zennoshinjou at 5:54 AM on March 17, 2009