Quote from SharpRoute483

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Well, I did those Microsoft Learn Challenges over the summer, during June. The "Who Hacked Me?" Challenge. Having a deadline is what usually gets me to focus and actually do the thing.

So when those 26 modules in that challenge estimate about 21 hours, that's probably how long it took me, if not slightly more. Because I do sit down and read all of them out loud in my room. Watched all the videos, and the interactive demos. And I spent the most time fiddling around with starting an Azure Portal account and trying to set up a demo Azure workspace so that I can add and test out Microsoft Sentinel functions. That was such a hassle, I probably spent 10 hours on messing with that, while I was constantly getting errors on setting up a workspace properly. I more or less got to see some of the menus where I was supposed to attempt to write new analytical rules, and then create a playbook, and stuff like that. I just gave up and went back to reading the Learning module, and sometimes they had screenshots for me to look at.

Cost me like $26 in Azure resources and bandwidth costs by the end of the month. (Supposedly, you can set up a demo environment in GitHub, but like I said, I don't a lick of how that works).

So after June, I just left it alone. And then I started getting desperate again to find a job, so I went to go do my SC-900 exam, and scheduled that. I had about a couple of days to study, and my original email from Microsoft provided a link to a study exam document, that's like a 130 page power point presentation. So that doesn't really take long to casually read. Couple of hours. Did the SC-900 just to see if I had ANY CHANCE of success in this area. Didn't feel good at all during the exam, really felt unsure with about half of the questions that I answered.

Quite surprised when I found out I passed with a 724 score (need 700 out of 1000 points).

So that gave me motivation for the SC-200. But I knew that was gonna be harder.

Went back to my June email where Microsoft congratulated me on passing the Challenge, and that had a study document, and that document had links to all of the related MS Learn modules. That was actually more modules than I originally took, it listed 44 modules. I presume that this study document gets updated, and you can tell that Microsoft is constantly updating their training modules.

There was actually 47 modules in total. Over half of them I already took in June, but I was going to read over them again, a second time. On some of them, I read over them pretty quickly, because they were much easier to understand the second time around.

Alot of the new modules felt like they had redundant information from other modules.I had already gone over. So, over the course of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week. I think I spent another 20-22 hours on the MS Learn website. (Deadlines make me work harder)

And finally, I'm a bit ashamed to admit this, but I really wanted to do everything I could to ensure my best chance at passing. I was going to watch a youtube video for a last-minute cram session, but I came across a youtube channel where they pretty much HAVE the vast majority of questions exactly as the exam, and they show and provide a quick explanation of the answer.

So I used that as a practice exam, but I also tried to use some memory retention in order for me to remember the question, and then remember what answer was highlighted.

And I'd say that roughly 75% of the 40 questions were verbatim from this youtuber's videos. And I had an additional 8 questions from a "case study" (Basically they explain a detailed scenario about a company, their workers, and their security problems and then they ask you 8 questions from that scenario).

The case study was exactly what he reviewed in his youtube video.

So that did help me, but at the same time it might've hurt a little, because my memory wasn't all that good, so I might've been remembering the wrong answer. Ultimately it helped me more than it hurt me.

Look up youtuber "DbSkyLimit" Like, I should've discovered him earlier, and gone through his videos twice, so that my memory of the answers could be more accurate.

Passed with a 733. I feel like if I hadn't watched his videos, I would've probably failed somewhere along 650 or so. I actually didn't do so good on questions relating to Microsoft Sentinel (which is 45%-50% of the test). But the other two sections (which are, each, 25%-30% of the test) I did just enough to compensate.

Chances are, if I'm really serious about wanting to know this stuff, I'll probably read through the Microsoft Sentinel-related modules again a third time, and maybe I may need to start reading up on SQL from a learning website, and try to take a course on that. And get really good at learning how the whole GitHub website works as a learning and training resource.

Thank you for such a detailed reply. I might consider SC-200 once I clear DP-100.

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