Technology Certification Information

There are a great number of certification programs available for hard-working, go-getter students and employees. Often an employer will pay the costs of obtaining certifications but its a great way to distinguish yourself from others in the job search. During your college years (or even high school years), you can obtain certification that would make you eligible for good summer jobs and internships. Hard work often pays off in many ways (job security, higher salary, job satisfaction, etc.)!

You can study for many of these certification exams by purchasing a book from Amazon. Often you can take prep courses at local training companies as well. You can even obtain certification by taking online courses at www.learningtree.com

At https://academy.oracle.com you can learn enough database design & SQL to pass the first Oracle certification exam. As of 2009, the training is approximately $500 and the online curriculum and hosted database environment are free.

Sun provides some certifications for Java programmers.  There is a Sun Certified Java Associate (SCJA) and a Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP).  Start here for more info - http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/scjp.xml The exam fees are substantial: $200 for each exam.  Plus, the exams have to be administered at a designated testing center such as Philadelphia.

***************** Another AP teacher said the following in 2009: **********************
For the SCJA, the amount of core Java language knowledge needed is relatively small ... certainly most AP students would acquire that
through the normal course of their studies.  However, there is a substantial amount of extra information covered on the exam ... UML class
and interface diagrams (and how they translate into Java), Java 2 Micro Edition, Java 2 Enterprise Edition, compiler flags, NetBeans naming
conventions, and so on ... plus, a great deal of detail-oriented knowledge of things within the Java core.  (Quick: name the eight primitive
datatypes in Java.)  There's no way that an APCS student could pass the SCJA without substantial additional study of that material perhaps from an exam prep workbook.

The questions on the exam are exceedingly difficult ... including the format of the questions.  While the questions are all multiple-choice, and
include all of our favorite types of questions from AP (like the "which of these three statements are true" question), some of the questions require
multiple answers to be given.  (E.g. "Here's a list of seven statements ... select the three that are correct?")  The questions are fair, but
exceedingly challenging.

The Sun Certified Java Programmer exam looks like it corresponds much more closely to the AP Computer Science curriculum ... but, again, includes a great deal of
extra material.  This time, the extra material is all about core Java, but requires extensive knowledge of the libraries: TCP/IP, threads, GUIs, and
so on.  Even for the familiar classes, detailed knowledge is expected. (Quick: what's the difference between a String, a StringBuffer, and a
StringBuilder?  Which methods are valid for each class?)
*****************************************************************************

This list is certainly not exhaustive but can provide you with information on a lot of opportunities to "get ahead" in the technology field.

The information below was compiled in 1999. Some of the information and certifications are surely out-of-date.