Comments on: InDesign CS3 Certification Exam News

By: Saulius Stonys

Saulius Stonys — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:40:37 +0000

Could anybody explain me how Adobe notifies ACE owners about new exams releases ? I have become ACE of Indesign CS2 past year and I was expected that Adobe will notify me when new exam will be released by email or by another ways. But I haven’t got any messages from Adobe. Maybe it is left for everybody personal care and I should check Adobe webpage more often.

Second question is about that 90 days period to make recertification. When I recently discovered of new release of Indesign CS3 exam I thought I’m late, but I can order recertification exam at Prometric still now. So what an advantage have recertication exams on that 90 days period ? Maybe exams are for free ?

Sorry for my English

By: Nancy Dick

Nancy Dick — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:54:12 +0000

Well, I bit the bullet, took both exams and passed, but some of the questions were really poor. And I agree with a previous poster who said the exam questions appeared to have been written by programmers . . . some of them completely lacked real-world context. (And on a tangential note, don’t even get me started about the CS3 versions of Classroom in a Book. Sorry, Brian!)
I write an awful lot of test material for my college students, and have also served as an SME for Certiport.
Anyway, Anne-Marie and David, you do a great job, and I’ve migrated to a using a lot of instructional content from indesign secrets and lynda.com for my students.
I will certainly share my concerns about the CS3 recertification exam with Adobe.

By: Nancy Dick

Nancy Dick — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:23:26 +0000

I set aside some time to prep for recertifying on Illustrator and InDesign today, and ran across these posts.

Does anyone have updated info on whether the Illustrator exam is also being rewritten? As noted by others, some of the topics & exam sample questions for Illustrator were strange: 7.4 refers to blending two mesh objects. Why on earth would you??
I’m a full-time multimedia college instructor with heavy emphasis on Adobe products. David & Anne-Marie’s posts and the many comments are not inspiring confidence in the exams. Too bad, because I’ve really enjoyed being part of the certified instructor community.

By: Adi Ravid

Adi Ravid — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:45:27 +0000

As I recently took and passed the certification exam (about a month ago), I didn’t realize that the exam I took was the pre-revised one. It was not that hard, although some of the questions were somewhat ambiguous, up to a point that their relevance to the real InDesign world I experience every day, to which it’s suppose to certify me.
Hopefully things will change soon, or at least until the CS4 re-certification…

By: Elizabeth Lass

Elizabeth Lass — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:27:12 +0000

Hah hah… Thanks Neil. Good call.

By: Neil Oliver

Neil Oliver — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:54:12 +0000

Elizabeth,

Thats the million dollar question!

The prep guide questions are really a guide to the format of the questions and how the wording of the questions are structured.

In my case I have always found the exam questions more challenging than the practice exam.

The only way you will really know where your at with your knowledge is to study to a point where you think you’ll be successful in passing, then take the actual test, from that point you’ll be able to tell if you had prepared enough or not. That’s the only way to truly gauge your knowledge from my experience.

By: Elizabeth Lass

Elizabeth Lass — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:10:45 +0000

Like John, I too am toying with the idea of taking the Certification exam. I just went through the questions in the Exam Prep Guide and got them all correct. For those who’ve taken the exam before, would you say that that’s a good indication that I would pass the full exam? Meaning, how well does the prep test reflect the real test? Thanks in advance, and thanks for the resources others have listed here.

By: Steve Werner

Steve Werner — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:15:22 +0000

Lynn,

Some of those who get certification work for private companies and probably don’t want to be publicized.

However, Adobe has a program for trainers for Adobe applications, who must be certified. You can search for one here:

http://partners.adobe.com/public/partnerfinder/tp/show_find.do

By: Lynn

Lynn — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:54:31 +0000

Thanks for the update. Does anyone know if Adobe has a website that lists all of the people in a given state/country/etc. that are InDesign certified?

By: Neil Oliver

Neil Oliver — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:53:20 +0000

Even with solid user knowledge as an ex-prepress and design person myself I don’t think I would have passed my original CS2 exam if I had not watched all the InDesign video tutorials at totaltraining.com and lynda.com accompanied by reading the equivalent Realworld InDesign books and also reading all the InDesign help content.

The thing is you don’t know which side they are going to hit you from, you really need to be prepared for it. All these resources come from a slightly different angle and you pick up things that you didn’t see in the other. Make sure you study your weak points the most.

If you havent already downloaded you InDesign CS3 Exam Prep Guide you should here’s the link http://partners.adobe.com/public/ace/main.html
All the exam content is listed within so make sure in your studies you can cross them all of the list.

For anyone wanting to re-certify in InDesign CS3 you can get away with reading the InDesign help content.

Besides that, GOODLUCK!