If you go to the Microsoft Certification website, the number of available certification options look bewildering.
Not only are there a ton of certifications, and various ways of accumulating the credits necessary, but on top of that it's hard to determine what you have to study, and where you sign up for an exam, and what it will all cost.
The first time you try to figure things out, it almost appears like you have to sign up for an expensive cram course (several thousand dollars) in order to get certified.
But this is certainly not the case: the tests are generally less than $200, if not half that (click here for a price list, priced in the currency of the country you want to sit the test), and you do not have to sign up for courses unless you want to.
Let me explain how the process of signing up for a test basically works.
Microsoft Outsources to Prometric
What is actually happening is that Microsoft doesn't administer the exams themselves -- they've outsourced the whole certification process to a company called Prometric, who handles certifications not only for Microsoft, but also for Oracle, Cisco, and just about everybody else in the field.
The landing page at Prometric for Microsoft Certifications, skipping Cisco, Oracle, and everybody else's Certification exams, is here.
Prometric, in turn, outsources to local companies
To sit an exam all that's really needed is for you to go somewhere and sit in a cubicle in front of a computer for the duration of the exam. Obviously, if that's all there is to it, it makes little sense for Prometric to go open offices all over the world, with receptionists, cleaning staff, etc. just to administer the testing cubicle (with so much extra costs, each certification test would a lot more expensive than the approximately $200).
For this reason, Prometric in turn contracts with companies in your city to host the testing locations/cubicles in their offices.
I'm not sure what's involved but it's basically a "you just provide a quiet cubicle somewhere in your office, and clean up the cubicle in between tests, we'll handle all the rest (ordering, ccard processing, scheduling, refunds, etc.) and we'll split the proceeds."
The local companies
The types of companies that are willing to make a corner of their office available for perfect strangers (don't forget that you ordered through Prometrics, and never even talked on the phone to anybody at the local company) to show up and take tests every two hours or so, are generally somewhat in the game themselves (in other words, the test centers will almost always certainly be within an office selling software services, rather than -- lets say -- the back of a car garage).
You can get a list of all testing locations near you here.
Your Local Training Centers
In fact, the local companies are 99% of the time in the business of training/teaching software themselves, and they would very much like to sell their training services and courses to you (eg: a crashcourse in .NET programming in 5 days ...for $500/day or some other price like that).
For example, here in Wellingotn, New Zealand, one of the places where MS Certification Exams, administered by Prometric, can be sat, is at the AuldHouse Computer Training, which bills itself as "the premier training partner for many of New Zealand's major companies and government departments and delivers over 100 courses from our three training centres in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch."
In many ways, these preparation courses are very good value for the money:
- the course teachers live with tests happening on the premise day in and day out, and can see where people always get stuck,
- they teach the information over and over again, refining their demonstrations often, and know how to cram the foundations in to your head within 5 days.
- they can focus on what you will need for work, and the exam, and not spend too much time on arcane cryptography stuff you will use maybe once every 3 years, and doesn't even appear in the test.
But there are some downsides to these courses:
- they are not given away for free,
- you have to take xxx days off from work to go to them,
- 5 days of learning doesn't make you a specialist: you'll have to go absorb all that they said and let it sink in, which takes some time.
Which way you go will depend on what you are trying to achieve -- and whether you can convince your boss to foot the bill of a lesson preparation session.
But remember: test preparations services (ie courses) and tests are two different things:
- You schedule your test and pay for it online, via the prometric website (see links below)
- You schedule and pay your test preparation classes with the local company
(ie: a totally separate process of registering for a test).
Package Deals
That said, although siging up for a course (with a local company) is different than scheduling an exam (done with Prometric), a lot of the local test preparation organizations offer an 'all-in-one' package where you sign up to their course, and they in turn sign in to the prometrics website and sign you up for the test, and sometimes eat the test cost themselves.
The fact that they often promote themselves as train and take the test at their place all for one price can often make the whole process a bit confusing for new testees (which is probably the point...cough).