After bombing the ENCOR at 679 and then 703 (passing is 825), I was ready to give up on the CCNP entirely. Both times I felt like I understood the material but kept running out of time on the drag-and-drop questions and the long scenario sets.
What changed on my third attempt was switching to timed labs instead of just reading. I spent about 3 hours a day for 10 weeks, but at least 90 minutes of that was hands-on in GNS3. My weakest areas were OSPF multi-area and SD-WAN policy, so I drilled those specifically rather than reviewing everything equally.
I also started doing full 120-question practice exams rather than topic quizzes. Timed pressure changes how your brain processes the questions. I hit 840 the third time around and honestly I don't think I was that much smarter — I just got used to the format and stopped second-guessing myself on the SD-Access questions.
Anyone else find the ENARSI elective harder than ENCOR? I'm scheduled for it in six weeks and the route redistribution material feels way more dense than anything in the core exam.
Three attempts but you got there — that takes real persistence. I spent 14 weeks on ENCOR prep the first time and still walked out feeling like I guessed on at least 30% of the questions. The exam tests edge cases that no single study resource covers completely.
ENARSI absolutely wrecked me the first time. The VRF-Lite and DMVPN sections were things I'd barely touched in my day job, so the lab scenarios felt completely foreign. Give yourself extra time on the redistribution filtering — those conditional statements trip people up badly.
The SD-WAN section is newer material and a lot of prep books haven't caught up yet. Cisco's own documentation for vManage policies is actually more useful than most third-party study guides for that specific topic. Worth an hour just reading the official deployment guide.
I passed ENCOR on my second try at 847 and the timed practice exam tip is spot-on. I was doing great on 20-question quizzes but the full-length format under pressure is a different animal. The QoS marking questions caught me off guard both times until I diagrammed the policy chain on paper first.
Congrats on pushing through, that third attempt grind is real. I passed in May after one fail and honestly the thing that saved me was exactly what you said, timed practice. But I'd add one thing to it: I stopped reviewing questions right after finishing a set. I'd take the whole timed block, walk away for an hour, then come back and review cold. Sounds dumb but it forced me to actually remember why I picked an answer instead of just nodding along at the explanation. My drag-and-drop speed basically doubled once I did that for a few weeks.
Also if you're weak on the design and security stuff like I was, I hammered the free ccnp network design and security sets on my phone during lunch breaks. Low pressure, no timer, just reps. It's wild how much of ENCOR is pattern recognition once you've seen enough scenario variations. You clearly know the material if you're scoring in the 700s, it's a pacing problem, and pacing is fixable.
I feel this thread so much. I've got two kids and a full time NOC job, so the idea of "just study 4 hours a day" advice you see everywhere was never going to happen for me. What worked was getting brutally consistent with small blocks. I did 45 minutes every morning before anyone else was up, labs only, no videos. Videos I saved for my lunch break or the commute because honestly you can half-watch those, but you can't half-do a lab. It took me about seven months instead of the three everyone brags about, and that's fine.
The timing thing you mentioned was my problem too. On weekends I'd do one full timed practice exam Sunday morning while the house was quiet, then spend the afternoon just reviewing what I got wrong. Not new material, just the misses. That review habit did more for my score than any new course. If you're squeezing this in around work and life, don't measure yourself against the people grinding 6 hours a day on here. Slow and steady genuinely passes this thing, it just takes longer than you want it to.