r/ccnp • u/SchizoposterX • 6d ago

ENCOR - Question About Time

Been studying for a while and feel close to ready. Went to take the Cisco U practice test today as my final prep and had a serious concern about running out of time during the real exam. The sim questions have four scenarios to work through and there's at least 3 sims in the practice test.

Apparently the real test has six sims and you're supposed to use the first hour for them. But if there's four scenarios in each sim, I'll need to work through each in 2.5 minutes??? The sim questions on the boson practice tests are short but in the Cisco U practice test, they are NOT short.

Did you find time to be an issue when you took the ENCOR or am I overthinking this?

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u/thankyouforecstasy 6d ago edited 6d ago

Cisco U Encor practice test does not reflect the real exam AT all.

In real exam, labs are easier and questions are more obscure as compared to cisco u practice exam

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u/dynamipsofficial 6d ago

I wouldn't build a pacing plan around the rumored six sims or reserve the first hour for them. Cisco lists ENCOR as a 120-minute exam, but a fixed 2.5 minutes per subtask is a misleading target.

For your next timed practice run, read every subtask before configuring anything, knock out independent tasks first, and use one targeted verification command for each change. If a neighbor will not form or a route is missing, set a limit on troubleshooting that one issue so it does not consume the time for the rest of the exam. Also include the time spent switching between instructions, topology and CLI in your practice.

After the run, note where the minutes actually went. That gives you a useful pacing plan based on your own bottlenecks instead of someone else's reported sim count.

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u/Sensitive-Crew9364 6d ago

The labs will probably take longer than they take during your practice exams due to the little screens in the testing center. The directions, topology, and CLI are all on different tabs and you can’t view them simultaneously. You will have to click back and forth multiple times. You will be short on time by the end. Just keep an eye on it and be prepared to read the multiple choice questions and answer quickly toward the end of the test.

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u/AggravatingFinding71 6d ago

I took it a few months ago and finished with under a minute left. The labs took over an hour. The issue wasn’t really completing the lab, it was that the labs had a very long delay on them. It was incredibly laggy. After a while, I just learned to go very very slowly and be as accurate as possible.

This was my experience remotely. Not sure if it’s any different in person.