VMware Beta Exams

Anybody who has ever taken a VMware beta exam knows the frustration of waiting an inordinate amount of time for your results. I recently had the process explained to me.

VMware sets a minimum number of people who must take the beta before they can begin the initial scoring process. For the VCAP5-DCA, this is 100 people. Since most people aren’t quick to jump in and take the beta in the first week, you’re looking at a minimum of 3+ weeks from the beta release before VMware can start pulling exam data. Once they reach their minimum, the data is sent out to the exam development vendor. A set of people called psychometricians (doctorate level psychologists and statisticians) start their analysis of the exam results. This takes at least a week. The rest of the beta exam results come in during the beta period, they are collected by VMware and analyzed by the psychometricians. VMware then meets with the psychometricians for a several day process where they set the cut score. At this point, the beta exam is now ready for general release. But the betas still need to be rescored, so another week or so goes by.

Although I still find the wait period annoying, at least I have some justification behind it.

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