The following summarises the ways to prepare for certification (in addition to experience!). General information about certification can be found at CertifyNow, note however that this is a book shop site and you need to choose your books carefully!
Vendor authorised
training courses
This is probably the most expensive and time consuming way to obtain certification.
However the training material is geared to teach you the subject as well as to enable you
to pass the test.
Training kits
Microsoft produce the best known training kits, these are generally a variation on
their authorised training material, relatively expensive but comprehensive and definitely
recommend.
Test oriented books
Look in any technical bookshop and you will find dozens of titles covering each
test area. The quality varies enormously. The best of these are probably as good as the
training kits and a somewhat cheaper. a good test oriented book will teach you the subject
as well as helping you to pass.
Crammers
Exam cram books have one very simple thing in mind, that is to cram as much
information as possible. This kind of book is usually used in conjunction with one of the
other resources and probably is best used close to the exam, basically when you think you
already know it all. Two publishers stand out, the Exam Cram series from Coriolis and the
MCSE Readiness Reviews from Microsoft Press. The Exam cram series provides essential
coverage of each major topic followed by a series of test questions. The questions follow
the actual test format closely and the explanations for both the correct answer and
incorrect ones is reasonable. The Readiness Reviews present very little theory and are
really a series of questions testing each objective as defined by Microsoft for the test.
Each section starts with a short explanation of the requirements for the objective
followed by a list of key terms (explanation to be found in the glossary). There are then
usually one or two test questions on the odd numbered page with the answer and explanation
on the following page. The explanations of both correct answer(s) and incorrect ones are
as good as you will find and probably better than in the exam Cram series.
Test simulators
Without any doubt you must take practice tests before you actually take the exam
otherwise you may be on for quite a shock. The test simulators vary very much on price and
quality. Most suppliers will provide a down loadable free set of questions at the very
least you needed to do this.
Web resources
A gold mine and free.
Feedback
If you have used any of these resources and found them particularly useful (or not) let us know.