Confused! CLD Failed the second time

[Billy_Firestone]

Hi guys,

I have practiced CLD success packages and samples exams for the past two months and were able to finish the sample exams all within 2 hours.

I took my first CLD test first week of February, and failed by a margin. For the first test, I believe I got nearly 40% of functionality points. But actually it was less than 25%. I did not argue with my score since the code I made did not function properly.

Then I gave it another try last week. After the exam, I felt like I can pass the exam comfortably since almost all required functionalities are realized almost. Style and documentation are good.

But when I got my score I felt shocked that I only get less than 20% while grasping most of the style and documentation points.

I am really confused about my score the way the code is graded.

Will somebody help me regarding to how CLD exam is graded?

Thanks!

[Gregory]

Hi William, I'm sorry for your frustrations. Maybe you are not understanding some of the requirements the way NI intended, but we can only guess. You can post one of your practice exams and members of the community will look at it and give you feedback.

[Billy_Firestone]

Hi Greqory,

Thank you so much for the reply.

Yes, I uploaded the boiler sample exam. This was done a while ago and this is not the final version I did.

In the exam, I got 10/10 for documentation and 13.75/15 for style.

Still can't believe that I get only 2.91/15 for functionality.

Thanks!

[Gregory]

Hi Willam,

The functionality in your boiler example seemed almost all the way there. The only thing I noticed is that for the "shutdown purge" at the end, the primary fan should be on and the forced draft fan should be off.

[Billy_Firestone]

Hi Gregory,

Thanks for reviewing my code.

I did this one pretty fast, so I may miss some points.

The difficulty level for the exam is very similar to the Boiler example. I finished it a hour ahead of time. Did VI analyzer and testing for numerous numbers of time. Don’t know why I did not pass.

[Gregory]

Hi Billy,

I'm not sure what could result in such a loss of points. Hopefully someone from the NI certification team can reach out to you here. 

[Billy_Firestone]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the message.

That is what I don’t know about.

I have prepared for the CLD exam for a very long time and practiced hard. I have reached out the certification team to reevaluate my exam. Hopefully they can provide me with detailed explanations of how my points dropped.

[piterx]

Hi,

It is very interesting what you are saying. As I received my results yesterday (failed exam) and I had 2.71 points for functionality. And my feeling after exam was that I maybe have 50% of functionality, but can't remember exaclty now. I've already booked another exam which will be in 5 weeks time and now I dread that I will fail again, after what you said. I was also surprised how well I scored on style, as one of my cases was a real mess. 

I was not going to dispute those results, as I felt the functionality was not enough, but after what you said I will watch this thread closely.

I wonder if this is a reflection of changing the scoring to emphasize functionality?

Best wishes,

Piotr Golacki

[piterx]

I wonder if this thread is of any help?

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Certification/CLD-Grading-shifting-to-emphasize-functionality/td-p/3974644

Best wishes,

Piotr Golacki

[Billy_Firestone]

Hi Piotr,

Thanks for the message.

Yes, I have investigated the info in the link you shared.

There is a trend that the grading shifts to functionality which becomes 50/100 instead of 15/40.

But as my grading reflects, both 40 points and 100 points are used for your grading, the higher percentage of the two is your score.

As you mentioned in the previous message, I felt the same way after I finished my first exam rough three weeks ago, in which I felt like I did 50% of the functionality, but only got 3.3/15 instead.

That is why I would like to start the conversation about CLD grading criteria for functionality. Without knowing that I feel like I can never pass no matter how good I think I did in the exam.