MCPD SharePoint 2010!!

As you can see to the right, I passed exam 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications.  With that I have earned a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer certification.

Microsoft has said that the PRO tests are supposed to be the ones that are the most difficult, and for 70-668 Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator I definitely agree, but this one, in my opinion, really wasn't that tough.  I had a difficult time with 70-573CS Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Applications Development.  Mainly because that one focused on the massive SharePoint API.  I don't really understand why Microsoft wants to test on minute aspects of the API though.  Most of the minutia you will get out of Intelisense, so why test over it?  The App Dev test should focus on core concepts, and the high level classes that need to be used and referenced.
The  Designing test, I think, did a good job of covering all of the bases, but I think more time, and questions should have been spent on, when to use the Property Bag, web.config, Hierarchical Object Store, and lists for configuration settings.  Also more time could have been spent on classes that are and are not available in Sandboxed solutions.  I might have thrown in a question or two on how to deploy sandboxed solutions while getting around some of the limitations of sandboxed solutions.
Inexplicably, time was spent on external BLOB storage.  I would have thought that this would have been a topic for the administration tests rather than the App Dev ones.  Sure, you may have to build your own provider using the ISPExternalBinaryProvider, but how often is that going to come up?  Stratigies to deal with sandboxed solution limitations are much more likely to be addressed by developers than deciding if External BLOBs are going to be used.  That is much more an Admin issue.

Anyway, the tests are in the books, and now I have to decide if I want to go a head and peruse a Microsoft Certified Master in SharePoint.  I really want to, but I don't know if I have the time and money to do so.  Also, what will it gain me?  I really don't want to be an independent traveling consultant, so why do I need the cert?  The boot camp that you have to attend is in excess of $18K, not counting travel expenses, they are held on the Microsoft Redmond campus, and are THREE WEEKS long, so why??  Just to have the initials after my name?  I have to admit that I do want the recognition...  However there are downsides to having such an advanced certification level.  A job might be willing to look at me because I have both MCITP and MCPD certs, but might think I am overqualified if I have the MCM.  Also if I apply for a leadership or manager position, the MCM might make a potential employer believe that I would be TOO involved in the day to day tech side of things, and neglect the manager work that I was hired to do.
If, perhaps, a company wanted to pay for this training I would do it, but right now...  No, I don't think so.  The cost is too high, and the benefit too small.  For now, I am content with my existing certification level.  It won't be long until I have to start boning up for the next series of exams on SharePoint 2013.