The only certifications I've picked up so far along my industry journey (I have no college degree and don't plan to get one, so these are necessary) are the Red

The only certifications I've picked up so far along my industry journey (I have no college degree and don't plan to get one, so these are necessary) are the Redhat RCSA and RHCE. Both of these certs can't be solved with rote memorization, and required me to log into a virtual machine and solve problems in a live environment, running through a plethora of common systems administration tasks that were then graded by how well I accomplished the requirements. Often the requirements were vague enough that I had to do some digging. There was no real memorization needed, and I had the full man pages of the operating system at my fingertips, but the time limit ensured that I needed to have at least a certain degree of proficiency with each tool to finish all of my tasks before the end of the exam. I assumed this was the norm with certifications, but the comments here strongly suggest that it is not. Are Security Certifications really multiple choice questions without any practical applications? That seems like it could stand to be improved greatly.