No, there is no such rule. You may take the exam at the end of your training program (or even before it ends). You will need a voucher # from EC-Council (which should be provided to you during training) to register for the exam.

If he was talking about the certificate, your instructor is correct. It takes 6-8 weeks to receive your certificate. You will know your results (and receive a printed copy of your score) immediately after finishing the exam.

Run a search on these forums and you'll find all sorts of posts and advice for taking the CEH exam and what/how to study. Just reading the books will not do, you will most definitely have to know and use many of the tools presented in the material.

Here's a great link provided by a EHN member and how he studied for the CEH exam: http://www.ethicalhacker.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,54/topic,1369.msg4925/topicseen,1/#msg4925

It will definitely help to familiarize yourself with the tools you have learnt about on the course. The CEH exam will ask about details that mostly experience will help with. I'd also recommend the following books for additional studies for the CEH exam:

Certified Ethical Hacker Exam Prep 2 (Exam Prep 2 (Que Publishing)
By Michael Gregg (Author) 
# ISBN-10: 0789735318
# ISBN-13: 978-0789735317

Counterhack Reloaded - Ed Skoudis (great book, well written and topics are explained in an easy to understand manner)
# ISBN-10: 0131481045
# ISBN-13: 978-0131481046

Practical hacking and countermeasures - by Spivey D. (another easy to follow book with plenty screenshots of servers configured with VMWARE, basically a step by step hacking guide)
# ISBN-10: 0849370574
# ISBN-13: 978-0849370571

HTH and good luck with the exam

Congrats!  Where is the C|EH on the sig???   

Below is the info from the EC-Council site. You'll need to fill out the application from here and send it to EC-Council.

I don't know if it's just my area or maybe it's just with the people I've dealt with, but I've put it on my resumes and during most interviews I have people ask me what it is. That tells me that it's meaningless to have it if no one knows what it is. 

After browsing this forum and the rest of the site some more today I was actually thinking about looking into the CISSP again. I think when I was looking at it before I didn't meet the requirements for the CISSP, but I did for the SSCP so I went with the SSCP instead.

Right now, I am really trying to figure out how to make the jump to a more security related job. I have always had a huge interest in the security field and I'm having a hard time coming up with a plan to move more into that field. Maybe the CISSP would help me there too.

Haha, that's funny. That's the article I read this morning that made me start think about taking that exam again.