The Beginning

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For a newbie in the Java world, it does take some time to actually get a hang of the numerous acronyms that the pros freely use, and the difference between what you know and what you need to know is enormous.

Based on my 6 months experience, here's a random list of what I think is considered "common knowledge" in professional circles, and in-depth of knowledge of which is the real syllabus for anyone moderately serious.

Exception Handling, Threading,
Serialization, File Handling, Reflection Classes.
Ant scripting, Network Programming,
Working with databases,
Design Patterns.
ORM tools like Hibernate, JUnit,
JVM and its working, Dynamically loading classes.
JSP, JavaBeans.
Some JavaScript, AJAX, working with XML.

System side skills, Shell scripting, speed at the command-line, and familiarity with the Linux structure.
Oracle, MySql.
Functional programming.

The list is obviously incomplete and much needs to be added, but this is a good place to start.