Passed Sec+ but not impressed

Liindolade

I've passed with a score of 856 after studying for about two weeks (~30 hours in total); ten days with Darril's book and three or four intense days following up on the notes I had taken, working on my weaknesses and doing practice tests. I had the Sybex book as well but quickly found it didn't have enough additional information at that point, so I skipped it except for its questions/practice exams.

The exam itself had quite a bit of material that wasn't covered by any of the study guides (I've actually done full text searches to verify this). For example, one question was about which UNIX program to use to achieve a certain result. I was able to answer that and most similar questions from my IT experience, but sometimes I was wondering whether I was doing the other version of the Sec+ exam.

I found ~15 of the 75 questions or their answers to be poorly phrased, often in a way that seemed unintentionally ambiguous. I spent about 40 minutes answering all questions as good as I could and flagging those that weren't clear to me, then an hour trying to figure out whether a question was a trick question or just genuinely badly written. At times, I wondered whether the person who had written some of the questions/answers would be able to pass the exam.

I'm consoling myself with the thought that they're doing this on purpose to check whether the examinee is able to give the perfect answer without fully understanding the question, which is certainly a useful skill in IT

DonM34

It's funny you say that, I'm currently studying for the exam using Cram Exam. I think the Cram Exam emulates the exam based on what a lot of test taker posted on this board. I notices that the questions were very trick and not to the point. I guess when it come to security you can't second guess on various situations.

JasminLandry

From my experience, all CompTIA exams have been that way. There were a couple of questions that I had to read a couple of times before I could understand it.

Ukimokia

Also remember that about 10-15 questions of the CompTIA exams are questions that do not count to your final score and are expiramental questions. So a bulk of those could of been those questions. They like to ask those questions to see if they're good questions for future exams and to compare to see if people know the answer without it being a normal question.

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on pass!!