CISSP passed today(18-12-15) at first attempt after 6 weeks of studying

tancro

Hi all,
As someone who has been reading the advice of other people on this forum over the last couple of months I thought I would share my experience of studying for the CISSP exam.

I used the Sybex official 2015 guide which I read cover to cover twice, I also read the Eric Conrad 2nd edition book twice. I rotated between the books so once I finished one I started the other, I have dedicated every week day for the last 6 weeks, weekends I took off to digest and switch of a bit, i,didn't make any notes not that is a bad thing to do as I found i could remember a lot of the concepts based on my experience.
I also used the official ISC guide a couple of times for reference but that's all.
For online tests I used the Sybex tests virtually all the time, I found them to be excellent, I did also purchase the ccure ones as well but didn't get on too well with them as I found some mistakes and some typos, still handy though for revision.

The day before the test(yesterday) i read the 11th hour guide by Eric Conrad twice and that's all.

Today was the test and it was at 8am, so I up early, I had a nice relaxed breakfast and walked the 40 mins to the test centre to get me in the mode.

The test itself was as expected, I had some questions which I had no idea about probably around 4 but the vast majority I had a good inkling to the answer or could narrow it down to a couple of answers.
I did a three pass method to complete the test, first pass I answered all the questions I knew straigh away and marked the ones I didn't know, this took me around 2 hours, then I did a second pass and completed everything I missed, this took another 1.40 and then I did a final pass of the whole test, all in all it took me around 5 hours with 3 breaks.

I hope this helps other people, I think what I have learnt is stick to a few good reference guides and supplement this knowledge with online tests but make sure you understand the concepts.

I hope this helps, Good luck for anyone else taking this test.

fumbling22

Again congrats on passing the first time! I'm normally just a lurker, I'm really impressed, though, that you read the Sybex book twice. Wow!

Are you a speed reader? Do you take notes as read?

I've spent the past 6 weeks just trying to get through the Sybex book once. Im scheduled to take the test on Monday and I still have two more chapters.