Passed GCED

chins

Just passed with a 92%. Finished with about 20 minutes to spare. I got a 93% on practice test 1 and 90% on practice test 2.

Most of the questions were not too difficult. There were at least 3 questions where I referenced what I was pretty sure was on the correct only pages in the books on and I still could not determine what the correct answer was.

One thing that helped me with studying, finding things during exam time and understanding the big picture of where things fit was that I created outlines of each book including page numbers for all of the major headings and as many sub headings as possible to fit into one page and stapled the outline page to the front of each book. I referred to to this a number of times during the test for general things that I could not find or it was quicker to find than in my index which was about 1400 words.

cyberguypr

Congrats on the pass!

iBrokeIT

Congrats! Nice score too

TechGromit

Congratulations, Very nice score. A co-worker recently took that exam and failed it.

cyberguypr

Did he take the class?

GirlyGirl

I am actually purchasing the OnDemand for that particular course in the next 90-120 Days. I have a few tasks I am working on that'll be finished by then. I don't see many Passed GCED posts, so I logged in swiftly to congratulate you. Congratulations on the pass. Thanks for posting. I like seeing more of the not so common pass threads.

tumblejerm

I have taken the GCED course in San Diego in May 2016. And I have been struggling to prepare for this test. I have created an Index of all 6 books and took my first practice exam and got a 49% . I thought my index failed me and had a hard time finding the tools and attack types from within my Index and really don't know how to improve it as I spent over 8 hours creating the index.

Is there any way I could borrow your index and I could e-mail you mine as well to see if i'm doing it right etc. This has been giving me anxiety for months now and I'm not sure what else to do.

tumblejerm

Congrats! That is awesome!

TechGromit

cyberguypr wrote: »

Did he take the class?

Yes she did, it was there first class in Cyber Security, why she didn't take the SANS 401 / GSEC instead is beyond me.

636-555-3226

tumblejerm wrote: »

I have taken the GCED course in San Diego in May 2016. And I have been struggling to prepare for this test. I have created an Index of all 6 books and took my first practice exam and got a 49% . I thought my index failed me and had a hard time finding the tools and attack types from within my Index and really don't know how to improve it as I spent over 8 hours creating the index.

Is there any way I could borrow your index and I could e-mail you mine as well to see if i'm doing it right etc. This has been giving me anxiety for months now and I'm not sure what else to do.

tumberjerm - remember, you should't be relying on the books to help you pass the test. You should learn the material and use the books as an aid when necessary throughout the test. If you're getting a 49% WITH your index's help, then it sounds like you haven't learned the material too well. A better index might help you pass, but you won't have gained the knowledge necessary to give back to the person who paid for your class. If you're doing the cert for a new job then you're only misleading your prospective employer on your abilities. Try to study up and get at least a 60% on the materials baesd on your knowledge then use your index to get up to that 70% pass mark. Better yet, I'd challenge you to get to 70% based on your studies and shoot for an 80% with your index's help.

ramrunner800

It doesn't sound like you're getting the necessary material into your index, or like you've properly reviewed the material. For me creating an index takes 8-10 hours per book, depending on the complexity of the material in that book. I'm currently working though GREM, and the index for that is taking quite a bit longer. I passed GCFE with 96% and GCFA with 93%, and I think the manner I've created my indexes in is pretty effective.

For me creating an index means reading every page of every book again. Any key term, tool usage, or major points get entered in the index. By the time you are done creating an index in this manner, you will honestly need the document itself much less, because you will have reviewed the material so thoroughly that you already know where in the material the information you need is. I also add any **** sheets provided on the course USB to my index, and in many cases I will also put the complete man page of the course's key tools.

tumblejerm

I appreciate your answer as it is positive/constructive. I need to revise what i said a bit. I never saw any replies from any other posts as this one is the only one I got notifications from (I think i missed the check box for received notifications) so I wasn't aware I have received anything. The 8 hrs i mentioned is wrong as I spent the whole week during class building the index as he lectured through the 6 days.

This is my first SANS course and it wasn't easy. As with I have only received my Security+ 8 months ago and new to the InfoSec world and was a former Desktop support person. I have spent nearly 50 hours at least that I can remember if include the work I did during the actual course. I was in the front of the class constructing my index while listening (not easy!) My Index is over 500 lines in Excel with decent write outs on each item with only one full pass-through of the 6 books. I'm not a fan of how the text was written but that's another story. There was a lot of tools that I don't recall in the book so I'm going to revisit that first. I honestly don't know how to study this material that well other than glazing over the pages to try to remember it. Was there something that helped you? I believe that looking at someone's index would me build mine or see what I'm missing and study it religiously until I have the knowledge necessary.

I may have written my initial post to hastily as this has been a burden for me and required for my job (since they paid for it). I'm usually an excellent student without having to study that hard but this course content has so much to it I have been struggling on developing an effective approach to get this fully. I don't understand why people get so upset of the borrowing someone index. If anyone asked me I wouldn't mind doing it as it wouldn't require any work to share and help people out. I suppose not have any perquisites for this course didn't help but I thought having a Security+ cert plus 1 year working experience would be enough. Any guidance would be helpful. I have also never created an index before so the whole thing is new experience. albeit an overwhelming one.

iBrokeIT

To be blunt, I see an awful lot of excuses and a lack of responsibility for learning the material as your biggest problems. You seem pretty hung up on no one giving you their index as to why you are failing but what if you weren't allowed to use an index on the exam? What would your excuse be then?

How many hours you study and how many lines you have on your index is really irrelevant compared to how well you actually know the material and I'm not talking about rote memorization of facts from the book. I'm talking about doing the labs, downloading and using the tools, learning how the technologies are applied in the real world, ect...

My GCIH index had 238 lines and my GSEC was 352. For me, the process of making the index helped me more than the actual index on the exam. I used the standard four columns: concept name, book #, page #, explanation/description.

My advice would be to stop begging for other peoples indexes because having another 1000 lines won't help you understand the material better to make the right choice on the exam, put your index aside for a week or two, get more hands on exposure with the tools and concepts you are being taught, and if it is still not clicking do some further research and Googling for alternative explanations.