passed 2018-02-17 in 100 questions
I violated the rules to not postpone and not overstudy.
I felt confident of maybe 10-15% of the questions. The first two demoralized the smelly stuff out of me.
I was doing OK on time. I noticed I had answered 98 questions and thought Oh well, no use looking at that number because I'll be here way past the 100 mark. Two questions later, it says I'm finished. What the freak? I must have misunderstood how it works. Maybe if you prove hopeless, it just cuts it short. Young woman ushers me out, sends me to the front desk for my failure report. And gives the front desk woman a secret signal to laugh at me. Except it wasn't a failure report, it was a congratulations report.
Still in shock.
My regimen: Read the Dummies book 5-6 times. Started two versions ago. I even submitted two corrections to Dummies, which they incorporated in the following version. They offered me free books for finding the errors, but I figured any book would be outdated by the time I got to reading it so declined.
Bought Conrad et al's 11th Hour prep. Read it 3 times in total.
Bought the official practice questions book. Took the two practice tests and got 80 and 75 percent of the questions right, respectively. But the other practice questions in that book were harder.
Bought Conrad et al's full book and read it twice.
Made a study outline from the Conrad full book, and somewhat from the Cybrary course below.
Paid for one of the official live online courses listed on the ISC2 site. I didn't learn much from it because I had studied so much already. The other students' questions and interruptions are distracting. Instructor commented that one of the student's accent was sexy. Lockerroom banter? I would advise someone to take an unofficial, shameless pass-the-exam course over the officially sanctioned one I took, if you're going to spend that much dough.
Did Kelly Handerhan's full Cybrary video course. She explains things better than any of the above, although Conrad and friends are significantly better than Dummies. It's also worth 15 CPE which I needed for my other cert.
Postponed twice. Part chicken liver, part had big other things happening in my life.
I am not alone in reporting that the questions seemed difficult and unfamiliar. I think we were expecting to regurgitate what we had studied. I believe the questions are designed to make you think afresh, using the knowledge you have accumulated. This is quite a feat in exam creation, making so many people think so hard that they feel like they're totally guessing on 80% of them, when in fact they were arriving at correct answers based on some serious study.
Are most people passing in 100 questions? I hope not because I want to be superior, but it seems a lot are reporting they did.
Thanks and hit me with any questions.
I felt confident of maybe 10-15% of the questions. The first two demoralized the smelly stuff out of me.
I was doing OK on time. I noticed I had answered 98 questions and thought Oh well, no use looking at that number because I'll be here way past the 100 mark. Two questions later, it says I'm finished. What the freak? I must have misunderstood how it works. Maybe if you prove hopeless, it just cuts it short. Young woman ushers me out, sends me to the front desk for my failure report. And gives the front desk woman a secret signal to laugh at me. Except it wasn't a failure report, it was a congratulations report.
Still in shock.
My regimen: Read the Dummies book 5-6 times. Started two versions ago. I even submitted two corrections to Dummies, which they incorporated in the following version. They offered me free books for finding the errors, but I figured any book would be outdated by the time I got to reading it so declined.
Bought Conrad et al's 11th Hour prep. Read it 3 times in total.
Bought the official practice questions book. Took the two practice tests and got 80 and 75 percent of the questions right, respectively. But the other practice questions in that book were harder.
Bought Conrad et al's full book and read it twice.
Made a study outline from the Conrad full book, and somewhat from the Cybrary course below.
Paid for one of the official live online courses listed on the ISC2 site. I didn't learn much from it because I had studied so much already. The other students' questions and interruptions are distracting. Instructor commented that one of the student's accent was sexy. Lockerroom banter? I would advise someone to take an unofficial, shameless pass-the-exam course over the officially sanctioned one I took, if you're going to spend that much dough.
Did Kelly Handerhan's full Cybrary video course. She explains things better than any of the above, although Conrad and friends are significantly better than Dummies. It's also worth 15 CPE which I needed for my other cert.
Postponed twice. Part chicken liver, part had big other things happening in my life.
I am not alone in reporting that the questions seemed difficult and unfamiliar. I think we were expecting to regurgitate what we had studied. I believe the questions are designed to make you think afresh, using the knowledge you have accumulated. This is quite a feat in exam creation, making so many people think so hard that they feel like they're totally guessing on 80% of them, when in fact they were arriving at correct answers based on some serious study.
Are most people passing in 100 questions? I hope not because I want to be superior, but it seems a lot are reporting they did.
Thanks and hit me with any questions.
Comments
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tedjames
Member Posts: 1,182 ■■■■■■■■□□
Congratulations! Always great to hear when someone passes this test. Coincidentally, all of your sources (plus 1-2 more) happen to be in my study plan, so your passing gives me hope. -
Info_Sec_Wannabe
Member Posts: 428 ■■■■□□□□□□
Congratulations!
Hats off to you for being able to read those books multiple times.
While I do find some of the topics interesting or informative, I'm not the type to really go through so many pages in one sitting as I get overloaded with information. 
X year plan: (20XX) OSCP [ ], CCSP [ ] -
adamj2281
Member Posts: 20 ■□□□□□□□□□
My experience was similar, at least with regard to the actual test. I'd say there were 25-30 questions I was pretty certain of, maybe more, but there were definitely a percentage that could have gone either way.
My test stopped at 100 and I was not at all confident, but I passed (roughly a month ago - got the actual cert today).
