Another CISSP Exam Journey

stryder144

My story:  I recently was accepted into the Onward to Opportunity program for the CISSP program.  They pay for one certification exam attempt, provide you with study materials (Skillsoft videos, some ebooks, and practice tests), and a support staff to assist you if you run into problems.  Prior to getting accepted into O2O, my wife asked me out-of-the-blue if I was going to take the exam.  She rarely asks me about certifications, so that was an eye-opener for me and gave me the motivation to get the certification.  I have purchased my own books (AIO, Eric Conrad books, official cert guide, and the official practice exams).

After moving through the 14 sections of the Skillsoft videos in three days, I started going through the (ISC)2 CISSP Official Practice Tests domain-by-domain.  There are a total of 834 questions, which took me about a week to get through. My average score after going through all 8 tests is 68.71%.  My path forward is to now go through each of the tests and review the questions that I got wrong.  Since I have several CISSP exam books in my possession, I will use them to fill in the gaps.  After getting through all of the 8 domains in this fashion, I will then retake each of the domain tests to ensure that I have learned the material.  I did find that during the tests I would often look at an answer that was correct, doubt myself, then choose the wrong answer.  I know better, but that is life I suppose.

Once I have done that, I will go through each of the four 125 question full practice tests.  That will hopefully help identify areas that I need further study on without getting too used to the questions.  That will be followed up with a run through the Boson CISSP practice exams, which I was given by my work.  If I can score 80 to 85% in the Boson exams I will jump into the practice tests that O2O provides, as I must have at least an 80% on that before I get the certification exam voucher.

Questions for those who have gone on this journey before me:

1.  Has anyone used the official practice tests and if so, do you think they are good preparation?

2.  CCCure has been recommended to me.  Considering the Boson and official exams, is access needed?

3.  Was there a correlation between the amount of time needed to get through the practice exams and how long it took to get through the actual exam?

I will update this posting as often as I can, considering my schedule.

Cheers

advanex1

Hi, I just took the test on 8/19 and passed so I wish you luck.

1. I think any preparation with those materials is good preparation.
2. CCCure is good, but it's going to reinforce the technical aspects of the exam. It helps when you know these, but it's not going to be the same caliber of questions as you'll see on the test.
3. No - I took about 90 minutes for the actual test and ended at 100 questions. I think the practice tests were easier to be honest.

Just keep studying and practicing what you can. Make sure you understand why an answer is correct and you'll be okay.

stryder144

@advanex1...thanks for the input.  I am focused more on the why aspects of answers in my studies, which makes me feel a bit less nervous about my study approach.  Much appreciated.