Need Advice

Hello,

First post. I have a couple questions for people who have taken the exam (particularly recently). First I'll ask the questions then explain how I got them.

1. What is the exact format of the exam? Some multiple answer with the vast majority single answer only, or are all of them multiple answer? I ask because I took a few practice exams on proprofs.com where every question had the ability to be multiple answer with only some saying "pick three" or something of the like. This presented a VERY challenging format and I did pretty horribly (50% on the first and 72% on the second one). These practice tests were billed as the "closest to the real thing", which scared me. :P

2. My next question, is on the content of the test. I see test guides around and myself have been using the textbook from my UMUC (University of Maryland University College) Security+ course book (Mike Meyer's Passport Security+ 2nd ed.). The disc in the back of the book has a 50 question practice exam (I felt a little cheated for it not being 100) and I aced it. It advertised a free 2nd test from LearnKey so I downloaded and took it. I may have signed up for the wrong one, since the name was a little different (no MM Passport Security+, but rather CompTIA Security+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide (Exam SY0-201)). However, the test included a large amount of Recovery plan questions that were very detailed and something called the CMMI (wiki search came up with Capability Maturity Model Integration) which I have never seen before and isn't in the book. Is this because it's for SY0-201? I do not know what version the test that came with the book is for, but it was a very different test.

I have been studying for a couple weeks now and hope to test before the end of the year. I have a copy of Darril Gibson's book coming and will use the two tests in the back of his book as a guide on whether I'm ready or not since so many people here say it's such a great litmus test. Any advice is greatly appreciated. This is my first cert and I'm actually not in this field yet (taking a Cybersecurity degree through UMUC). I am a trained Satcom tech in the Navy. :P So this is a learning experience. I know some of you will proly say I should do Network+ first, and that was the first course I took for my degree but didn't do the cert afterwards. I am doing Security+ first since I just finished the class and it is fresh in my head. Net+ is next since it'll require a more in depth refresher.

Thanks folks!

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Comments

futurethat88

I have within the last 2 months passed A+ and Net+ and feel the format is not much like Proprofs.com material. Too many of their questions are, like you said, "Choose Three" format. This is inaccurate IMHO. I also did poorly on my runs there.

As far as I can recall there are < 10% questions with multiple answers on either A+ or Net+ and I would assume this holds true for Sec+.

Rock on for getting Darill's book. Its apparently a great resource. I will be going the Meyer's path and then supplementing with Sybex chapter review questions.

Goodluck on your future certs.

BOTLFED1

I took the Sec+ about a month ago. The 2009 exam. There were a good handfull of questions where I had to select 2 or 3 answers. But majority of the 100 questions were single answer. I bought the ExamCram 2 book off of Amazon and read the first 3 chapters. Then I got the disk out and ran through the 200 questions until I could pass the test every time. I would read the explainations on the questions to get a better understanding of what I was testing rather than just memorizing questions and answers. Finally, I took notes on the terms/sections that I was not comfortable with and went back to the book to read up on them.

Had about a month of study time. Passed the exam on the first try. I didnt blow it out of the water, but did pretty good. I think it definately helped me that I already had A+ and Net+.