When are you ready?

billyr2009

Hi all,

I am wondering when do you feel is the time that you know your ready to take the exam? Is it when you are scoring 85/90 % on cccure questions/total tester ? I signed up for the test in 3 weeks and am just wondering how to determine in ready to go and not reschedule it? I studied shon harris iap and Conrad 2nd edition. I read through Conrad and read through my tough chapters like crypto and telecomm with shon Harris 6th ed. Right now I am just going through online videos for cissp and taking practice questions and basically reviewing. Within 10 days out I plan to read the 11th hour by Conrad. I just hope it'll be enough and I'm ready within 3 weeks. What do you guys think?

zxbane

Billy,

It sounds like you have a solid study approach and you are using quality resources. As for myself, when I was doing CCCure questions, I didn't want to base my readiness strictly off of that because I started to go through the questions so many times that I knew the answer without knowing the logic. For me it was more so based off of when I felt comfortable with the material and all 10 domains, then I focused on the few domains that I felt were more difficult, such as Crypto etc.

I don't know if I honestly ever felt ready but like you, I set a solid date, prepared as much as I could and took the test and ended up passing. In short, I think the best way to know if you are ready is actually taking the test.

j.petrov

Sounds like you are in good shape to me. Just keep reviewing a little everyday and you should be fine. Don't kill yourself in the 24 hours leading up to the test. Make sure you stay relaxed.


Good luck.

billyr2009

Thanks you both for your responses! What worries me is that I see people have Shon Harris AIO 6 ed 3 times before taking the exam or have read the Eric Conrad 2nd Ed 2 times before taking the exam. I have only had one read through but tried not to rush and make sure I understand the concepts. 3 weeks is not much time to decide if I am ready but I will keep prepping for this and determine the week of if I feel I will go in for the exam or pay the extra $50 and reschedule. I'm hoping I can have this knowledge ingrained in me before the exam.

joebanny

@billyr2009, Hi, getting your feet wet with many tests is also a good idea. Personally, when I was preparing, I would take a couple of test after each domain to access myself. Any domain that I did not score very well, I would read it again. By the time I was done, I think the Crypto was my weakest link- since I struggle to reach the 80 percentile in that domain for a while- so I kept working at it, when I was getting 80% and above, I knew I was ready to go. IMHO, any score less than 75% when taking 250 questions (just like on the actual exam) is a clue to revisit some of the weakest domains. Good luck in your exam!

cyberguypr

JDMurray said in his CISSP Experience blog post that "The more times you take the same practice exam the more likely you are to memorize the correct answers and score higher. The score you get after completing every practice exam is not an accurate indicator of anything useful at all. If you feel that you are ready to take the CISSP exam because you are getting good scores on practice exams, you are likely deceiving yourself. A better indication that you are ready for the exam is when you can give a 30-second speech on each topic in each domain of the CISSP CBK."

When I was preparing for my CISSP I found this to be accurate. I say open the book, grab a random topic and go at it. Repeat like 20 times and see where you stand.

billyr2009

Thanks again for your response guys. @Cyberguypr, now when you say that a good measuring stick is to be able to talk about each topic of each domain for 30 seconds, does that mean for example Risk Management, Give a talk about Risk management for 30 seconds? Or is it something more granular like say give a 30 second talk on Deterrent controls? Like for example in Shon Harris book, she has a lot of frameworks in there like CobIt, SP 800-53, COSO, etc? Would each one be a topic or would a 30 second talk on frameworks themselves be a topic? Sorry if I added any confusion to this, I may be confusing myself lol but I just wanted to be specific so I am doing this right.

j.petrov

I only read the Eric Conrad study guide once and the 11th Hour Study guide once. I did about 3500 practice tests on cccure.org and felt it was extremely valuable. Also the sunflower pdf that is floating around is a great study guide. I barely ended up taking any notes of my own.

TheProfezzor

j.petrov wrote: »

I only read the Eric Conrad study guide once and the 11th Hour Study guide once. I did about 3500 practice tests on cccure.org and felt it was extremely valuable. Also the sunflower pdf that is floating around is a great study guide. I barely ended up taking any notes of my own.

Interesting. When did you happen to write the CISSP exam?. Shed some light on your experience in the field. As far as I know, many people who sat for the exam claim that Eric's Book alone, isn't enough. It should be paired with Shon Harris's AIO or the Official CBK.

j.petrov

I took the CISSP this past December. I've only been in IT for a year and a half since changing careers. I've only done self study for my certs. I think what helped me out with the CISSP is that I did it right on the tail of doing the Sec+ and CCNA Sec. There was a decent amount of overlap there so I didn't need to study as hard. I studied for about 3 months on and off before sitting for the exam. Reading the success stories gives you a great idea of what materials people used to pass.

joebanny

@Cyberguypr, no one is talking of taking practice tests over and over and memorizing answers- that will simply be cramming and not mastering the subject, that is no benefit to anyone doing that, my point simply is that taking a number of the simulated practice tests is one of the correct ways to access yourself- that's no brainer. How can you say you're ready to face the 250 CISSP "monster of a beast" exam questions, if you haven't at least take one that's close to the real thing? Nearly everyone who had posted a success story on this portal had mentioned using one practice exam or the other as part of the success strategy.

blackberrycubed

billyr2009 wrote: »

Hi all,

I am wondering when do you feel is the time that you know your ready to take the exam? Is it when you are scoring 85/90 % on cccure questions/total tester ? I signed up for the test in 3 weeks and am just wondering how to determine in ready to go and not reschedule it? I studied shon harris iap and Conrad 2nd edition. I read through Conrad and read through my tough chapters like crypto and telecomm with shon Harris 6th ed. Right now I am just going through online videos for cissp and taking practice questions and basically reviewing. Within 10 days out I plan to read the 11th hour by Conrad. I just hope it'll be enough and I'm ready within 3 weeks. What do you guys think?

If you don't mind, what online cissp classes are you going through? are they free?

billyr2009

the online training I was referring is actually an online video course that my company has an account for. I shouldnt say it is an actual training. It is termed as a training but, is more of an over of the domains. I cant complain though because it is of no cost to me since its through my employer.

billyr2009

Hi Folks,
Just an update, but I had rescheduled my March test date to Wednesday of this week. It'll be the first time I'll be taking the exam and I feel like I have more to cover. I have spent the last few days going over the 11th hour book Conrad book and just took a 250 question test from Shon Harris Total tester software included with her book. I scored an 80% on those but some of the questions I felt I had seen before so I dunno if I'm ready still! lol I had taken about 2-2.5 week off from late March to April where I wasnt studying as hardcore due to family being in town but I have been been since last week going over Shon Harris chapter summary, and Sunflower PDF chapter summary along with Eric Conrad, along with online videos on youtube to ingrain this. Does anyone have any suggestions on what should do next for the remaining 48 hours I have left? (Reschedule? Keep studying? anything?) Thanks everyone for your exceptional advice.