Taking A+ Core in April

Bravo5

I am taking the Core exam 2 April at 9:30 am. I have taken 100s of practice exams. Some days are great somes are

. Any suggestions? (I'm sure you never heard that before

)

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Webmaster

Keep practicing till all the days are great

My way of tackling exams the first take without getting all nervous and everything is to actually learn and know the material. After that I need to know if I know the material, on every day, good or bad, only then I schedule the actual exam. You don't want to fail the exam because it's one of those 'less great' days and you do want to know the material also days, weeks, months, years after you passed the exam. And since you still have two weeks...

What are you using to prepare besides practice exams?

bellboy

have you tried taking a computer down and rebuilding it? ebay can be a great source of 2nd user equipment.

Cross

Clint aside from those 100 or so questions you have, I hope you have a book to cover every objective on the exam. Also as Bellboy said try hands-on experience and testing also with hardware and core

Nucleus

I am taking my A+ Core Hardware March 28. I have also taken 100's of practice exams, anything I can get my hands on and of course my success varies from exam to exam, day to day. The problem I have with all these practice exams is that they are not the same as the real A+ exam, that is they are not in adaptive format. So if I score 80% on a practice test, would that be indicitive of a pass on the A+ test?

All I can say is that I will continue to review and see how things turn out after my test.

bellboy

your score will depend on how often, or for how long, you have taken the practise tests. imho, consistently scoring 80%+ would be a good incidation to book the exam for a few weeks time.

however, if you have been doing the same exams for an hour a day for several weeks, because you will become familiar with the questions and answers, your score should be much higher.

i was unable to take my a+ operating systems exam for almost six months after my core because of work commitments. i took the same practise tests, many of them free and i even bought a commercial product, and was pretty much acing each exam. it was more to do with the fact that i had memorised the q&a (in some exams, i knew where to have my pointer in the right spot for the next question when it popped up), although i also knew the objectives, pretty much, inside out.

Nucleus

I scored 80% on the Core Hardware test by ****. It had 350 questions. I then re-did the questions I got wrong bringing my score up to 92%... but like you said, I had already seen the questions and remembered the answers. In total I have probably answered well over a 1000 practice question... after testing myself with so many questions I hope some are repeated or similar on the real A+ test..

Webmaster

after testing myself with so many questions I hope some are repeated or similar on the real A+ test..

**** huh.... then you have been preparing using real exam questions (in other words cheating)

RussS

Hmm, perhaps it is too much to ask that people actually learn the subject matter from study material rather than ****

Jeeps8796

I have never heard of them before. I thought all the vendors had legally gotten **** off the market?? I guess of course if they are not saying they are a **** then they can do it.

Webmaster

Jeeps8796 wrote:

I thought all the vendors had legally gotten **** off the market?? quote]

That is totally not the case, the IT certification industry is overrun by **** sites, there are at least 25 sites out there selling "real" exam questions. A good place to read more information about this issue is at www.certcities.com

A general waterproof rule is simply not to buy questions packed in PDF format, 99% of them are rewritten braindumps and.. ah well don' get me started

Jeeps8796

Thanks for the article and the info. I really didn't realize that these type of sites and info still exist.

I guess the one thing I would say to anyone who uses, wants to use or has used is you really need to look in the mirror. I started my career with no certifications, making a small $11.30 an hour and learned quite a bit. Tomorrow I start a new job, with 680 PC's I will be servicing and making over 40,000 salary.

I recently got my A+ and am going for my Network + and on to my MCSE simply because I want to have the certifications to go along with my experience.

The point Im making is being a paper technician will do you no good when you get in a real world situation. Learn by doing, by reading the theory into the situation instead of answers to questions.

Webmaster

Congratulations on the new job Jeep! Sounds like you deserved it.

Bravo5

Thanks everyone for the advice. It has really helped. The books I am using are: Exam Cram 2 A+ by Jones and Landes; A+ Study Guide 4th ed. Osborne press. They balance out really well for me. Exam Cram has lots of information/technical stuff while the Osborne press has lots of pictures and keeps it pretty simple. I have installed, fixed and built computers before and I am currently trying to get a IBM PS2 up and running (cost me 10 cents at a thrift shop). I am really trying hard to learn everything I can. Sometimes it can be overwhelming but I took a break from studying over the weekend and for some reason all the IRQs, DMAs, Mhz etc.. are clear as bell. Probably what I needed. I completely agree that you should actually learn the stuff instead of memorizing answers to questions. I couldn't look people in the eye nor live with myself if I said I had any type of Certification without actually knowing the material. Again thanks guys and gals. I will let you know what happens.

bellboy

i used exam cram for my a+. it was the last coriolis edition, the one with the red cover. it was excellent, though i remember the voltages during the laser printing cycle were wrong.

best of luck.