Practice exam dry run

detrevnI · March 2008

I had the opportunity to take a CISSP practice test from Transcender last night. It is one of the tests (Preset: Exam A (250 items, 360 minutes)) they offer to emulate the actual test experience. I did not have the time to finish the entire 250 questions and had to quit the test early. My score on the questions that I answered was a 74%. This was achieved cold - without any formal preparation. Ops Sec and law, investigations & ethics were by far my weakest domains. The rest were pretty much even.

I have a few questions:

Do you feel that the Transcender CISSP tests are an accurate representation of the real exam?

If anyone has used the Transcender tests, how far off from being able to pass actual exam would this score be?

If I am close enough to be on the cusp of passing from real world experience, would reading something like the "CISSP for Dummies" and reviewing a study guide or two be enough to fill in the gaps for the exam?

I realize these are very subjective questions. But, any thoughts that you have would be appreciated.

JDMurray · March 2008

I've not tried the Transcender nor actual CISSP exam, but I'd guess the Transcender exam doesn't come close to simulating the actual CISSP exam. It's more of a study tools that presents CISSP study material in the form of exam questions--but not necessarily in the form (or content) that you'll see them on the actual CISSP exam.

Do me a favor: take the CISSP practice exam at www.freepracticetests.org and post back here how you thought it compared to the Transcender exam. You don't need to select 250 questions; just 50 will do. I'm wondering how close in form and content the two practice resources are.

keatron · March 2008

The transcender exams are very well put together and they are an excellent tool for teaching you concepts. The biggest value with the CISSP Transcender exams are the explanations for the answers, they are well researched and provide plenty of "meat" as to why a certain answer is the correct answer. With that being said, they're not very well aligned with the real exam at all as far as likeness to the real exam questions. The link JD provided you is going to be the closest you get to the real thing. Those were actually put together by cccure.org and they are the closest I've seen.

Schluep · March 2008

I haven't used the Transcender exams but I would imagine them to be helpful as long as they tell you at the end what areas you were weakest one and explain why you missed a question. Don't simply do practice questions over and over but look to other sources to study up on the areas where you are weakest. It will be very unlikely for most people taking the exam to be a master of all 10 domains when they sit for the exam.

I used the cccure.org questions at the link JDMurray provided and found them to be incredibly helpful in determining my weak areas and focusing my studies in those areas. That being said, even they are not going to be terribly close to the type of questions on the exam. If you understand the concepts and questions asked in the questions at www.freepracticetests.org however you should be able to apply the knowledge on the CISSP exam.

The thing I liked a lot about the style of the CISSP exam is it makes you apply the knowledge instead of simply understanding the topics. Instead of "What is _____" questions it focuses more on "Considering this scenario which of the following would be best implemented:". That way you not only have to understand all of the answer choices but be able to apply them to the situation and choose the one most applicable. The key comes back to understanding all of the domains and then being able to apply that knowledge. Most practice exams likely won't capture this application of the material, nor do they need to.

detrevnI · March 2008

Thanks for the feedback.

take the CISSP practice exam at www.freepracticetests.org and post back here how you thought it compared to the Transcender exam. You don't need to select 250 questions; just 50 will do. I'm wondering how close in form and content the two practice resources are.

Thanks for the link. I took a 100 question with the max difficulty on pro and selected loosely related.

The test at freepracticetests was definitely harder. it covered a much broader scope of material and there were quite a few questions that were looking for very detailed memorization. After spending a few days reviewing forums, study aids, test guidelines, etc, I felt that there seemed to be a lot questions that went much deeper than I expected. Of course, this could have been due to the test settings I used.

I've often heard the CISSP test criticized for being a mile wide and a inch deep. This test felt that way with several crevasses hidden in the middle. In comparison to the transcender test, the freepracticetests test seemed like Security+, Network+ and Server+ exams rolled together with some encryption and orange book questions.

The transcender exam had a lot more focus on the business end with deeper thought needed around BIA and DRP type topics. It felt more like Security+ plus meets a Risk Management course in a college Project Management curriculum.

I will continue to use both tools to assess my progress. Even though there were differences, both tests identified the same weak domains for me - legal & ops sec with security architecture not far behind. They both really made my weak domains obvious.

evilempire · March 2008

JDMurray wrote:

Do me a favor: take the CISSP practice exam at www.freepracticetests.org and post back here how you thought it compared to the Transcender exam. You don't need to select 250 questions; just 50 will do. I'm wondering how close in form and content the two practice resources are.

Yeah - you'll see a lot of links to this and cccure.org (they are the same thing). These were the most helpful by far in helping me pass. Our company was getting about 7 of us CISSP certified and the instructor made us copy down that link as the first part of class. Good stuff.

Practice exam dry run

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