I only took the test on Friday, so I figured I'd also offer my opinions...
Tough exam, and I used all 6 hours, pacing myself the whole time. Time
management was a bigger issue than I expected. I didn't feel too rushed, and
answered all the questions with some time to spare, but I could've used an
extra 15 minutes to review (second guess) some questions I was unsure about.
You will need to move through the questions relatively quickly. In some cases,
you will spend more time reading the scenario than answering the 2 questions
that apply to it.... Boo to that. I didn't notice any of the "not" questions,
so I guess they've eliminated them, good for you ISC2!
I used a combination of the All-In-One book and video training, practice exams
I found online and in document form, the material from the SANS boot camp I
took, and spent a few days reading through the ISC2 CBK study guide a coworker
had given me.
I felt like I was asked the same basic question in multiple different ways in
some cases, and then on others I found the answer very difficult to choose
between two possible answers. Maybe they were "research" questions, or maybe
they were softballs... Mostly I was surprised by how many questions were very
easily answered if you did the studying, which I feel I did. If the "think
like a Manager" trick is how the exam is truly framed, then I think it will
work to your advantage.
I had to travel a few hours to take the test, so stayed in a hotel away from
the family, reviewed most of the day, got a good nights sleep, a filling
breakfast with no coffee just a few glasses of OJ, and stayed off any alcohol
the night before. Strangely I was able to go from 7:30 - 4ish w/out eating,
just some sips from iced tea I had. Very unlike me... so I think I was
running on some sort of adrenaline to stave off the hunger, and somehow stayed
mostly focused throughout the test.
I know two other people who did boot camps with the test day immediately
following, and they passed, but felt overwhelmed after all was said and done.
I had 10 days between the SANS boot camp, which wasn't too intense, and the
test, and I think that may have me time to rest a little and review more, but
not too long that material wasn't fresh in my mind.
I'll also say that scheduling a test was tough for me, my goal was to get it
done before the summer got into swing. Many of the test dates you see on their
site are private tests, you can't schedule it unless you are also going to
their boot camp. On the East Coast at least, ideal test dates (date/location)
were hard to find. I suggest setting a date about 3-4 months out and work out
a scheduled to cover the material, etc. building up to the test date.
-PJ
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:27:20 -0500
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Pauldotcom] CISSP Study Strategy?
I took and passed the test just over a year ago and they made a point to
eliminate the negative questions like, "all but one of the following," or the
double negatives. I'm sure they did this largely for non-native speakers of
English, but those are nasty questions even for native speakers.
Honestly, if you see practice tests with questions like that, you probably want
to skip those practice tests. They prepare (and frustrate) you for something
that won't happen.
I'd love to give study tips, but how we learn tends to be somewhat personal.
For me, it really helped to just read up on and be around the security
community and deal with security on the job over several years, and augment
gaps with relaxed reading and note-taking sessions. If you can, role-play in
your head how concepts may apply to your company/job/manager and how that
conversation may go.
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