If I can comfortably get all flashcards correct and pass the practice test for a+, am I ready for the real test?
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I was wondering if I were to pass the practice test and get every flashcard correct, would I be, in theory, ready to take the actual exam?
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Possibly...but not necessarily or in theory. You could have memorized the flashcards and practice exam questions. You may see some that are the same but not exactly. So that's not completely objective.
To be objective and passing the exam with a better level of certainty. Do the following.
- Download from CompTIA the CompTIA A+ 220-1101 and 220-1102 exam objectives.
- Learn about each sub objective to the level as specified by the verbs used on each and every domain objective.
- Associate your learning with everyday things.
- Make technology a hobby and associate what you learn with something fun.
- Take notes, ask questions about anything and everything you don't have a grasp of at the level of the exam objective verbs.
This is where you rest assured that you're thinking is inline with the exam writers.
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Ronnie isn't wrong, but I hold 5 CompTIA certifications and think you'll probably be fine.
I passed 3 of those completely panic-bombing on the performance questions. It wasn't until someone gave me this advice that I started nailing the performance questions:
- Only look at each performance question for 30 seconds and then skip it and focus on the multiple choice. Go back to them after you've completed ALL the multiple choice.
- Do NOT overthink what they are asking you. They typically are NOT asking you something overly difficult.
- Often times they give you way more (distraction) information than you need to answer the actual questions.
- Do what you can. I clearly cannot confirm this, but I believe you can get partial credit on performance based questions.
- More generally, do not panic! Even if you think you are failing the exam, just focus on whats in front of you and don't worry about the result. Even you finish the questions with almost no time remaining for PBQs, you can STILL pass if you did well enough on the questions; that happened to me once...
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@Ronnie-Wong Thank you for the advice! I will definitely look at the exam obj. I love your guys' videos so I'd like to keep going with ACI for all of my certs!
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@Joshua-Howard Thank you for that information! I will definitely keep that in mind. Did you only use ACI/ITProTV when studying?
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@Brian-Vallenas
If I could find reasonably inexpensive alternatives, then I've never only used a single source of information. In this case, I would suggest combining with (at least) a run through the YouTube Professor Messer materials.With that said, I used to do flash cards and practice tests a lot and found those helpful early on. These days I rarely use a flash card and tend not to look for massive banks of questions. So, from that perspective even if you've memorized things in the way Ronnie mentioned, its still going to help you vs just going through video content. The super important thing is that you don't jump to any conclusions based on that memorization. Just because something "sounds" similar to that thing you've memorized, it could easily be a trap. Make sure the question is in the same context; IE, they didn't invert it somehow on yah...
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I wound up taking A+ specifically for college credits. I only studied for 2 days for each exam, but it was slightly more difficult that I expected. Unfortunately, for somewhat wrong reasons though. Clearly I can't provide much detail on why, but here are some high level generalities.
Terms used at the A+ level are NOT the terms I've used/learned in more advanced topics/exams.
There were a fair number of questions where there were definitively 2 answers because they didn't provide enough information to pick one over the other. In many cases, they didn't even include words like BEST & MOST.
There were a hand full of questions where I don't care what they think, none of the provided options were acceptable answers. This doesn't bother me too much from the perspective that they are known to include ungraded questions for future exam potential. However, if this threw me for a loop and wasted some of my time, then I do feel particularly sorry for someone much more green.
To further expand the prior point. Both of my exams drew 4 PBQs. On both exams I would say 2 of them were easy or mild difficulty, 1 was slightly harder and 1 of them was seemingly nonsensical. On Core2, I finished everything in less than an hour and spent all of my remaining time just trying to understand 1 PBQ. Hopefully those nonsensical PBQs are also in the ungraded category...
I guess what I am trying to say to "green" exam takers... All advice stands, but be very aware of your time, take a best guess and don't try find something that truly isn't there.
