Wow. This course does not have much pre-test help. The forums were very lacking in information on how to prep. Listen to the CBT nuggets, read the book and do the practice test. That makes getting hands on practice kinda difficult if you don't have gear. Not good.
I decided to use GNS3 and virtualbox to do the routers and such. It has taken a 2 days to get the environment setup. I read the manual after getting lost for an hour or two. I try the click until something good happens at first. Helps me learn where everything is before reading a manual cold. Next, Getting IOS images is a challenge. Plus setting the idle time is important. Last, connecting virtualbox into the system is cool. Yay, practice for tacacs+ and radius. Good thing to save those practice Win7 and Linux machines from earlier courses.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
CTV1 -- SY0-022/SY0-401 -- Security+ Passed
Yay! Passed another one. This was one of the harder or more intimidating courses to pass. You have to get a 750/900 and that translates to between an 81-83%. That's a bit high than the 600 or 700/900 on most of the CompTIA courses so far in the curriculum. Anywho, rambling. Back to the course.
Study Material: Again, after checking the forums and reading what other students had done, I went with a 3rd party source for studying, not the official WGU material. I used the book from Darril Gibson (kindle -- $9.99)along with the practice tests ($19.99 or 29.99) on his website. The book is a relative easy read, and it doesn't get lost in the woods like many of the other resources. It has the level of detail needed for the test, but not too much more.
Practice Test: I used Mr. Gibson's website practice test material for the majority of my practice sessions. I was scoring 98% on his site, but 90% in real life. (If you get the material, you'll understand that statement). I did take the Transcender's material offered with the course, but I thought several of the question banks could use some work. (Look at the sources for the questions when reviewing the answers. Seriously, if it isn't part of the official study guide certified by CompTIA, why is it being tested?). I was making 75% to 82% on the transcender material the day of the test.
Test: 70 questions, 90 minutes. Yikes. Gotta hustle. The test had your standard simulations like most CompTIA courses now. There were 6-8 of those. Rest were multiple guess based on two to three sentence scenarios or pure definition questions. Along the way there were multi-select multiple choice just to spice it up.
The scenarios can chew into your time. I always find the hardest part is getting enough screen real-estate to see the test question, the diagram, and the answer area. I end up having to move windows around all the time. Grrrr. Those took 3 minutes or so each. I am starting to think on the scenarios, don't even read the question. Just open the scenario, quick view the diagram, and then read the question after looking at the diagram(s). The question always hovers sonit is readily available to view.
The whole test took me 55 minutes total. Some of the questions are awkwardly worded (as usual). Made an 816 for my troubles.
Study Material: Again, after checking the forums and reading what other students had done, I went with a 3rd party source for studying, not the official WGU material. I used the book from Darril Gibson (kindle -- $9.99)along with the practice tests ($19.99 or 29.99) on his website. The book is a relative easy read, and it doesn't get lost in the woods like many of the other resources. It has the level of detail needed for the test, but not too much more.
Practice Test: I used Mr. Gibson's website practice test material for the majority of my practice sessions. I was scoring 98% on his site, but 90% in real life. (If you get the material, you'll understand that statement). I did take the Transcender's material offered with the course, but I thought several of the question banks could use some work. (Look at the sources for the questions when reviewing the answers. Seriously, if it isn't part of the official study guide certified by CompTIA, why is it being tested?). I was making 75% to 82% on the transcender material the day of the test.
Test: 70 questions, 90 minutes. Yikes. Gotta hustle. The test had your standard simulations like most CompTIA courses now. There were 6-8 of those. Rest were multiple guess based on two to three sentence scenarios or pure definition questions. Along the way there were multi-select multiple choice just to spice it up.
The scenarios can chew into your time. I always find the hardest part is getting enough screen real-estate to see the test question, the diagram, and the answer area. I end up having to move windows around all the time. Grrrr. Those took 3 minutes or so each. I am starting to think on the scenarios, don't even read the question. Just open the scenario, quick view the diagram, and then read the question after looking at the diagram(s). The question always hovers sonit is readily available to view.
The whole test took me 55 minutes total. Some of the questions are awkwardly worded (as usual). Made an 816 for my troubles.
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