I’ve taken ISC2 exams six times. This includes failing the CISSP the first time I took the exam, then passing on the second attempt. I also committed the ultimate dumb ass mistake of letting my CISSP expire because I didn’t get enough CPE credits. This forced me to take the CISSP exam for the third time (and passed). Next I took the CAP exam. After this I took the CISSP-ISSEP concentration. I was told that I failed this so took it again six months later. Failed again. Then, months later I got the “woops, you really passed both times” e-mail from ISC2. I was one of the lucky folks caught up in the ISC2 erroneous grading debacle. So what did I learn after sitting through six ISC2 exams?
1. Bring food and water
The CISSP exam can last 6 hours. Thats an eternity to sit at a desk reading frustrating questions. You don’t want the added aggravation of being hungry or thirsty. Not only is it distracting but can have a negative effect on your comprehension and patience. I know people that suggest gimmicky food or drinks.
2. Bring two #2 pencils and a pencil sharpener
You shouldn’t need to do this, the proctors usually bring pencils for you and they are usually sharp. They key word is usually. In one of my exams the pencil sharpener that they used to sharpen all the pencils before the exam was dysfunctional. All of the pencils were sharpened slightly off center, which caused the wood to extend down the length of the graphite. In order to use them, you had to hold the pencil at a specific angle. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it grows frustrating to color in 250 scantron bubbles with a bad pencil. Take a few pencils and one of those small sharpeners with you just in case.
3. Bring a print out of your admission document
ISC2 tells you to bring a copy of your admission document with you. But for whatever reason not everyone does this. If you don’t show up with a printout of your admission document, then you are at the mercy of the proctor. Some of them don’t make a big deal out of this, after all, they have a list of people, and you can show your photo I.D. to prove that you are on that list. Whats the big deal? The other scenario I see is people holding out their iPhone to the proctor. I’ve never heard of anyone getting turned down for doing this, but it always generates a few minutes of nervous talking about whether or not it should be accepted. Just like the pencil, why take this chance? You want to eliminate any additional stress from your test day. Bring an old fashioned printed copy of the admission document that was e-mailed to you.
4. Get lots of sleep, and get there early
I took one of my Exams in Chicago, a three hour drive from where I live in Michigan. This was a very bad decision. The morning traffic was worse than I expected, there was road construction going over a bridge that caused a minor traffic jam, and I was depending on a printed map to find a location that I had never been to before. Half way there I admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to make it in time, I would have to reschedule the exam and lose the money I paid. Luckily, I had forgotten about the time change. I arrived just in time, even through it took me an hour longer than I planned. This is not the state of mind you want to be in when you begin the test.
Unless you live in a large city or are very flexible about when you schedule the exam, you will probably have a long commute to an exam that starts early in the morning. If at all possible, get a hotel near the exam site the night before. Many exams are inside a hotel. This will let you get a good night sleep and cut down on the stress of finding the location the morning of the exam.
5. Don’t study the night before or morning of the exam
Any benefit of memorizing the last little bit of knowledge just before the exam is not worth the risk of burnout and stress produced from cramming just prior to test time. If you are depending on last minute studying to pass, its too late. This isn’t to say that you can’t glance through your material. If you have had trouble remembering the order of the OSI layers, then it may be a good idea to read over them one last time. Then you can transfer the order onto your scrap paper when the test begins (so that you don’t forget it again). Glancing at notes is fine, but don’t cram at the last minute.
6. Eat breakfast
Earlier I mentioned the importance of bringing food to the exam location. Time spent filling in scantron bubbles for CISSP questions is like dog years, 6 hours feels like 6 days. If you don’t normally eat breakfast then don’t go all out and eat a heavy meal, but eat something. You don’t want to lose energy or have your stomach growling as you busily color in answer bubbles.
7. Take your time
Plan on using all six hours to complete the test. Its very easy to get in a hurry and start glancing through questions and picking answers quickly. An hour into the test you may see people finishing and leaving. Don’t freak out and think that you are going to slow. The exams encompass all of ISC2 tests, including the SSCP, CAP, ISSEP, ISSAP, and ISSMP. These are all shorter than the CISSP. If you see someone completing their test faster than you expect, they are probably taking one of these shorter tests, or failing the CISSP.
8. Read the question, then read all of the answers
Sounds simple enough. But this can get difficult five hours into the exam. The wording on the test is notorious for its use of double negatives and confusingly similar answers. Read the entire questions, rephrase in your head if necessary. If the question asks, “Which is not an incorrect OSI layer”, you should turn this into “Which is a correct layer”.
9. Leave time to transfer answers from the answer book to the score sheet
The format of the test involves reading the questions from an exam booklet, then recording the answers in a separate bubble sheet. Most people prefer to answer the questions inside the booklet, then transfer these over to the bubble sheet when they are complete. Personally, I like to use the bubble sheet as I go. I don’t see a benefit either way, it depends on your personal choice. If you do need to transfer answers, then leave plenty of time to do this, it will take longer than you might think.
10. Make good guesses
You are going to run across hard questions where you can’t eliminate all of the wrong answers. The one thing that is certain is that you are going to have to make guesses. When this happens, follow a three step process. First, if one of the answers comes to mind right away, but can’t explain why, then pick that answer. Mental cobwebs may be preventing you from remembering the reason why the answer is correct. You are subconsciously remembering something. If none of the answers stand out to you then skip the question. As you answer questions later on in the test you may be able to come back and narrow down your choices.
Finally… If you are absolutely stumped. Pick the longest answer. When the folks at ISC2 make test questions they find it easy to come up with the wrong answers. Who’s going to disagree that an answer is wrong? However, the process they use to decide on a correct answer isn’t as easy. Many times the only way they can agree on a correct answer is to make it more detailed and specific. This means there is a small chance that the longest answer will be the correct one.
Image courtesy skippyjon
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I agree that you should bring your own pencils, but you should put them away at the start of the exam so that they will give you the ISC2/CISSP branded pencils. They look nice in your pencil holder at work.
DON’T FORGET TO BRING YOUR LUNCH!!!
“Your brain, in general, accounts for about 20 per cent of your total energy requirements. [...] The more intelligent you are, the more energy you expend on a problem that is subjectively hard for you” (Science Focus, 2011).
I took the test a few months ago and suppose I was smart enough to pass on my first try but dumb enough to not bring a lunch… go figure. About 4 hours into the test I wasn’t feeling too good and almost quit.
-Pasi
I still have those green pencils! Adding to my collection of ISC2 paraphernalia. They are almost as geeky as purchasing a lapel pin http://www.isc2education.org/store/product_info.php?products_id=1
I had an experience with someone showing up without their admission papers. They were able to take the test but it was still frustrating to have to wait while the proctor made a phone call. I can’t understand why people do this…
Good point about the longest answer. I hadn’t thought of that before but it makes sense.
Todd
I don’t understand why you would answer them directly in the bubble sheet. That has to add an additional distraction into each answer. Seems like everyone would benefit from marking the correct answer, them moving them into the appropriate bubble later on.
Thanks for the helpful tips. For someone like me preparing to take the exam, this is really good information.
@Matt why would you want to mark the answer and then transfer it later…….. this will waste time and will incur and additional step where human error may be introduce
“I would have to reschedule the exam and loose the money I paid.”
The word you are seeking is “lose”. This is one of my pet peeves. I see this in articles online all the time.
Thanks for pointing that out Steve, I fixed it.
9. Leave time to transfer answers from the answer book to the score sheet
This is the method I chose when I took the exam. I found it less distracting. It was easier to continue moving through the booklet. Though one thing I would like recommend is, when you go through the exam, is to stop and mark every twentith bubble on the scantron, (20, 40, 60, etc.) so when you start to fill in the scantron you can check your progress to make sure you are on the right number. That way if you make a mistake, the worst case scenario is you only have to go back 19 questions to find which question you skipped. My friend told me about his horror story when he got to the end of the scantron and he had six questions left but seven bubbles to be filled in. I did not want that to be me.
I got rejected last week with just the email on my iphone. They made me go to the business center at the hotel and print out the document.
I’ll have to say that number 7 should be edited. I took my CISSP and finished the exam in about 1-1.5 hours. Two weeks later I found out that I passed.
Not all people fail exams when they finish early.
Your advice is valid and sane, but the CISSP has diminished exactly for the reasons that it is attained by people who have no business earning it. If someone needs the entire six hours to complete the exam, they likely had no credibility to begin with. The questions are stale, the CBK is ancient and the subject matter is so banal that a qualified security practitioner can breeze through it. Sadly, it is still the singular search criterion used by hiring managers and my first objective in every interview is to explain its uselessness to eliminate competing job candidates. the hiring managers faces simultaneously deflate and brighten at my candor and command of industry knowledge and I always walk out with your job offer and contracts.
Thanks for sharing!