How to Pass and Study for CompTIA Security+, Network+, and A+ Certification Exams - The Most Effective Way
This piece is written to help both people who are about to start their CompTIA journey as well as those struggling with the A+, Network+, and Security+ exams. This comes from thousands of hours of experience directly with students at all learning levels and abilities. Bluntly, I will charge you at least $80 to tell you this one-on-one in Zoom for an hour. If you take this advice, I will in all likelihood save you weeks or months of pain and struggle. Good luck!
Why You Should Listen to Me
I have personally helped over 1000 people study for and get through their CompTIA exams. In addition to earning the certifications, I have also done quite a bit of real industry work in machine learning, web security, wireless networking, digital sales, and a ton of CompTIA teaching. I am a VET TEC-certified instructor and a member of the CompTIA Instructor Network (CIN) doing bootcamp style courses for the two top organizations in that program working almost exclusively with veterans. I have a very high success rate, and I have hundreds of former students who made the jump successfully into new tech jobs. I don’t know everything, but I do have a simple and repeatably successful method to get you from start to finish with your CompTIA journey.
If that’s good enough for you, go ahead and schedule a consultation now at the button below. Keep reading if you want the truth. If you want someone to sugar coat this, go waste your time somewhere else. I’m here to actually get you certified.
Things to Avoid Like the Plague
Brain Dumps - I know, horrible name. Brain dumps are banned by every certification vendor including CompTIA, Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. Very simply it means that you are not A) allowed to obtain real test questions from the official exams prior to, during, or after your attempt(s) and B) no third-party provider can use word-for-word training techniques in their instruction. This link takes you to CompTIA’s article about brain dumps. You can have your certification stripped, be prevented from taking a test, or just straight up blacklisted from taking a vendor’s exams at all in the future. It is unethical, risky, stupid, and the person who gets hurt the most is you because you don’t retain the information and you contribute to giving certifications a bad name. Don’t do it. It isn’t worth it. You will often see the word “dump” in the URL or just blatantly advertised on various websites.
Charlatans and Liars - The truth is that the IT certification test prep market is big. Millions of people every year start studying for various certifications. The CompTIA Security+ and A+ are two of the most popular in the world, which makes them massive organic search terms that illegitimate people will use to sell you useless products and courses, falsely claim to have the certifications for the courses they are teaching, and almost always waste your time by giving you incorrect or incomplete information. There are many of these people out there. Unfortunately, it is much harder to find real highly qualified instructors and top-notch training organizations than it is to find the pond scum trying to siphon your time from a noble pursuit into their infinite loop of failure. Can you tell I have had droves of students fall victim to this and desperately seek me out to help them out of the mess than an uniformed Google search got them into?
People and Organizations Offering a Pass Guarantee - There are no guarantees. Nobody is there to hold your hand. You either pass or you don’t. Proper preparation will yield success. Shortcuts, bad study habits, wasting time, taking too long, and a host of other issues contribute to whether you pass or not. My experience has shown that there are a lot of people who interpret a pass guarantee to mean that they don’t have to try as hard to study and the providing organization takes the responsibility. While there are a lot of organizations that do a good job of helping you get across the goal line, the responsibility for whether you pass or not lies squarely in your hands. I have had people pass exams in a week or two on the first try, and I have also had people take over a year with six or seven failed attempts before passing. The truth is that nobody cares how many times you fail so long as you pass.
Cheap Courses and Books - Complete waste of time plain and simple. You have no idea how many times I have had someone come to me for a one-on-one and tell me the same story. “Hey, I bought [insert book name] and/or [random Udemy course] a couple months ago because that’s what Google told me to do. I did really well on the practice tests, but I failed the real test by 200 points. What happened?” I’m not saying books and courses are completely useless. I’m saying the cheap ones are completely useless. If you had the misfortune of buying that stuff, get a refund if you still can and send the books back. I have met people who do really well with reading out of the book. I call them “unicorns” because about 0.5% of my students actually read the thing cover to cover and can retain a meaningful amount of the information. The vast majority of people are better off without the books. Cheap courses are either going to give you half the information, say it in a way that isn’t representative of the real exam, or just generally waste your time.
Assumptions - One of the biggest, if not the single biggest, reasons that people fail is that they assume instead of understand. As you go through the material, there will be topics that you know inside and out. Great, don’t spend unnecessary time on them. There will also be topics that are completely foreign and brand new. Great, you know that you don’t know and have the opportunity to improve. The problem is when you tell yourself “I think I know that” and assume that you know it instead of putting it on a list to come back to and study as if it were new information. I struggle very much with this and virtually every student I have taught has as well. It goes against human nature because we all want to think that we know more than we actually do. As Richard Feynman wisely said, “There is a great difference between knowing the name of something and actually knowing something.” You will do yourself a service taking that to heart.
Answer for Yourself: Why Are You Doing This?
Nobody does a CompTIA certification just for fun. You better have a good reason to do this because it is going to take time, and you will need to have a big enough why to sacrifice things and time that would be a spent having a lot more fun elsewhere in order to make this happen. Maybe this is your path to get into tech without a degree. Maybe it is a government thing, and you need to comply with DoD 8570/8140. Maybe you’re in a degree program and this is required or tests you out of classes. Maybe it is a tool to advance out of the entry level of tech. Maybe it is something else. If you’re doing it every once in a while for an hour or two a week, just stop. You’re never going to finish at that rate. You need to do this at least 2-4 hours every day from the time you start until you finish with no days off. That means saying no to friends and family to hang out. That means cutting video games and TV dramatically or completely. TikTok and social media doomscrolling is just going to make this take longer and distract you for no reason. This is a sacrifice and you have the responsibility to see it through. If your why is big enough, this is totally doable. A lot of people less intelligent and capable than you have passed and work in tech doing well. I promise that is true.
What Materials Do I Need?
Keep it simple. DO NOT GOOGLE RANDOM STUFF AND THINK YOU ARE DOING A GOOD JOB BY FOLLOWING THE FALLACY THAT “MORE QUESTIONS FROM MORE SOURCES IS MORE BETTER!” You need a primary source and a supplementary source. Some people also want a one-on-one tutor or a live instructor. Reach out for a consultation if that’s you. The tried and true best primary source out there is the official CompTIA CertMaster Practice program and free videos at ProfessorMesser.com in combination with detailed notes written on paper. (No, neither is an affiliate link. This is to prove I don’t have a conflict of interest. They are actually the best resources available.) CompTIA sells a bunch of different materials, but for the “trifecta” of A+/Net+/Sec+, Certmaster Practice is specifically the best tool out there. Since CompTIA makes it, it contains the closest language to what you will find on the real exam, which is more than half the battle. Professor Messer is just great. You can make up your own mind about his practice exams, but myself and pretty much all my students use him as the main video supplement. I personally did when I was studying. How you use those two together is described in the next section.
What is the Best Way to Do This?
There are really only three good ways to get through these exams.
Instructor Led Training (ILT) - This is definitely the most formal option. This can be done with a Private Bootcamp with us or with a dozen or so other financing options with various partner organizations. There are different styles and flavors of this, and not everyone is suited to the same type. The most popular programs are the “bootcamp” style, which I personally teach regularly for both civilians and military students. This is when all the content for the certification is jammed into one or two week chunks for 4-8 hours per day. This is not for everybody. You should be good learning with the firehose method because it’s a lot of information very quickly. Some people do well with that and others don’t. There are slower paced training organizations that take a month or two to get through everything as well. This can also turn into a hybrid bootcamp and tutoring arrangement depending on the student. For more information and to see where you are likely to fit it, request a consultation here or with the button below.
Self-Study with a Tutor/Instructor - Certmaster Practice + Professor Messer + Live Tutor/Instructor with the Certification + Time + Good Study Habits = High Probability of Success.
Self-Study Solo - Certmaster Practice + Professor Messer + Time + Good Study Habits = High Probability of Success.
How Long Does It Take?
Most people go from start to finish in 6-12 weeks per exam. Some people are faster, and some people take longer. If you are doing a self-study method, this is certainly accurate depending on your academic capacity, life situation, and experience level. With the bootcamp style, I have seen people start from scratch, take a week or two bootcamp, take a week or so to do some hardcore review and be done with the exam in less than a month. I do want to caution you that the probability of passing falls off a cliff after about 12 weeks. You will feel that the process is taking too long. Burnout will creep in. You will increasingly find reasons not to study. A day off becomes three days off, and that becomes weeks at a time. The material in these certifications has a way of disappearing from your memory rapidly if you do not stay at it every single day, even if that is just 20 minutes of reading over some notes. If you take a week off, I promise you it will feel like you have to start over from basically scratch. I absolutely have had students take over a year to pass an exam, but it is much more common that someone thinks they are able to self study, fail to get it done within a reasonable time, and then just fall off the face of the planet never to be seen or heard from again. Don’t be one of those people. Finish what you start and do it in a reasonable amount of time.
Is It Worth It?
Yes. Certifications aren’t everything. Degrees aren’t everything. Experience is very important but still not everything. With that being said, degrees take years and have questionable value outside of academia specifically for tech careers. Experience is hard to get if you don’t have any. The best way to get a job is to have a job. That leaves certifications. I along with many of my current and former students are living proof that you absolutely can leverage certifications to get from where you are to a much better position in a relatively short period of time. However much money you spend passing these certifications is a drop in the bucket compared to what the rest of your lifetime earnings look like when you have a certified skill set.
Can I Get Financial Help?
Probably, especially if you are are a veteran. Self pay is always an option, but there are a number of ways to get help. Request a consultation and let’s talk it out.
What Can I Expect on the Real Test?
The “trifecta” exams of the A+, Network+, and Security+ are remarkably similar. You can expect 90 questions give or take. The first 3 or 4 questions will be the performance-based questions (PBQs) and the rest will be a traditional test of normal question types like choose the right answer, choose all that apply, which of the following is NOT correct, which is the correct order, etc. A lot of people get really stressed out about the PBQs, but you really should not. The way the test is structured is that if you do great on the traditional test part and do pretty not great on the PBQs, you’re going to pass. If you do great on the PBQs and not great on the traditional test, you’re going to fail. The best way to do well on the PBQs is know the exam content well. I would advise that you don’t actually do the PBQs first. Go ahead and read them and take some notes about what they are asking, but do the traditional test part first. You can mark questions related to the PBQs and will likely get a few useful bits of information that will tell you some of the answers on the PBQs but not all of them. You also do not want to burn out your brain power at the beginning. This is a long slog through a lot of dense information, so do the traditional test part first and PBQs at the end because the worst thing you can do is burn yourself out early and not be able to focus toward the end. Bad decisions will be made. It will be easier to second guess yourself and start changing a bunch of answers, which is what paves the road to ruin. I am of the fairly well informed opinion that the best way to fail the test is to have a passing score, get nervous, then go change a bunch of answers at the end. Don’t be that person.
What Happens After I Pass?
Go shout it from the rooftops! Go celebrate! Seriously though, becoming certified is the beginning and nowhere close to the end. If you are committed to doing the entire trifecta of A+ then Network+ then Security+, your reward for passing the A+ and Network+ is to come home, tell the people you care about you passed, then go buy the next CertMaster Practice license and start studying that night. Once you pass the Security+, that is when your tech life makes a significant turn. Having a DoD 8570/8140 compliant certification opens the door to the biggest organizations in the country, which is good for you. The sooner you get it over with, the better off you’ll be. You will need to renew the certification every three years, and there are plenty of ways to do that.
What Next?
Request a consultation with us and make sure that you are going down the right path so you can get this done and move on with your professional life better than it was before.