I receive a decent amount of e-mails about building confidence for the exams. Thought I would jot down a couple of my thoughts on how to build your confidence so that you can ensure a passing grade when you take your tests.
1. Know it all. You can’t be sure what questions you will get on the exam. Study my product(s). Study other people’s products. Use all of the tools at your disposal. The more practice the better. Know the theory, but practice in a hands-on manner on actual computers as well. These are the main focal points of my books. By knowing the theory and the hands-on, you thoroughly ready yourself for the exam, but also you prepare yourself for the real-world—the IT field. And for most test takers, that’s what it’s all about.
2. Study the objectives. If you haven’t downloaded them yet, then do it. Check mark each bullet on the list when you are sure you understand it. Most testing organizations (such as CompTIA) use objectives to define what will be on their exams. Many also have sample questions on their website. Go through those to help gauge how ready you are.
3. Don’t rush taking the exam. There probably isn’t any rush, so don’t schedule the exam until you are thoroughly prepared. Your scores on the practice exams in my books should give you another indication of your readiness. Always go for 90% or higher on each of my practice exams before you move on to the next one.
4. Mark the questions and return to them. When taking the real exam, mark the difficult performance-based questions (and any other difficult questions), skip them temporarily, and continue with the rest of the questions. You can return to them at the end. Just make sure you leave yourself some time to complete them. A lot of people get tripped up by the wording and concepts of some of the performance-based questions. By skipping them temporarily, you are in control.
5. Trust in yourself. You have studied hard. You know your stuff. You can do this. Don’t listen to what others say about the exam. You create your own confidence simply by saying “I can do this!”
I have some additional tips at the following links:
I hope this helps anyone out there about to take a computer certification exam. If I can be of any assistance, feel free to contact me,
