I'm really excited that you've decided to take the exam with us as part of your preparation, I really
want to go through different aspects of preparing yourself, both mentally and physically, to take
that sisar exam and pass.
Remember, our goal is to pass the first time every time not to take it 5 or 6 different times and hope
we pass.
As part of that, I really want you to schedule your exam now.
Scheduling your exam now psychologically prepares you for a deadline.
That deadline says to you mentally that I need to study for my exam.
By studying for your exam and placing that deadline upon yourself, you are more apt to study every
day and provide yourself with a legitimate schedule that you need to follow in order to pass that exam.
After all, no one likes spending 400 plus dollars on an exam that is going to come and go.
You want to let other people know, get that support within your structure.
Let your friends, your coworkers, your relatives, even your teachers know I'm planning to take that
CSA exam.
They'll help you by providing you both mentorship and support.
Even in those times when you think that you can't do it.
I want you to dedicate some time to studying for your exam.
It does no good to pay for a course that you don't actually listen to.
Remember, go through and provide yourself with a schedule.
I'm going to study for at least one hour a day is not enough.
You need to say to yourself, I'm going to study from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., maybe it's 7 a.m. to 8 a.m.,
maybe it's 630 in the morning.
Whatever your preferred dedicated time is, you need to follow through and identify when that time is
and block that off from everybody else around you.
If you have a lot that dedicated time, you need to say to your significant other, I need to study,
and this is the time that I'm learning for myself to study and pass this exam.
I need you to have a positive attitude, understand that life gets us down and sometimes we have a bad
day.
If you miss one dedicated time of studying.
It's okay.
It's not the end of the world.
Let's just pick up again tomorrow.
If you had a week where you just didn't study.
Yeah, it sucks and we don't want to do that.
But let's jump back on that horse and get back to it.
Understand that having a positive attitude, it's 9/10 of actually passing what we're going for.
We watched lectures that you don't understand.
If there's a difficult concept and you're just not getting it, rewatch it.
If you just rewatched it once and it still doesn't click.
Take a break, take a day, and then come back into it tomorrow and rewatch it.
You'd be amazed how just a limited time, a break, whether it's 2 hours or 24 hours of rewatching that
same episode, really does make us click inside of our own heads and allow us to go, oh, that's what
they were talking about.
That light bulb will come back on, I promise you.
And then lots and lots of practice exams.
When it comes down to it, when I took my own exam, I took so many practice exams it was absolutely
ridiculous.
I remember my own wife telling me, My God, how many practice exams are you going to take before you
actually take the exam?
And the answer is as many as I need to feel comfortable before I take that exam.
Remember, we want you to have that 85% pass rate before you walk into the test center.
You should walk into that test center with the idea that I'm already going to pass.
All you need to do is walk in and take their exam.
It's a formality.
You should already know that you're going to pass before you even walk through the doors.
Have that confidence level and you get that confidence level from taking practice exams and passing
them with that 85% level.
If you can do that, you're setting yourself up for success.
And I have no doubt in my mind that you're going to pass this exam as part of your preparation for the
exam.
The first thing you need to do is actually purchase the exam voucher.
Now, the current cost to the CompTIA website is $404, but prices tend to go up or down each year,
and there could be associated tax and fees depending on where you live.
This is located at the CompTIA org website.
Another way that we could purchase in a voucher is through a discount voucher program.
Total seminars has one of those discount vouchers available to them.
As a student.
Through our process and through this course, you can purchase a discounted voucher through total Simcom.
This provides you about a 10% discount that's available through most discounted voucher programs.
Finally, you can be eligible for an educational discount if you have a.edu email address.
The third way is through an educational discount.
If you have a.edu email address that is currently valid and that you have access to with this.edu email
address, you can go to the academic Walkandtalk.org website and purchase a voucher for about a 40%
discount.
As an academic student, let's take a look at how to purchase those vouchers through one of those three
measures that I've mentioned.
Once you've arrived at the CompTIA org website and go to the certifications, you can find the Cisa
voucher available here.
If you scroll down, you can see the different aspects of the CSO 003 cybersecurity exam.
It identifies the launch date, the number of questions associated with it, in this case a maximum
of 85, the length of the test, as well as the passing score.
At the very bottom.
You can see that the Cisa exam can be taken either at a test center or through an online testing format.
By pressing the view price in cart, we can see the actual cost of the exam.
As of today, it is $404.
You can proceed to checkout and they will provide you an email through your valid email address of the
Pearson Vue website and how to sign up on a step by step basis.
If you go to the Total Seminars website, you can see there's an exam Vouchers plugin right here.
By pressing on this tab, you can scroll down and identify the voucher you want to purchase.
In our case, the Cisa plus exam.
By pressing the Buy Now button, it will provide us access to the Cisa exam.
Here you can see the Cisa exam voucher and by selecting your country, it will tell you the actual cost
of the exam.
For instance, in the United States, it's $362.99 as of today.
Finally, the academic score for the CompTIA exam, if you scroll all the way down, you'll see certification
vouchers by pressing the browse button.
It will list all the vouchers available for academic students.
By scrolling down, we can find the Cisa voucher.
And here we can see the Cisa voucher on the academic store is $262 even as of today's date.
Now that we've purchased our voucher, we're ready to sign up for an exam date and identify the date
and time in which we want to take the actual exam.
This can be done either in person or online.
Now, I want to take a moment and talk about the downsides of taking an online test.
I've had numerous students that have taken an online exam thinking this was the better way to go.
After all, I save time.
I don't have to drive to the testing center.
I have a more open schedule and aspect and it just overall is an easier, more comfortable position
in order to take the exam online, I want to take a moment to talk about the downsides of online testing
through the Pearson Vue system.
I've had numerous students complain about the fact that they've gone through.
They're taking their exam and a vehicle drives by with music blaring.
The Pearson Vue moderator hears that as someone talking, and they instantly disqualified the exam because
they heard talking in the background.
They perceived it as cheating.
I've also heard horror stories of people taking the exam, and their wife, or their daughter, or even
son pops their room head into the room and they ask a simple question because there's no talking allowed
during the exam process.
They've nullified the exam, and that exam no longer counts.
You don't get a refund on your money, you don't get an additional voucher, and the exam is just gone.
It's kaput.
You've wasted your time and more importantly, your money on taking the exam that's no longer valid.
If it was me, I would just drive to this testing center.
Unless it's more than two hours away, you really just want to take it in person.
There's less likelihood that you'll be disqualified for something that I just don't consider to be valid,
and it's going to make you in that position where you're just ready to take the exam.
It's set up properly.
You don't have to clear up your desk.
You don't have to clear up the pictures on the walls.
You can just walk in, show your ID, prepare yourself mentally and physically to take the exam, and
then pass with flying colors.
However, let's talk about how to actually set up that voucher as you're going through the Pearson Vue
website.
Let's discover that now.
Here you can see I'm at the Pearson Vue website, specifically the CompTIA portion.
If you Google Pearson, Vue, CompTIA, it'll be one of the very first things that pops up.
I'm going to click on login.
Here.
You see that you can either register for a new account if you've never taken one before, or you can
provide your email address and password to sign in to your Pearson Vue CompTIA website.
I'm going to sign in with my CompTIA credentials, and once you've logged in, you can now schedule
the exam I'm going to schedule.
Now I'm going to provide my information.
And then once I've saved my updates, I'll be taken to a screen that says find my exam.
I'm going to type in CSA right here.
You'll notice that the CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst CSA A+ certification exam I'm going to click on
that.
It's going to process my request and it's going to ask me, do I want to do a test center or do I want
to do it online?
Obviously, you know my feelings about this.
I'm going to do it in person.
It's going to tell me, hey, you need to have your photo ID available.
It identifies you with what you should expect and provides a short video so that you can learn to be
prepared for that in-person testing environment.
Once we've identified that we're going to hit next, it's going to ask me for my preferred language.
Obviously, I speak English.
I'm going to press next again.
And it's asking me, are you temporarily in another country and plan to take the CSA exam outside the
country?
Obviously I'm in the United States, so I'm going to press no and continue forward.
It's going to talk about its admission policy, the reschedule policy, and how I have one full business
day, or 24 hours to which I can reschedule or cancel my current appointment.
I'm going to scroll down and agree, and then it's going to ask me where I would like to take the exam.
It's going to sort my different testing centers based on the distance from my home address that I've
already provided.
I'm going to click on one of these test centers and hit next.
Once I've identified the test center, it's going to give me a range of dates.
Now you can see here that I have available to me on May 30th and 31st, but if I want to go six weeks
out, which is my recommendation, I'm going to go into June and then into July.
It's going to take a second for the calendar to catch up.
So six weeks out puts me at July 2nd.
I'm going to click on July 2nd of 2024, and then it's going to ask me what timeframe I want.
Do I want a 12 hour clock or a 24 hour clock?
Now, me personally, I prefer a 24 hour clock, but not everybody is like me.
It's going to provide me the next available appointment in this time frame and it says, I can take
my exam from zero 9 or 9 a.m. to 1230 in the afternoon.
If I press book this appointment, it's going to go forward with the process, and it's going to give
me a little snapshot of everything that I agreed on.
It provides me the exam details.
I'm signing up for CS 0003 CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst A certification exam.
My appointment time length is 210 minutes.
My appointment is on Tuesday, July 2nd at 2024 at 9 a.m. it's going to tell me the cost associated
with it and if I scroll down it can say proceed to checkout.
Now I know that it looks like they're going to charge you $404, but we already purchased our exam,
so we're just going to proceed to checkout.
And here you can see that the total cost is $404.
And right here I can provide my voucher or promotion code.
Now very very rarely does CSA or CompTIA as a whole provide a promotion code for a discount.
So I would recommend going through a third party vendor like we talked about on total seminars for that
10% discount or that academia website if you are an Edu student and providing that voucher here.
Once I plug in that voucher, I press apply.
The number or total will zero out and I can press next.
Now you can get from here to the actual exchange.
But I do want to point out two things as we're going through this.
One, make sure you complete the full transaction even with the voucher and promotion code available
to you.
Make sure you get a reference email from CompTIA and Pearson Vue identifying that you are scheduled
to take that exam.
I can't tell you how many students I've had that thought they signed up for an exam, never got that
reference email only to realize they never completed the process.
Make sure you complete the process in order to get that reference email.
The second thing I want to talk about is if you need to cancel or reschedule.
If you reschedule your exam, make sure you go through the entire process and receive that reference
email at the end.
If you don't and you sign up for the new exam, they may come back at you and say you never signed up
to reschedule your exam That money is now forfeit because you missed your original exam date.
Make sure you have that reference email dictating that you did, in fact, reschedule or complete the
actual process to certify your new exam time.
Once you've scheduled your exam, there's a few more things that I wanted to go through.
I wanted to provide you some quick tips to better prepare yourself in order to take a CompTIA exam if
you've never taken one before.
Or maybe it's just been a while since you completed your last exam.
The first tip I want to provide to you is those first 2 or 3 questions in your exam are considered performance
based questions.
I want you to click that little red flag at the very top right hand side of your screen and skip the
question.
Don't read it.
Don't spend any time on it.
Just go past it.
You're going to skip to the very first multiple choice question and then start your exam from there.
There is a method behind my madness.
A lot of those performance based questions are very detailed, and they take a little bit of time to
actually go through.
It is, believe it or not, possible to pass your exam without doing those performance based questions.
Do I recommend not doing them?
Absolutely not.
I want you to get your mind in the game.
And that process starts with multiple choice questions.
Those are the easier questions.
It prepares you to do those performance based questions.
Your nerves will be calmer when you go back to those questions.
When we do those performance based questions, you've already completed all those multiple choice questions.
You've had time to relax.
You're in the groove of completing your exam.
So we're going to start with that first multiple choice question.
Once you start that I want you to read the question.
Read it slowly.
Don't be like me and go through and read the question as fast as you can and then provide an answer.
I want you to slow down and I mean that literally.
Slow down and read the question.
You have about a minute to a minute and a half to answer each one of those questions.
On average, it should take you right around 45 seconds to a minute to read through the question, read
the answers.
Read the question again to identify exactly what is the question asking me, and then answer what the
question is asking, not what you think it's asking, but what the question is actually answering.
And I know that sounds confusing, but as you're going through your questions, realize that the question
is asking one thing, but the scenario could be taking you in a different direction.
Get your mind in sync with that question that it's actually asking, and then answer it as you proceed
through.
Follow this same technique.
I'm going to read the question, then read the answers, then reread the question to find out exactly
what the question is asking of me, to reread the answers and then answer appropriately.
At times you may come across a question that you just know.
The answer of this method we're going to talk about today is talk about the process of elimination.
There will be four answers attributed to most multiple choice questions I want you to go through and
knock off the ones you know.
It's not.
If you get answers and you're looking between one, 2 or 3 different answers that it could be, and
it provides for right off the bat, let's get rid of one if we can.
That knocks our chances even for guessing down from 25% up to 33% just by knocking off one question.
If we can knock off two, which is the 50 over 50 method, then we've come up a 50% chance of getting
the correct answer.
We know it's not this one.
We know it's not that one.
That only leaves me two viable answers to answer this question, knowing that I now have a 50% chance.
The next thing I want to talk about is that gut feeling.
Believe it or not, it's a real thing.
I can't tell you how many times I went around the classroom while students were taking their final exam
or a midterm to have the right answer.
Then they reread the question 2 or 3 minutes later and they come back to it, and they're answer the
question incorrectly.
I don't want you to ignore that gut feeling you may have if you think the answer is this way and you
don't have a reason to change your answer, don't change it.
Rely on that gut feeling.
Believe it or not, more often than not, it's right.
If you get to a question and you are completely lost, or maybe you even had to use that 50 over 50
methodology and you're not sure.
At the top right hand side of the screen, there's a flag I want you to press that flag.
We'll come back to that question if we have time later down the road, it's not uncommon to go through
a question that you just don't know the answer of.
Or maybe you're pretty reliant that it may be one of these two answers, but you're not entirely sure.
It's not uncommon to have a question 5 or 6 points down the way which identified an acronym, or made
your memory get jogged to where now you know that answer.
Go back and answer that question, even if it takes an extra 10 or 15 seconds to do so.
I always recommend that if you answered a question incorrectly, only to find the answer is something
else later down the road, immediately go back and answer that question correctly.
Remember, it's all about statistics.
The more questions you get the right, the higher percentage of chance you have of passing the exam.
The final thing that I want to provide for tips based is that if you don't know the answer yes, remember,
if you don't answer a question, it's automatically a zero.
If you guess at the question, you at least have a 25% chance of getting it right.
I'll take 25% over zero every single day, and I recommend you do the same as you're going through the
exam and you're muddling yourself and you're really getting into the groove, you'll start to notice
that your nerves calm down.
At the very end of your exam.
You'll see this highlighted point and it'll say, do you wish to go back through questions that you
missed?
Absolutely.
You do any of those flagged questions which should be on those performance based questions.
You're now going to go back to remember, we're going to go back through those performance based questions
before we go back through those flagged questions that you may not have had a good feeling about.
Once we've identified those performance based questions, you should have a little bit of time left
over to go back through those flagged questions.
I've never taken an exam where I didn't have 10 or 15 minutes left over at the end to go back through
those flagged answers.
Once we've identified those, now we can go back through those flagged exam questions.
And again, I recommend you read them just like you did before.
Go through them and then answer the question.
If you're looking at an answer and you've already answered that the first time around, now is not the
time to change your answer unless you have a good reason to do so.
Remember trust that gut feeling.