Exam nothing like the modules

[Adrianlockhart]

I took my CC exam today and failed and from the looks of it it wasn’t even a slight fail.

I can’t believe how different the exam was to the study material, it was like chalk me cheese. I’ve worked in I.T. For over 20 years and have completed many courses and most recently under took the google cybersecurity professional certificate and passed, I believe the Google course was a lot more I depth and you need to understand programming in many different platforms.

On the isc2 modules I was scoring way over 80% consistently yet when it can to the exam 4 out of 5 modules were below proficiency and one was near proficiency. This baffled me, also whilst taking the exam I knew after the first few questions that this was not to be as the questions were so far away from what was taught it was unbelievable,

The downside is to retake the exam is £161 and at the moment I’m not convinced paying that is going to serve me well and I think there are better supported courses out there.

The search continues

[JoePete]

Generally, those who make the ISC2 exams are completely separated from those who develop training materials for it. A large part of that is ensuring the integrity of the exams. I assume the CC follows this model, which applies to the established exams of the ISC2.

[nkeaton]

@Adrianlockhart From the people that I have worked with on this, they usually do not realize that 25 of the first 100 questions are beta/pre-test questions. A friend of mine and I volunteered for the pilot (ELCC) when ISC2 asked for volunteers. We both already had earned our CISSPs years before. We agreed was not an easy exam. At the time was only the self-study training. Making sure that know the exam objectives (ISC2 calls it an exam outline) is very important and will help to identify knowledge gaps. No learning is bad but know people at Google, and their employer does not recognize it nor does industry. I am glad that learned something from it; just realize that was kind of a cash grab in conjunction with CompTIA. I can recommend some resources if you still want to pass the CC. I did review the eTextbook when it came out after the exam went live. I did not feel that it added a lot of content. I would recommend Mike Chapple’s book if reading is how you learn best. Remember that practice questions are just to make you think. They are not the same as actual exam questions. Best wishes.

[dcontesti]

Sorry to hear that you were not successful.

@JoePete is correct.  ISC2 must keep the exam and trainings separated but they do follow the same outlines,  Also note, that ISC2 us NOT allowed to teach the exam.  Both teams will use the outlines to develop either the exam or the training.  Remember the outline (commonly called the Common Body of Knowledge (CBK))  is intended for folks to be able to understand the subjects that will be taught/tested in each domain.  So it logically follows that the questions might be on different subjects in any Domain.

d

[Alten]

@Adrianlockhart, anyone who's been around long enough has failed an exam and it doesn't feel good.  Sorry to hear you weren't successful.

I took the CC a few years back as a beta tester.  I had CASP and CEH already, so it was more "fun" for me to take it.  I remember the CC being no more difficult than Sec+.  I thought the CC had more robust (and better overall) questions than Sec+ and I remember thinking the training was pretty fair for entry-level cybersecurity.

What alarms me is that you said you have 20 years experience in IT and were scoring well with the material and still didn't pass. To be honest, that's hard for me to understand. Even if the training materials we're off, after 20 years in IT it seems like an entry-level cert shouldn't have been an issue.

What do you think the issue was? Highly-specific questions? Proprietary ISC2 questions? Did you research the topics on your own or rely only on the training material?

An honest lessons-learned session can be very beneficial for the re-take effort.

Again, sorry to hear about the attempt.  I've been there.