Passed my Security+ Score: 804 (first post and certification 🎉)

A TLDR abt me: I’m a 20 yo, computer science student. I don’t have any formal IT experience, but I do enjoy networks and i’ve messed with some personal projects like making a raspberry pi into an Adguard DNS server + resolver, along with making it a wireguard VPN gateway. (nothing super crazy imo) I also did my Google Cybersecurity Certification, that was my reason for jumping straight into Security+.

Going into the test I had my heart pumping out of my chest (drinking coffee a few hours before didn’t help one bit). I was beyond nervous despite the fact I feel like I studied a lot, but for that reason alone I didn’t want to fail. Spending countless nights staying up till 6am studying, I truly didn’t want to keep at that. 😭

My main study resources, like many, were:

• Professor Messor’s full playlist
• Dion’s Practice Exam Set 1 (Scores:
#1: 76%
#2: 71%
#3: 75%
#4: 84%
#5: 78%
#6: 82%) I didn’t think retaking would actually help since it was more memory than anything.
• Various online practice exams I found.
• AI for review and clarification.

And about 300+ custom made flash cards of acronyms and concepts that I would review on incorrect questions on said practice exams. I didn’t make a flash card for all 300+ acronyms (maybe a little over half) on the comptia objectives, but that was fine for me. Pretty time consuming, but I reviewed them once a day.

Despite being, imo, a little over prepared, I truly didn’t feel prepared since I would occasionally get questions wrong on random practice exams. I would also feel overwhelmed since i’d see many people reddit passing by somewhat thin margins, even though they’d probably have A+ and Network+ under their belt. So I’d think, “sh*t, what chance do I have”.

All in all, it was a humbling experience and the MCQ were decently easy given I was prepared with tricky word salads (from Dion’s exams). There was only like 3 acronyms I wish I probably knew, but that goes to show to study as much acronyms. I think knowing the common ports helped, but knowing some more would’ve definitely helped more.

PBQ’s weren’t the worst, understood maybe 2/3 of them with pretty good confidence. Last one was pretty tricky.

I wanna thank everyone else that posts their passing scores, stories, and engages in this subreddit. It did help, even if at times it was a little nerve wracking lol.