Top Tips on managing the last 7 days to your CISSP exam

With just 7 days to until your CISSP exam, ideally you should have covered the entire CISSP syllabus from the official ISC2 CISSP book. On top of that, if you’ve solved at least 1,500 CISSP practice questions, you’re on the right path. So, by now you'll know the areas where you need to brush up your knowledge, and what your strengths and weaknesses are.

However, if this isn’t the case, do you go ahead with the CISSP exam? If you are not meeting the above criteria, perhaps you should consider postponing your exam for the time being until you have completed more study time and aim for meeting these benchmarks. On the flip side, if you do meet the criteria, read on! Below are our Top Tips on managing those last 7 days until your CISSP exam.

7 days to go…

At this point you should still continue studying along your agreed study plan developed with your mentor. Ideally, focus more on revising your old practice questions, particularly those with wrong answers that were corrected rather than working on solving new questions. Speak to your mentor and get all your outstanding doubts and/or questions clarified and answered. By this time, make sure you have finished reading the CISSP revision material. If you do not have any revision material, please get in touch with us and we will share some revision material with you.

5 to 6 days to go…

Start de-prioritising your office work and focus only on CISSP revision. Revise all your personal CISSP notes and questions - it helps significantly if you can practice a full final exam-style CISSP exam. You will easily find CISSP practice exams as part of CISSP books or contact us.

3 to 4 days to go…

Keep going! Honestly, continue revising all your personal notes and questions including those where you made errors and have corrections. In addition, understand what you have learnt from the CISSP practice exam you did earlier in terms of managing time, concepts you are not clear with, and any silly mistakes you made.

1 to 2 days to go…

Firstly, take a deep breath and relax. Getting stressed and anxious about your exam will only be detrimental to you.

Over the next 2 days, focus on reading some of your keynotes and the summary points that are provided at the end of each domain from the ISC2 CISSP book. Also, review books you have incorporated into your study preparation. Nothing more than this is required at this stage. Ensure you have all your equipment ready to take with you to your exam, including refreshments, i.e. Hall/entry ticket, pencils, pens, calculator, dictionary, chocolates, muffins, bottled water, etc. Most of all, try to get a good night’s sleep in readiness for exam day.

It’s exam day!

Try to be as relaxed as possible and feel confident in what you have learnt. If there’s the possibility of getting stuck in traffic on your journey or parking may be an issue at your exam venue, take public transport. Aim to arrive at the exam hall at least 30 minutes prior to the start of your exam. Remember, aim to do your best, that’s all anyone can ask.

Good luck!

The author is a professional CISSP trainer within CMA’s training pool. He is CMA's CISSP/CISA/ISO 27001/SOX/Information Risk Management/SAP Cyber security trainer. He has an MBA (Finance), Computer Engineering, CISSP, CISA, ITIL (expert), COBIT (foundations), and SAP security qualifications.

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