The A+ exam

chopster

For those of you who have sat this exam , am thinking of taking this soon but don't understand the scoring system. As this will be self study/cramming and no one to ask thought i'd ask here

Anyway how is the exam scored ? I understand it's 80 multiple choice questions in 90 mins , but i don't actually know how it is scored . Is it a case of answering correctly 40 out of the 80 correctly for a pass or are the questions weighted somehow as i know you get scores in the hundreds. And what is the pass mark or percentage ?

Tia

gline

where u doing the exam? am interested in taking this but dont know how to go about it, can you pm me with some tips about books to get and where to take exam etc? thanks

srdb20

Visit the Thomson Prometric (http://www.prometric.com/Default.htm) website, I think they offer 3 or 4 testing centres in Dublin anyway.

You can sit the exam in:

Dorset college (http://www.dorset-college.ie)

Parnell street (Same place you do your drivers theory test)

Calax training on lower Mount Street (http://www.calyxtraining.ie/)

New Horizons testing centre (http://www.newhorizonsireland.com/)

For self study books i found the Sybex series pretty useful, im sure theres plenty out there though.

There cheap enough on amazon!

gline

thanks for the info man, just what i needed

CombatCow

Iv loads of printed test questions for the hardware and the OS exam i can send yah if yah like, gline


:v:
CC

srdb20

Ye ive got some test king stuff if you want!!!

gline

yeh guys any info is much appricitaed and will be put to good use, can u send me the stuff?
thanks

CombatCow

Sure, pm me you addy and i'll send it off tommorow


CC

gline

CombatCow wrote:

Sure, pm me you addy and i'll send it off tommorow


CC

pm sent

srdb20

Pm me your Email! I'll forward you on the info.

Best of luck in the exam!

feylya

Sorry for hijacking. Could you email me any A+ stuff you have too? I'm taking the exam soon hopefully.

srdb20

Just PM me your email ill try send it tonight!
If not ill send it tommorow morning!

chopster

er......thanks for the reply guys, but i'm stilll none the wiser.....

_CreeD_

Hmmm, a massive 5 seconds of searching brings up:
http://www.comptia.org/certification/a/glancebox.aspx : 515-Core, 505-OS

No offense mate but if you are using this to get into or validate an existing IT career be more prepared to find the information you need yourself. I'm not saying this to put you off asking for help, god knows we all need it sometimes, but if you aren't trying to exercise your own wits in getting the info. you need it doesn't bode well for your determination to actully study and pass the exam. You need to push yourself and effectively train yourself to data-mine efficiently, it's almost as important as the course content itself.
You won't find anywhere that accurately breaks down how much each question is worth as no certifcation body that I know of will actually release detail on the points they use. You can approximate but from what I've seen different questions carry different score-weight so it gets a bit moot.

Noooowwww. Being more constructive check out www.techexams.net . There are some great free technotes and the forums are a great resource for just about any major cert.

7aken

you have to sit the exam in two parts, the Hardware exam is scored from 100-900 with a pass mark of 505. i know, wierd scoring system. the second exam Operating systems is scored from 100-900 with a pass mark of 515. God knows what the percentages are cos as far as i know your not scored on every question, some questions have different points awarded aswell.

i have a lot of A+ study material such as videos from sybex, practice exam simulators and an exam cram book that im willing to part with if i can recover at least some of the cost. pm me if anyone interested

a good site for study material is www.learnthat.com

spartacus93

Apparently the book to get to pass is written by Michael Myers, he runs a company called Total Seminars that train people in the States. I got the book on Amazon and passed with flying colours, found it very interesting to read, he goes into good detail and uses nice analogies to get his point accross. (Did you know the CPU is really a man in a box with loads of light switches!)

Also, I sat the test in IACT, (www.iact.ie). Didn't take long to do at all.

the_syco

Goto http://www.mcmcse.com and do the A+ test a few times. The same Q's pop up.

chopster

As 7aken says it seems to be a weird scoring system , just thought there was some logic to it.Obviously some questions hold more weight than others.
I have googled high and low for the answer to this and as a result have amassed a good quantity of links but nowhere seems to be able to succinctly answer this.

the_syco

chopster wrote:

As 7aken says it seems to be a weird scoring system , just thought there was some logic to it.Obviously some questions hold more weight than others.

Yes, and they won't tell you which ones, nor will they tell you which ones you failed.

srdb20

Yes, and they won't tell you which ones, nor will they tell you which ones you failed.

At the end of the exam they will tell you whether or not you have failed, also they will give you a broad description on the topics that you didn't do so well on (e.g printers or something like that), i.e the ones you need to brush up on!

the_syco

srdb20 wrote:

At the end of the exam they will tell you whether or not you have failed, also they will give you a broad description on the topics that you didn't do so well on (e.g printers or something like that), i.e the ones you need to brush up on!

Do they? They didn't for me. Well I passed, but those who failed didn't mention them saying anything.

petes

I have these set of books for sale here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054879540

As someone else said I am trying to recoup some of the cost.

SolarNexus

Does anyone know if theres an advantage to getting the A+ certification in addition to a degree? I ask as the course I'm doing in uni covers a good deal of the A+ exam (leaving only the periphery of the subject matter to study) and was wondering if it would be any advantage to, in addition to getting my Bsc.H. (assuming I pass) sitting the A+ exam.

on a side note: maybe we should have a certification forum under computers&tech...

srdb20

I passed first time around and the sheet of paper they give you at the end saying whether you failed or passed, has some broad topic ranges on it like Printers and stuff like that.

Maybe its where you do the exam? I did mine in the testing centre in dorset college.

I have the say the best part though is the way they tell you as soon as you finish the exam, click finsh and it tells you whether or not you passed!

Its sweet!