Failed my CompTIA A+ twice — what am I missing in my study approach?

by Sarah M. 13 views3 replies
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Sarah M.OP
May 27, 2026

So I've been at this for about four months now and I'm honestly starting to question whether I'm cut out for IT. Failed Core 1 the first time with a 620 (passing is 675), studied harder, failed again with a 648. I'm using a mix of Professor Messer's videos and a study guide I picked up on Amazon, but something clearly isn't clicking.

The thing is, I feel like I understand the material when I'm reading it. It's when I sit down for the actual exam that I freeze up on the weird edge-case questions about hardware compatibility and networking troubleshooting scenarios. A friend told me I should be doing way more IT practice test questions than I am — I'm doing maybe 50-100 per session but mostly reviewing the same ones.

Has anyone else hit this wall? I've got about six weeks before I can afford to pay for another attempt. What actually worked for you? Any exam tips for the scenario-based questions specifically would be huge right now.

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Marcus T.
May 28, 2026
I was in almost the exact same spot — failed twice before I passed on attempt three. The thing that finally clicked for me was stopping the passive reading and going full practice-test mode for the last three weeks. I mean 200+ questions a day, and more importantly, I'd review every single wrong answer until I understood WHY it was wrong, not just what the right answer was. Scenario questions especially, you have to train yourself to think like a troubleshooter, not just a memorizer.
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lisa.prep
May 28, 2026
Six weeks is plenty of time. Focus hard on networking fundamentals and motherboard/CPU compatibility — those two areas alone probably account for a huge chunk of what's tripping you up on the scenario questions. You've got this.
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Marcus T.
May 28, 2026
Honestly your score improvement from 620 to 648 shows the studying IS working, you're just not there yet. Don't give up. One thing I'd add — make sure your study guide is current. CompTIA updated the exam objectives a while back and some older books still have outdated info on things like cloud virtualization and mobile device management. That caught me off guard. Also, timed practice exams changed everything for me, I was running out of time on the real thing.

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