Failed my first attempt with a 693 back in December, which was frustrating because I'd been studying for about six weeks. The problem was I was memorizing acronyms without understanding how the underlying concepts connected. PKI, identity management, and threat intelligence all bled together.
Second time around I spent 10 weeks, roughly 1.5 hours a day on weekdays and 4 hours on Saturdays. I focused almost entirely on domains where I scored under 75% on attempt one: implementation, operations and incident response. Professor Messer's notes were solid but I needed to actually practice applying them, not just watch videos.
The performance-based questions are what will trip you up if you're not ready. I did at least 40 simulated PBQs before the retake and my score jumped to 781. If you're hovering around 700 on practice exams, add another 2-3 weeks and drill PBQs hard.
One thing I wish I'd done earlier: Darril Gibson's book for context, then Jason Dion's question sets for drilling. That combo covers both conceptual depth and exam-style repetition.
693 to 781 is a real turnaround. The implementation domain is brutal because there's so much memorization on top of conceptual stuff. Subnetting, cipher suites, protocol ports — you kind of have to know them cold.
The PBQs came first for me, all five before any multiple choice. Don't spend more than 8-10 minutes per PBQ even if you're unsure — flag it and move on. I wasted 20 minutes on one and stressed myself out for the rest of the test.
How long did the actual exam feel? I've heard people finish in 45 minutes but I'm slow on multiple choice under pressure. Did the PBQs show up at the start or scattered throughout?
This mirrors my experience almost exactly. I passed on my first try but barely — 754 — and looking back I think I got lucky on the PBQs that day. The drag-and-drop firewall config one nearly broke me.
Update for anyone following this thread: I just hit 847 on a practice set last night, which honestly surprised me because two weeks ago I was still hovering in the 720s. The free sy0 601 architecture design questions helped a lot with the stuff I was weak on — I wasn't connecting implementation scenarios to the underlying architecture concepts, and those questions forced me to slow down and actually think it through instead of pattern-matching to answers.
I'm booked for the 22nd. Nervous but way more confident than I was before my first attempt. Good luck to everyone else who's still grinding through it.
The thing that clicked for me was stopping to ask "why is this wrong?" every single time I missed a practice question. It sounds obvious but I wasn't doing it. I'd just note the right answer and move on, which meant I kept making the same conceptual mistakes. Once I started writing out a sentence explaining why each wrong answer was wrong, not just what the right one was, the concepts started sticking in a completely different way.
For PKI specifically, I drilled it by asking why you'd reject a certificate, not just what certificates do. That forced me to understand the chain of trust instead of just reciting it. Same with threat intelligence — I'd pick wrong answers, then ask myself what scenario would actually make that answer correct. Sometimes the wrong answer is right in a different context, and knowing that distinction is what the exam is actually testing. If you're stuck, don't just review what you got right. Spend twice as long on what you got wrong.