How I Passed CompTIA’s A+ in 1 Month
For those of you who don’t know (which if you’re here reading this you likely already do know..), the CompTIA A+ is considered the first and most foundational certification in IT.
In all honesty, this exam was actually quite fun to study for and offered a lot of cool knowledge for those of you who, like me, geek out over tech. I was able to pass both exams with 1 month of studying and here’s how:
Resources used:
Professor Messer CompTIA A+ Course (YouTube)
Total Seminars (Mike Meyers – Udemy)
Jason Dion’s Practice Tests (Udemy)
Quizlet/Anki (User Choice)
CompTIA A+ Exam Objectives (PDF)
Using these resources honestly makes studying a breeze and made me feel more than confident when it came to test time.
To best plot out your studying, I would highly recommend using Total Seminars program first. The video series is approximately 14 hours worth of content and, despite the fact that they don’t go in order for the exam objectives, it is highly interactive and entertaining which makes for a great introduction to the concepts and information required for the A+. If you watch these on 2x speed, these videos would likely take you about a week to get through assuming you can dedicate an hour a day to studying.
After you complete the Total Seminars series, it’s time for the nitty gritty studying: Professor Messer.
Professor Messer videos (found on YouTube) literally walks through each course objective one by one. The best way I found to use these videos to study (total runtime: 18.5 hours) is to play it at regular (maybe 1.5x speed) and have the exam objectives either printed out next to you, or pulled up on screen next to you. I then had Quizlet (flashcard application) pulled up in another window. As we went through exam objectives, I would make flashcards labeled in groups.
For this part of studying, I spent about an hour watching videos and then throughout the rest of my day I would just pop through flashcards on my phone. For me, the Professor Messer videos took about 2 weeks to get through and make all of my flashcards.
At this point, I scheduled my exam for a week out.
I then moved to using Jason Dion’s Practice Tests on Udemy. These practice tests were quite possibly the most useful items to help with really getting that passing score on the A+. The test questions were pretty spot on and were almost mirrored in the actual exam. Don’t get down on yourself either if you don’t pass them first try! I remember the first one I took I bombed.. take your time when you go through the review and really try to highlight the exam objectives covered by the question, read the explanations, and then head back to Professor Messer to review that particular question. After taking these exams for a week, re-studying topics, and re-taking the exams, I was ready to take the A+.
A word on PBQs: Definitely do some Googling on these before you take the exam. There are actually a bunch of YouTube videos that walk through mock PBQs. Also check reddit, lots of discussion on these. Personally, I thought the PBQs were the easiest part of the exam and, for me, focused on topics like setting up a WiFi network, cable/tool choice, and handling tickets for IT issues.
I really believe that crushing the A+ within a month is totally doable (I did it) and it would not be out of the realm of possibility to push a more aggressive timeline if you have the time to study.
Best of luck on your A+!
