Question-Handling Strategies

Based on exams the authors have taken, some interesting trends have become apparent. For those questions that take only a single answer, usually two or three of the answers will be obviously incorrect, and two of the answers will be possibleof course, only one can be correct. Unless the answer leaps out at you, begin the process of answering by eliminating those answers that are most obviously wrong. A word of caution: If the answer seems too obvious, reread the question to look for a trick. Often those are the ones you are most likely to get wrong.

Things to look for in obviously wrong answers include nonexistent methods of access control, incorrect vulnerability names , inconsistent matches between server types and protocols, and terminology you have never seen. If you have done your homework for an exam, no valid information should be completely new to you. In that case, unfamiliar or bizarre terminology most likely indicates a bogus answer.

As you work your way through the exam, budget your time by making sure you have completed one-quarter of the questions one-quarter of the way through the exam period and three-quarters of them three- quarters of the way through the exam. This ensures that you will have time to go through them all.

As mentioned earlier, you might consider marking the more wordy questions and the ones you are unsure of, answering only the questions you know the first time around. You can always come back to the more complex questions later. This allows you to go through all the questions. You can then review the ones you have marked .

Be cautious about changing your answers and second-guessing yourself. Many times the first selection is right and changing your answer may cause you to miss questions that were originally answered correctly.

If you are not finished when 95% of the time has elapsed, use the last few minutes to guess your way through the remaining questions. Remember that guessing is potentially more valuable than not answering, because blank answers are always wrong, but a guess may turn out to be right. If you don't have a clue about any of the remaining questions, pick answers at random, or choose all A's, B's, and so on. The important thing is to submit an exam for scoring that has an answer for every question.