What Most Candidates Get Wrong About This
You think you’re not ready for the CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) exam because you haven’t memorized every acronym or watched every video in the training course.
That’s backwards.
Being “ready” doesn’t mean perfect knowledge. It means you can walk into the testing center and pass. That’s the only metric that matters. Most candidates delay their exam attempt by months because they’re chasing a confidence level that never quite arrives. They keep taking practice tests, retaking them, watching more videos. The score stays 680–710. They’re stuck in preparation purgatory.
Here’s what actually happens: You reach a point of diminishing returns where more studying doesn’t move your score. You’ve hit the ceiling of what passive review can do. At that point, you either sit for the exam or you keep wasting time. There is no third option where you suddenly feel “totally ready.” That feeling is a myth.
The other mistake? Candidates treat the exam like a knowledge test when it’s a performance test. You’re not being judged on how much you know. You’re being judged on whether you can answer 90 questions in 90 minutes under pressure, with the passing score at 750/900 points.
The Specific Problem You’re Facing
Your practice test scores are hovering in the 650–720 range. Your official exam date is coming up (or you just got your score report and it says 672). You’re looking at your weak domain report and seeing gaps in network security, cryptography, or identity and access management. You’re wondering if you should reschedule.
Don’t. Not yet.
Here’s why: The gap between a 672 and a 750 is about 8–10 questions. Not 20. Not 50. On a 90-question exam, you need to flip maybe one domain from 70% correct to 80% correct. That’s moveable. That’s fixable in 2–3 weeks if you work smart.
The issue isn’t that you’re underprepared overall. The issue is that your preparation has been unfocused. You’ve been studying in broad strokes—going through chapters, watching lectures, taking full practice tests. Meanwhile, your weak domains stay weak because you keep studying everything equally.
Your score report probably shows something like this:
- Domain 1 (General Security Concepts): 78% ✓
- Domain 2 (Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Mitigations): 71% — close
- Domain 3 (Security Architecture): 64% — problem
- Domain 4 (Security Operations): 75% ✓
- Domain 5 (Security Program Management): 72% — close
- Domain 6 (Cryptography and PKI): 59% — critical problem
You don’t need to fix all of them. You need to fix the ones dragging you down.
A Step-By-Step Approach That Works
Step 1: Stop taking full-length practice tests.
Full tests feel productive. They’re not. You’re wasting time on domains you already understand. If you scored 78% on General Security Concepts, taking another full exam where 15 questions cover that domain is inefficient. You need targeted drilling.
Step 2: Isolate your bottom two domains.
Look at your score report. Find the two domains where you scored lowest. Those are your leverage points. If cryptography is 59% and security architecture is 64%, those are your only focus for the next two weeks. Everything else is a distraction.
Step 3: Do domain-specific question sets only.
Use your study materials (Messer’s videos, Dion’s practice exams, Kaplan, whatever you’re using) and filter for questions from those two domains only. Not chapters. Not videos. Questions. Answer 20–30 questions per domain per day. Time yourself to 1 minute per question, just like the real exam.
Step 4: Analyze wrong answers differently.
When you miss a question, don’t just read the explanation and move on. Ask:
- Did I not know the concept?
- Did I know it but misread the question?
- Did I know it but second-guessed myself?
These require different fixes. If it’s concept knowledge, you need to study that specific topic (e.g., “difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption”). If it’s misreading, slow down on exam day. If it’s self-doubt, note it and come back to similar questions.
Step 5: Create a cheat sheet for each weak domain.
For cryptography, write down on a single page: what AES does, what RSA does, what hashing does, the difference between encryption and hashing, how PKI works, and certificate pinning. One page. Look at it every morning. You’re not memorizing a textbook. You’re cementing the core concepts that exam questions actually test.
Step 6: Take one domain-specific mini-test three days before exam day.
20–30 questions from your weak domains. This isn’t a full exam. It’s a confidence check. If you’re hitting 75%+ on your weak domains in isolation, you’re ready.
What To Focus On (And What To Skip)
Focus on:
- The 10–15 core concepts within your weak domains. For cryptography: symmetric vs. asymmetric, hashing, PKI, certificates. For access control: RBAC vs. ABAC vs. DAC. These repeat constantly.
- Real exam-style questions (multiple-choice, single answer). Not flashcards. Not videos.
- Your mistakes. Wrong answers teach you more than right ones.
- Time management. You have 1 minute per question. If you’re taking 2 minutes and running out of time on practice tests, that’s your real problem, not knowledge gaps.
Skip:
- Advanced topics you’ve never seen on practice tests. If you haven’t encountered hardware security modules in your last 200 practice questions, they’re not your blocking issue.
- Multiple-choice review sites and discussion forums. Other people’s confusion is not your studying.
- Memorizing commands, screenshots, or obscure tools. The exam tests concepts, not trivia.
- Retaking your entire practice exam suite. You’ll see the same questions, inflate your confidence, and waste time.
Your Next Move
Do this today:
- Pull your latest exam score report or your most recent practice test breakdown.
- Identify your lowest two domains (the ones where you scored 65% or below).
- Go into your study platform and create a question set from only those two domains.
- Answer 25 questions from those domains today, untimed first, then review. Then answer another 25 timed to 1 minute each.
- Count how many you got right. You’re looking for 70%+ to be in striking distance of 750.
If you hit 70%+ on those domain-specific questions by the end of this week, book your exam for 10 days out. You are ready. Stop studying and go take it.
If you’re still hitting 60% or lower on those questions, you have a genuine knowledge gap. At that point, you pivot: deep dive into the specific topics you’re missing (watch the Messer video on PKI, go through the Kaplan chapter on threat modeling). But most of you won’t need to. Most of you are one week of focused drilling away from 750.
Stop waiting to feel ready. Ready is a score of 750. Get there.