My Background

I had been very busy during my studies for the CompTIA CTT+ Essentials exam (TK0-201). I had a 9-to-5 job as a software team lead and a part-time evening teaching job (teaching Unity game development) about 9 hours a week. I have a 4-year-old daughter too. Whew! You can imagine how tight was my schedule.

I decided to study for this certification because it was a requirement for becoming a Unity Certified Instructor. Why do I want to get that certification? Because I love teaching and having that cert helps me to become a better teacher and get more teaching opportunities.

Study Material

Apparently, the official study material for the CompTIA Essentials exam is “CompTIA CTT+ Certified Technical Trainer All-in-One Exam Guide“. I passed the exam by reading this book and free sample questions – about 20 – on the Comptia website. Nothing else.

I bought the Kindle edition of the book from Amazon and read it on my tablet. This allowed me to study the book while I was lying down on my bed after coming home from work feeling exhausted. The hardcopy edition is heavy and your hands get tired soon. You cannot lie down and read it.

While reading the book, I highlighted the important concepts and definitions and marked important pages. But generally, I was reading it lightly and quickly. At the end of each chapter, there is a quiz. Study that thoroughly and carefully. Every time I lied down to study, I started by reviewing the highlighted parts.

I spent between 12 to 16 hours on this book. These hours were spent during about 7 sessions of studying.

This book is very repetitive and a dry read. It can be easily condensed from 400 pages to 100 pages. Some of the ‘correct’ answers to the quiz questions seem to be arbitrary. Having said that, the book contains useful advice on how to deal with problematic students and issues in the classroom.
As I said, I used the kindle version of the book, and I was happy with its quality.

During the exam

I took the test on 2019/Aug/24. The exam had familiar terminology. The exam’s questions sound like the quizzes in the official book. However, comparing with other certification exams I’ve taken (AWS Architect, C#, Unity, LabVIEW, etc), this one was the vaguest and subjective one.

Exam results

I got the result immediately after the computer-based exam was finished. I passed the exam. My score was 725 out of 900 (80%). The passing score was 655 (73%).

Note: The exam center gave me a hard copy of my transcript after the exam but I never got its digital format (I simply got an email from CompTIA saying I passed). So you must keep this piece of paper (or better scan it). You will need the details on this transcript later on).

In the next post, I’ll explain how I passed the second exam – the video submission exam (EXAM TK0-202).