i’m going to take my cts exam this week and find it increasing frustrating how poorly written this exam is. not only is the majority of the content in the textbook not reflected in the practice questions, but some of these questions are just straight up asinine. i’ve attached my favorite example below that i’m sure you all are familiar with because this is one of the only practice exams you can take beforehand.

i tutored the ACT/SAT for half a decade and so i feel particularly inclined to cite how poorly this exam is setup in terms of feasibility of studying, readability of questions, and overarching consistency. that is of course denying the most obvious glaring weakness of the exam which is that it is so unrelated to field work, is a barrier for entry into the field because of its prohibitive cost, and is dumb.

 i’m taking the cts exam with the intention of taking the cts-I exam since employers in my area seem to value that exam. i got a 77% on the practice exam for cts and ive been studying my ass off with 400+ notecards derived from the textbook. HOWEVER i’m finding it increasingly more difficult to motivate myself to study when i find practice questions referencing shit i’ve never seen before like fucking BTUs (british thermal units obviously cause that comes up a lot in AV work ???) and other random jargon pulled from their assholes up at avixa. the exam price is several days work for me and i’m so afraid im going to fail it purely bc it’s just such a terribly written exam. i feel so powerless which is not how i should feel in regards to preparing for an exam. how am i suppose to succeed when this organization fails to give decent and consistent standards and provides little to no studying resources?

so i guess in summary — it’s criminal this exam is so expensive but means nothing but a paper i can shove in employers faces or in my case it will just unlock the next level of dante’s inferno for me to descend into. 

please wish me luck
i hope you found this rage cathartic 


raging about the cts exam