Passed @ 100Q at 25 years old with < 5 years experience

Hi all! As I just passed (literally, 3 hours ago), and because I also read many posts here, I felt obligated to create an account just to post haha! This isn't your typical post about someone with 15+ years of experience and in their 40s. No, in fact I just turned 25 and I graduated from my master's in Cybersecurity last summer. This means that I currently have < 5 years of work experience and yet I passed at 100Q. In total, I studied from January 2026 until today, so 3 months, give or take. I want to discuss my approach and what I think of the exam.

TL;DR: The exam is hard and you must know the true meaning of (technical) terms, such as RTO, RPO, LEAP, EAP, etc. The “think like a manager”, in my opinion, is a bit overhyped but nevertheless good to keep in mind. The questions are often (very) long with information that is not directly necessary, testing you on whether you can filter out the unnecessary information.

What did I use to study?
First of all, I will list the study materials I used:

• Official Study Guide 10th edition
• Official Practice Questions book
• CISSP for Dummies, although only partly read
• Boson exams for practice questions/tests
• Wiley for practice questions/tests
• The usual Pete Zerger CISSP full-course video
• Andrew Ramdayal “50 CISSP Practice Questions. Master the CISSP Mindset” on YouTube
• Studygo (IMO really useful to drill terms and abbreviations and their meanings)

How did I study?
Basically, I started with reading the OSG. Although it is quite hard to read through, I feel like it gives you the basic/standard understanding of the concepts. When reading through the book, the abbreviations/terms I did not understand I then wrote in Studygo for me to create a list that I could supplement throughout the book. Once I read through the whole OSG, I started with the practice questions/tests from both the OSG as well as the practice questions book. This went okay, but I definitely agree with most people that these questions are too easy. I started with Boson exams, since my employer had a subscription ready for me to use. Once I started with these questions, it became clear that the OSG questions were too easy and that extra studying was needed.

Since my background is in cybersecurity, but my experience is still limited since I just graduated, several concepts were already clear to me. For example, I did not study a single thing of cryptography, since I followed 2 courses at my university that went way beyond the theory of CISSP. It really comes down to your current knowledge when you start studying for CISSP.

What about the exam?
So, the exam itself. If you read these posts about people saying they did not know whether they failed/succeeded at the end of the exam, I can 100% assure you I felt the same. During the exam, I did not feel confident I was going to pass. The questions on the exam are hard and the answers look similar overall. My tactic was to filter out answers I definitely knew were wrong, so that I was left with a 50/50, leaving me with 2 options to choose from. Once again, knowing the (technical) terms/abbreviations and what they actually represent makes the difference here. Upon reaching the 100th question, my exam stopped and the survey was presented. I was pretty confident that I had failed, since I did not have much self-confidence that I passed at 100Q already. But, after filling in the survey and getting my results from the counter, I read the first word saying “Congratulations!” and I felt extremely relieved.

Tips for you!
Now, I also read many posts about people passing the exam and providing tips. Generally, my tips are as follows:

• Know the terms. Know what they mean at the core, thus not only the full name but what they do and more importantly what they influence.
• I found the exam quite technical sometimes. The “think like a manager” was not really useful here. This is mostly the networking part, e.g. VPNs, subnetting/CIDR, etc.
• As you may already know from other posts, the terms BEST, FIRST, MOST are very common among questions. Try to understand why similar answers are incorrect when presented with a question with the above terms.

Overall, to pass the CISSP exam you don't need 20+ years of experience. Yes, I agree that it is useful in your learning journey, but speaking from my experience it is not necessary. I do think that you need to study thoroughly and not underestimate the exam. If you have any more questions feel free to ask them here, I will regularly check up to see other people's experiences!