Dear Group members, First I would like to thank all of you for providing the wonderful support in this

forum for CISA aspirants. Really the level of discussion helped me a lot in clearing my exam.Yes,I have cleared the CISA Exam Jun'07.Really It was a wonderful experience I felt right from the preparation till the time of getting my results. So far I have been in a promiscuous mode in this group by just listening the messages and discussions.I just changed to active mode after getting the results and thought of writing this mail to give an insight about the preparation of the Exam and the way to approach the question.Hope this would be useful for the future CISA aspirant. I have also cleared CISM exam on Jun'06 but I find CISA to be very tough in terms of preparation as well as answering the question.Being working in an IS Audit platform ,I definitely felt it was very tougher than CISM.This is my personal experience. Definitely we should appreciate ISACA for having such a wonderful certification and the Content Areas. Here comes the preparation which I have went through, this is not a thumb rule hence you can adopt your own strategy of preparation. 1. Mentally prepare yourself for the Exam and keep in back of your mind that youre going to take an internationally recognized certification which is going to enhance your career reputation and knowledge. 2. Book the Exam in advance to get avail of ISACA offers for early registration. 3. Stick to the Exam date, try not to reschedule the exam unless there is an emergency cause, Focus on your date.. 4. Form a study group accordingly, so that you can pace your preparation. 5. Buy CISA Review Manual and the CISA Q& A CD and the Supplement manual for Q & A. 6. Try to go through 2006 and 2007 CISA Q & A(You will get more than 1700 questions for review) 7. Plan a study chart, by allocating the chapters accordingly in an Excel-sheet for day wise preparation. Fix up the target like 20 pages everyday or weekly a chapter based on your working environment and other factors like time availability. My personal suggestion is to spend at least 1 hr per day and weekends up to 4-5 hrs, so that you can relax in revising the chapters and Q & A at later stage. 8. Take the sample Questions given in the Review manual at the end of chapter once you finish up the chapters also take the Q & A in the CD

immediately for that chapter. 9. Don't worry about your wrong answers and the score, my best advice and suggestion is to review the Explanation given for the answers irrespective of you chose right or wrong.Definietely this helps you to strengthen the concepts and the ISACA approach on the CISA exam. 10. Follow the above said procedure till you finish the CISA Review Manual. 11. Download the ISACA CISA Glossary from the site and read the terms given each by each. Understand the terms no need to memorize. I found most of the Glossary terms have relation with the Questions. 12. Now take a random selection of Questions from all the chapters and answer it. Take 50 once and increase the count subsequently. Because you will get tired of seeing more questions, so adopt by taking few questions then increase the count. 13. You can do the same with the CISA Q & A supplement book given by ISACA which have 100 questions as a sample test. 14. At this stage you will get an idea of the Questions and the context it was asked. 15. Now start making your plan for your 1st revision and read the CRM again and follow the same steps as mentioned above. At this point of time you have to carefully read the question and eliminate the distracters. Im sure definitely you will get a reasonable score than the previous time. 16. Once you completely revised the CRM and the Q& A of all the chapters, take a sample test of 200 Questions which is found in the CISA Supplement Q & A. Just simulate yourself as real CISA exam and goahead..Try to keep up the timing.. 17. Timing Allocation and target :ex:( Duration :9.00a.m-1.00pm ) 50 Questions-10.00am 100 Questions-11.00am 150 Questions-12.00pm 200 Questions-1.00pm 18.Now validate your answers against the key given in the Q & A. check your weak areas and identify how did you went wrong? 19.Retake the exam again and validate the results.You can select your test Questions alternatively from Q & A supplement book and from the ISACA 2007 Q& A CD . 20. I personally believe 2007 CD have lot of features like Personal Professor, category listing, restrictions etc.Please make use of

it. There are also many new questions found comparing to the 2006 CD. Finally on the exam day....... Be relaxed ..Try to close your books on the previous day itself...Just go through Glossary if time permits...Be focused and keep back of your mind that you are going to earn a worldwide recognition. Adopt the time strategy as mentioned above...stick to time and try to answer at one shot...postponed the question only if you have more doubt on answering. Definitely you can eliminate the distracters, but the tough guy is the other two. Think from an Auditor perspective and answer..Understand the context of the question. Very importantly shade your answers in the correct circle for the relevant question. You may make a mistake here..Be careful...Don't get overexcited of seeing a question which you have found already in the CD or Q & A supplement. The context of question will be a different even the choices too. So please read the question full and answer it.. Finally ,make use of this group and post your doubts and suggestions and the difficulties you are facing while preparation,I'll try my best to help you and I'm sure there are many senior members in this group who are doing excellent job in helping the future CISA aspirants.. Hope my insights on CISA preparation would help you in achieving the target.. Best of Luck to everyone... rgds Vijai.K , CISM,BS7799LI,CEH,CCSP(Ios),CCNP,CCNA