I recently took the IT Passport Examination.
The IT Passport Examination has been gaining recognition lately, but what kind of certification is it, and how difficult is it?
Here I’ll explain based on my own experience.
First, to summarize:
The IT Passport Examination is a proficiency test covering knowledge of IT.
Study time is roughly 30 hours. Even at the very least, more than 10 hours!
To begin with, the IT Passport is a national certification, and it is a qualification demonstrating that you have basic knowledge of IT and business management in general.
So it isn’t a license; to me it felt more like a proficiency test.
The content, too, is less about programming and more about IT technology along with comprehensive knowledge related to corporate management strategy and business administration.
The benefits of obtaining this certification include:
・It gives you a selling point when job hunting
・It proves that you have knowledge of IT
The people I’d recommend it to are mainly university students and new employees.
If you’re anxious about job hunting, why not try earning this certification?
Next, about the exam itself.
Having taken it, I felt the difficulty was about the same as when I got my Class 4 amateur radio license.
Honestly, it was harder than I expected.
I think about 30 hours of study will reliably get you a pass.
In my own case it was around 8 hours, and it felt like I barely scraped by.
The content is relatively easy to grasp and many of the topics are familiar, but the actual terminology is very hard to memorize—there are tons of three-letter acronyms and complicated terms.
As a study strategy for passing in the shortest time: never try to get a perfect score.
Aim for just above the 600-point passing mark (out of 1000).
The reason is that the exam will always include questions on material you haven’t studied.
There are also plenty of questions that are hard to understand.
Past exams are published on the official website, so if you work through the last few years’ worth you’ll see what I mean:
“I never studied this!” “This is way too hard!”
You’ll probably run into surprisingly many questions like that.
When you hit a question you don’t understand, many people want to fully master it or be able to solve it, but if you want to pass in the shortest time, just accept it for what it is and move on.
The alphabet acronyms are hard to remember too, but rather than memorizing the meaning of each term perfectly like a dictionary, narrow it down to keywords and aim for a rough, general recall.
Some may argue that this isn’t good enough for a certification, but personally I don’t think you need to memorize terms like a dictionary at all.
What matters is that when you actually encounter the term, you have a rough sense of what it means and know that such a concept exists.
Remember things roughly! That’s the shortest route to passing.
My recommended study method:
- Read a study guide once from cover to cover (read to the end even if you don’t understand it)
- Work through past exams from about four years ago up to the present
- Use the study guide to understand the questions you got wrong or didn’t know (if it’s not in the guide, just move on)
- Jot down the terms you keep getting wrong along with their meanings, and review the list right before the exam
The key to beating this exam is working through past papers!
That’s all there is to it.
It isn’t a highly difficult certification.
With proper preparation, you can definitely pass.
Give it a try!
The IT Passport website is here
The book I used to study is below