A+ study hours: turn your real week into two exam dates that hold

"Pass A+ in two weeks" plans are written by experienced technicians. They collapse in the first week for everyone else, and the candidate blames himself. This guide starts from your calendar instead, and it plans both exams, not one.

How many hours does A+ really take?

CompTIA publishes figures for its own products. For each core, its V15 pages list Learn at 25 to 40 hours, Labs at 15 to 25 hours and Practice at 10 to 20 hours. This book therefore uses 60 to 90 hours per core, or 120 to 180 hours for A+, as a working assumption. Move towards the top of the range if IT is new to you.

Nobody can give you your own figure without a diagnostic. Take one practice test per core in your first week, and note which domains feel strange.

How should you split the hours?

Split each core's hours in proportion to its domain weights, then move hours towards your lowest-rated objectives. For a 140-hour plan with 70 hours per core, the starting split looks like this.

Which weekly track is yours?

Pick the track that matches your real weekly time, not your best week.

How do hours become dates?

Divide your total hours by your weekly hours, then add roughly one buffer week for every eight weeks of plan. At 140 hours:

Place your first exam at the end of the first core's hours, not the end of the whole plan. On the standard track that is about week 7 or 8. Rana, in the book, planned this way and sat Core 2 in week 8 and Core 1 in week 16.

What goes in each stage?

A+ rewards hands-on practice, so labs and questions deserve a large share of your hours. Run these four stages once for each core. For a 70-hour core the hours are shown in brackets.

• Stage A, foundation (about 10 per cent, 7 hours). Rate yourself on every objective, take a diagnostic practice test and set up your lab.
• Stage B, first coverage (about 45 per cent, 31 hours). Work through your course once, with a lab for each domain.
• Stage C, practice (about 30 per cent, 21 hours). Question sets by domain, performance-based practice and a review of every wrong answer.
• Stage D, simulation (about 15 per cent, 11 hours). Full timed practice exams and light revision.

Practice and simulation take almost half of each core. If your schedule slips, cut from Stage B's reading, not from Stage C's hands-on work.

What should your home lab look like?

Build a small lab from what you have: an old desktop or laptop, a spare drive and a home router. Take the computer apart and rebuild it. Install Windows and a Linux distribution in virtual machines. Set up a secure home Wi-Fi network. Practise the troubleshooting method on faults you create on purpose, and write each one in a log.

On the limited-time route, with six hours a week or less, choose one V15 course, one practice-test source and a home lab, and keep at least a quarter of every week for hands-on work.

How will you know you are ready for each core?

Readiness is a pattern, not a single score. Look for consistent results across two or three full practice exams for that core, no domain far behind the others and confidence with performance-based tasks. Book that core when the pattern holds. The cost and booking guide covers vouchers and retakes. Appendix B of CredenTrek For CompTIA A+ has the weekly plan template with a row for each core.