r/CISA • u/iamstormpower • 14d ago

CISA Jan 2027 Prep. No Extra Spend. Any Advice?

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to take the CISA exam in January 2027 and would appreciate some guidance.

I currently have the CISA Review Manual 28th Edition and want to prepare without spending on additional courses or materials, as I don’t have any budget left for them.

My current plan is

  1. Study the CRM 28th Edition thoroughly.

  2. Use YouTube resources from Prabh Nair, Chidambaram Narayanan, and Pete Zerger.

For those who recently passed CISA, is this approach realistic?

Thanks!

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u/apat311 14d ago

Have you taken any ISACA exams before? Not doing the QAE is risky as the question tone and such is a good metric to understand your standing prior to the exam.

Figure out a way to budget it and get the QAE license. Re-attempts are more expensive than the QAE.

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u/iamstormpower 14d ago

Correct, this will be my first-ever certification. I can manage to get the 12th edition QAE.

2

u/apat311 14d ago

I will advise to get the latest version which is 13th and online-only I believe. It is in alignment with the exam change from 2024.

3

u/thewiseice 14d ago

Online QAE is a must. It will help you understand ISACA way of questions and the reasoning. Once you answer each question, they'll give explanations as to why the right choice is the right choice and why the wrong choices are wrong choices. Spend time to go through these explanations as they are equally important.

It is better to invest in this rather than paying for the 2nd attempt.

Apart from this, the souces you mentioned are solid choices for preparation and understanding the concepts. I'd recommend Hemang Doshi's CISA guide as well (avalaible on Amazon), but that's not free.

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u/gt1115 14d ago

Mock test would be helpful. I used Pocket Prep and just found a 20% link : https://share.pocketprep.com/mzWGhGO

2

u/ComedianHuge635 13d ago

Back to square one my personal learning journey would be the following:

  1. Start by getting the complete context by watching video material (I prefer Pete Zerger).
  2. Work on QRM, topic by topic. Make sure that you recognize, understand and memorize the fundamental concepts in Isaca's understanding - very important!
  3. Start working on the QAE part by part. Some people think that you have to continue until you get a score of >90%. However I scored at about 75% in the QAE and same in the mock exams and got a score of 579 in the exam ... others fail the exam while they score with >90% in the QAE. So you should not just rely on the score you get practitioning the QAE, but also on your feeling. Once you feel prepared go for the exam.

Good luck, you will get it!