2017-05-23 14:07:00
One of my past colleagues reached out to me today, asking me this:
I'm still OSCP-wannaby, but probably it is too technical for me. I'm still not sure. Could you please share if a pre-exam training is worth its price or what is your practical - cutting of 'try harder' ;-) - advice to pass it?
I'll post my reply here, because I've been telling people this very thing for the past few weeks.
I've always thought OffSec's online PWK training to be well worth the money! $1150 gets you a huge PDF with all the course work, a few hours of videos and 90 days of lab access. It also includes your first exam attempt. For a training of this quality, that's really not a lot of money! You could even opt to pay even less, getting only 30/60 days of lab access.
The classroom variant is something else entirely though. It's a LOT more expensive, at roughly $6000. That's for a week's on-site training, including a CTF event on one night. You also get the same PDF and videos, the included exam, but only 30 days of lab access. For me, it was well worth it because it was five days of non-stop hacking in a room with 30 other students and two top-notch trainers.
Something that saved me time and money: during the classroom training you receive the two most important VMs, which you can use on your OWN laptop. Thanks to that, I didn't have to start my lab access until I'd finished >90% of my exercises. In the online PWK you use lab access to work on your exercises!
The course is always worth it before taking the exam: submitting a proper report of your coursework may net you 5 bonus points on the exam. Submitting a pen-test report for the labs may net you a further 5 bonus points. On a minimal passing score of 70, those 10 points can really help a lot!
So yeah. Definitely work through all the coursework to get into it and score points. Then play a lot in the labs, for both practice and more points. Then take the exam when your time's up. Always do the exam! Because if you fail your exam and then renew your labs, OffSec will include a "free" retake of your exam with the new lab time! Totally worth it! That way your "failed" exam because a recon mission that teaches you a lot!
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