New record! Corydon's IT certification cheat sheets sold like hot cakes — helped over 10K+ students pass the exam on the 1st attempt!

Corydon’s exam cheat sheets have become the fastest-moving product the publisher has released, with more than 10,000 candidates reporting a first-attempt pass after using one as their final revision pass.

Each sheet compresses an entire exam blueprint onto a single printable page, weighted by domain so revision time follows the marks. They are delivered as electronic PDFs, print cleanly on one sheet of A4 or Letter, and are free to re-download whenever a vendor updates the objectives.

The range

• CompTIA A+ Core 1 — all five 220-1201 domains
• CompTIA A+ Core 2 — all four 220-1202 domains
• CompTIA PenTest+ — the full PT0-003 kill chain, tools and flags
• CISSP — all eight (ISC)² domains
• General reference sheets: OWASP Top 10, AWS IAM permissions, Python data tricks

Certification sheets are $9.99 and general reference sheets are $5.99. Both sit alongside the study guides in the Corydon store, and subscribers get the full set included.

“One sheet. All essentials. Exam ready. That was the brief, and we threw out anything that did not earn its place on the page.”

— Corydon Publications, editorial team

Why a single page

A cheat sheet is a deliberately constrained format, and the constraint is the point. Given unlimited space, a revision aid drifts back towards being a textbook, and a textbook is precisely what a candidate does not want the night before an exam. Restricting each sheet to one printable page forces every line to compete for its place, and what survives is the material that actually moves the pass mark.

Each sheet is laid out by exam domain, weighted to match the published objective percentages. A candidate can see at a glance that hardware and network troubleshooting carry more marks than virtualisation, and can allocate the last few days of revision accordingly instead of spreading attention evenly across topics that are not evenly rewarded.

Built to be used, not admired

The sheets are delivered as electronic PDFs designed to print cleanly on a single sheet of A4 or Letter without the reader having to fight page setup. They are meant to be printed, folded, carried, annotated and worn out. Readers pin them above a desk, tape them inside a locker, or keep a copy in a bag for the queue outside the test centre.

Because certification vendors revise objectives on their own schedule, every sheet can be re-downloaded free whenever the underlying exam changes. A candidate who bought a sheet a year ago is not stuck revising against a retired blueprint, and does not have to pay twice to discover that.

The current range

Certification sheets cover CompTIA A+ Core 1 and Core 2, CompTIA PenTest+ and CISSP, and are priced at $9.99. General reference sheets — OWASP Top 10, AWS IAM permissions and Python data tricks — are $5.99. All of them are included at no extra cost for full-library subscribers, and each certification sheet is designed to sit alongside the corresponding Corydon study guide rather than replace it.

What the number represents

The 10,000 figure counts candidates who reported a first-attempt pass having used a Corydon sheet as part of their revision. It is self-reported rather than audited, and no revision aid passes an exam on a candidate’s behalf. What the sheets do is make the last pass over the material efficient, and for a great many readers that has been the difference between walking in hopeful and walking in ready.

What actually goes on the page

Each sheet begins as a full extraction of the exam blueprint and is then cut down until it fits. That process is where the editorial judgement lives. Anything a candidate can reason out from first principles comes off; anything that has to be memorised stays. Port numbers, command flags, protocol behaviours, domain weightings and the handful of definitions that examiners phrase precisely — those survive.

Layout follows the same discipline. Related items sit together so the eye can find them under pressure, headings match the vocabulary used in the official objectives so nothing has to be mentally translated in the exam room, and the domain percentages appear alongside each block so a candidate can see at a glance where the marks actually are.

How readers use them

The dominant pattern is as a final pass rather than a primary resource. A candidate works through the study guide, does the labs, sits practice exams, and then in the last few days switches to the sheet — reading it repeatedly until the gaps stop appearing. Used that way it functions as a self-test: anything on the page that does not immediately make sense is a topic that needs one more visit to the book.

A second pattern has emerged among people already working in the field. Engineers who do not need the certification keep the general reference sheets pinned near their desk purely as working aids — the AWS IAM permissions map and the OWASP Top 10 sheet in particular get used long after any exam is over.

Kept current, free of charge

Certification vendors revise objectives on their own schedule, and a revision aid that silently goes stale is worse than none at all. Every Corydon sheet can be re-downloaded free whenever the underlying exam changes, so a candidate who bought one a year ago is not quietly revising against a retired blueprint. That policy applies for as long as the sheet remains in the catalogue.