Tips to Pass ISTQB Foundation Level Exam

Megha Kainth, 19 May 2015

The ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualification Board) Foundation Level Exam is a globally recognised certification for software testing. This certification is appropriate for professionals to gain an understanding of the basics of software testing.

This certification involves sitting a one hour exam, consisting of 40 multiple choice questions. The pass mark is 65% which means you need to answer 26 out of 40 correctly. There is one point for each correct answer with no negative marking. This exam is not online so you need to answer it on paper.

ISTQB syllabus is available online and the questions comes from the syllabus. Exam questions are distributed across K (Knowledge) levels.

Number of questions per K levels:

All the six chapters get covered in the exam questions as per below:

Some tips to pass ISTQB foundation level exam:

• Read the ISTQB syllabus carefully
• Get familiar with terms in the glossary
• Read the book: Foundation of Software Testing by Erik van Veenendaal, Isabel Evans and Rex Black
• Understand the concept of testing principles, software life cycle and different techniques of testing
• Solve the questions at the end of each chapter in book and also attempt the sample exam questions
• Practice mock exams online
• Solve statement coverage and decision coverage questions
• Understand the concept of state transition testing
• There will be some distractors in the answers such as "much" and "most" so my advice is to carefully read the question and all the options before answering it.

Good luck for your exam!