Recently, development of computerized testing in Indonesia is quiet promising for the future. Many government institutions used the technology for recruitment. Starting from Indonesian Army acknowledged the benefits of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) over conventional test administration, ones of the issues of selection the first item have taken place of attention. Due to CAT’s basic philosophy, several methods can be used to select the first item such as educational level, ability estimation from item simulation, or other methods. In this case, the question is remains how apply the methods most effective in the context of constrained adaptive testing. This paper reviews such strategies that appeared in the relevant literature. The focus of this paper is on studies that have been conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of item selection strategies for dichotomous scoring. In this paper, also discusses the strength and weaknesses of each strategy group using examples from simulation studies. No new research is presented but rather a compendium of models is reviewed in term of learning in the newcomer context, a wide view of first item selection strategies.