TOPIC: We're increasing the PMP Exam Time in Simulator from 230 to 250 mins

In December of 2020, the Project Management Institute (PMI) changed the structure of the PMP exam by adding two breaks as follows:
- Answer 60 questions
- Optional 10-minute break
- Answer 60 questions
- Optional 10-minute break
- Answer 60 questions
- Exam End

We are currently analyzing this change and will decide on the best course of action for adding this new feature to The PMP Exam Simulator. In the meantime, while we perform this analysis and review, we will implement the following workaround:
(1) On Thursday, February 04 at around 2pm PST, we will increase the time allotted for PMP Exam 1, PMP Exam 2, PMP Exam 3, and PMP Exam 4 from 230 minutes to 250 minutes (*).
(2) Each time you start one of these 4 exams, a message is displayed encouraging you to take a 10-minute break after answering 60 and 120 questions.
(3) Time management of these two breaks is 100% done by the exam taker. The simulator does not provide any automated support.

Here is how this would work when you take an exam:
- You start PMP Exam 1
- A message is displayed reminding you to take a break after 60 and 120 questions
- The exam countdown time begins at 250 minutes (*)
- The rest is up to you. You have to remember yourself to take a 10-minute break after 60 and 120 questions. The simulator will not remind you.

This means that in the simulator (unlike on the real PMP exam) any break time you do not use to actually take a break is available to you to answer the questions. However, we do not recommend this approach. Instead, we recommend that you schedule and take two full 10-minute breaks.

Please let me know if you have any questions by replying to this message in our forum


(*) The total time will actually be 252 minutes and is due to a rounding difference in the simulator software.

Thank you but please is the 10min break inclusive of your total duration for exams?

Dorothy

On the real PMP exam, you have 230 minutes to answer 180 questions.

The two 10-minute breaks are outside of this and do not count against your exam time.

Hello everyone,

The duration of the PMP exams in the Simulator has been updated from 230 to 252 minutes as communicated in this post:
www.project-management-prepcast.com/kune...30-to-250-mins#26238

We hope you find the PMP Exam Simulator an effective and useful tool for your exam preparation. Best of luck, and thank you for being our customers!

Thank you , Just can you please advise how i can stop the time during the exam to take the break
Shall i push on the timiig tap

Hello Ehab,

You cannot stop the timer. That's the whole idea of having 250 minutes (252 to be exact) for the exam AND the two 10-minute breaks. You should manage your time as if you were taking the real exam. In other words, after you answer 60 questions, take your first 10-min break. Then answer 60 more questions and take your second 10-min break. After that, you answer the remaining 60 questions and finish the exam.

I hope this clarifies.

if we do not take break after 60 questions, break time is added to the exam time or not

Hello Murali,

Yes, in the simulator, if you do not take the breaks, you have more time to answer questions. However, we do NOT recommend taking this approach as you may get used to having more time per question on average, and when you take the real exam, you may run out of time.

If I do not take these two scheduled breaks of 10-10 minutes in real PMP exam, will those extra 20 mins be added to my 230 minutes allotted to answer 180 questions (in real PMP exam)?

Are these breaks are mandatory to take?

Hello Shikha,

The answers to both of your questions are NO.

For more details, please watch the video from the live Q&A session that Cornelius hosted on Feb 15, 2021. Jump to the timestamp at 47:00, where Cornelius provides a very extensive explanation about the breaks.
The title of the video is: Lessons Learned from the 2021 PMP® Exam
The URL to the video is:

I hope this helps.

Thank you

So I am assuming that on the real exam the clock starts at 250 and never stops.
Once we finish replying to the first set of 60 questions, it will advise us to have a 10min break but the clock keeps going down.
If we assign a 75 min period to reply to 60 questions (average 1min and 25sec per question) and stick to that pace, we should reach the first break when the clock marks 175.
We then stop for 10 minutes and resume the exam when the clock shows 165.
Maintaining the pace, we should finish the second set of 60 questions when the clock marks 90.
We then pause for 10 min again and resume the exam for the last set of 60 questions when the clock shows 80.
Given that we cannot have any notes, we should memorize that we need to reach the end of the first set of 60 questions at 175 and the second and 90.
Is this correct?

Hello,
I have just gotten access to my free 7 day trial but when I click on the PMP 1 Test it shows me only 23 questions? How do I access the full length exam?

I took all the breaks allocated and still completed the exam with still 28 minutes left. It all depends on how well one has prepared for the exam and I did not even mark any questions for reviews.

Cheers,

Emmanuel

Is taking the break time bound? We are here talking about taking break after every 60 questions. What is the ideal time that one should spend on each batch of 60 questions.

Hello,
Your explanation is somehow correct, but I think the real PMP exam starts at 230. When the question 60 is answered (it is supposed to take 75 min exactly), the time is stopped at 155 min. whether you take advantage of 10 min or not, when you start the exam again the monitor show you the question 61 and the total remaining time is 155 min.
Again, when the question 120 is answered (it is supposed to take 75 min exactly), the time is stopped at 80 min, in 10 min, the exam starts in question 121 and the total remaining time is 80 min.

Since this is a practice platform, I hope you can add a pause button/feature to the Exam simulator, in case we'd like to solve it and we got busy for any reason we don't lose all the data.

How to stop the exam to take 10 min break after 60 questions? Click "END EXAM" or Close the browser? It is not clear from above instructions.

Thank you very much Sir.

Having taken the exam in a test centre recently (January 2023), I'd just like to add some clarification on timing for anyone who is preparing to sit the PMP exam soon. I do not know what, if anything, differs when taking the online-proctored exam.

In the real exam, after the intro and tutorial, the countdown timer in the top right-hand corner of your screen starts at 230:00. After you have gone through, but not necessarily answered, the first 60 questions, there is an on-screen prompt indicating that a break is programmed before question 61 and reminding you to review your questions. Using the Review screen, you can look through a vertical list of the 60 questions which clearly shows if any are Incomplete (i.e. not answered), Flagged for Review (if you flagged any), or both. Returning to any question is quick and easy, as is filtering the list by Flagged and/or Incomplete. When you are happy with your answers, you have to press End Review.

If I recall correctly, this brings you directly to your break screen, although there might have been an 'Are you sure Y/N?' dialogue box in between.
On the break screen, a different timer counts down from 10:00. In the background, the question timer is effectively paused until the break timer reaches 00:00, or if the candidate chooses to end the break early. If you return before the 10 minutes are up, you can interrupt the break at any time and start on question 61.

Assuming you want to make the most of the break, it's a good idea to leave the exam room straightaway. Before anything else, check the time on a real clock -- since you have no devices or watch on your person -- so that you have a good idea of when your break will end. It's funny what exam stress does to people's perception of time. For some people it becomes heightened and they have a great sense of how many minutes and seconds are remaining. For others, the pressure causes them to become less clear-headed and to gauge time poorly.
To be clear, there is no exam advantage to be had in cutting short the break time. Take care of your physical needs, move about a bit, have something to drink and/or eat from your locker if you know this will help you.

Before the 10 minutes of break time end, get back to your station. At my test centre, the supervisor had to accompany each person physically and unlock their exam station with a login and password. At that point, the candidate can restart the question-taking process by clicking on a Resume button. If you still have, say, two minutes of break left and want to wait a little longer, you can do so. The break timer is still visible. When you do click Resume, question 61 appears and the main exam timer restarts from exactly where you left it before the break.
The same process occurs after you have gone through question 120.

At the end, the main timer counts down to zero and cuts access to the questions, unless you have already pressed End Review yourself before that point, ending the exam. There is no scoring advantage whatsoever to finishing earlier, so use all the time that you need to be sure you're happy with your answers. If you're a speed demon and are fully satisfied with all of your answers with 30 minutes left to go, feel free to end the review and thus the exam.

Everyone operates differently in the exam. I had classmates who finished their blocks of 60 questions very rapidly and had acres of surplus time. Others used up every second available. Some people notice that they become heavily fatigued over the course of the 180 questions (eyes blurring, ability to concentrate diminishing), while others are like endurance athletes and maintain similar levels throughout. If you're used to spending long periods working at a screen, you'll probably be more comfortable at the end than someone who isn't. The great value of taking the PM PrepCast Exams in the Simulator is to test not only your ability to answer the questions, but also to see how you are affected physically by the experience. Practicing this part of exam technique can only aid you.

Once you know when during the day your real exam will taking place, I would strongly recommend taking your simulator exams at that same time of day. If your real exam starts at 2pm and you know that you're not usually at your best mentally in the afternoon, then practice starting the exam at 2pm, in as close to exam conditions as possible, to find the best strategy for performing as well as possible. Eat and drink like you would be able to before and during the exam, don't use any other timing devices other than the countdown timer on the screen during the question-answering blocks, and respect the 10-minute break maximums. If your life schedule is hectic, do still prioritize these practice exams. Tell the world you're incommunicado for at least 4 hours 10 minutes, put your devices on airplane mode, put up do not disturb signs, etc. Even one practice exam will give you a great amount of feedback on what to expect on exam day.

The only thing that you need to do differently when heading into the real exam when coming from the PM PrepCast Simulator Exams are your rough guides to progress on the timers.
I'm not used to counting down large periods of time in decimal sets of minutes. I know straightaway where I am with "2 hours 25 minutes left", not so much with "145 minutes left". If you're prone to using up more than the 1 minute-and-16.67 seconds that are available on average for a question and want to track your progress, it's good to have 'red line' guides for the end of each 60-question block to know that you're not behind schedule, assuming a near-constant question-taking rate. If you know that you slow down or speed up consistently during practice exams, it might be worth adapting your red line times to this phenomenon.

For the PrepCast exams, I used a limit of 174:00 after the first 60 questions, and then 88:00 after 120 questions. Don't forget that in this system, if you take a 10-minute break after reaching 174:00, when you come back, the timer is going to be at 164:00. By the way, during the PrepCast Exams, I also only allowed myself to review the 60 questions in the block I was completing, just like during the real exam, even though PrepCast does allow users to review any of the 180 questions at any time.
For the real exam, I had memorized just two numbers: I wanted to be at no lower than 154:00 after the first 60 questions, and no lower than 78:00 after the second block. I left myself slightly more time in the final block, as I knew I would likely be slower due to cumulated fatigue. This helped me and wasn't cumbersome. If you're great at memorizing figures, knowing your intermediate red lines might also be useful, but I found that that became excessive detail.

I hope that this helps some other people with their preparation.

Thank you people for nicely organizing the exam simulator. .

Thanks so much Dominic.
Much appreciate your detailed explanation.
The quick points:
a) So, the review feature of the questions is an "extra time". This means that this review doesn't count neither in the 10 minutes break and also do not take from the exam time, right?
b) We will have 230 minutes to respond the 180 questions, which is an average of 1 minute and 27 seconds per question. is it correct? I got somehow confused that the two slots of 10 minutes provided by PMI is included in the 230 minutes, but in fact, is is outside of the 230 minutes, is it correct? Of course, I got the point that we will not see 250 minutes but my point is, these 10 minutes are outside of the 230 min for the 180 questions, right?
Thanks a congrats for your PMP
Fabio

Hello Fabio,
Thank you for posting. I'll try to be clearer and more concise than in my original post:

a) When you use the Review function, the overall timer does continue to count down. During the two (maximum) 10-minute breaks, you do not have access to the questions, so you cannot use Review.
Review is an just aspect of the Pearson VUE exam software that allows you to filter the questions that you wish to go back to during the exam. I think it is fair to call their interface rather clunky, so the Review functionality is far better than having to advance or go back through every question in sequence.

b) Not quite. Don't forget that the 1.278 that we arrive at when dividing 230 by 180 needs to be converted into mins/seconds, which isn't decimal. That gives an average of only 1 minute and 16.7 seconds per question, not allowing for any review time. Therefore, it is a good idea to 'budget' for even less answering time per question so that you have some extra margin for the inevitable ones that require more, or that you will want to go back to.

My exam was over six months ago now and the memories are becoming hazy, but in my study group no one reached the end of the 230 minutes of answering time without having at least seen all of the questions and had the time to consider each one once. We had all done at least one practice exam with PrepCast's Simulator (most did three or more), so I'm convinced that that helped with our time management.

Yes, it is a little confusing when going between the PrepCast Exams and the Pearson VUE exam. Just bear in mind that in the real exam, you have:
- A first session, for questions 1-60
- A maximum of 10 minutes away from the questions
- The second session, for questions 61-120
- The second maximum of 10 minutes away from the questions
- The final session, for questions 121-180.

I hope this helps. All the best with your preparation!

Hi Dominic,

Thanks so much for your quick reply on that. Much appreciate it.

You have clarified all my points. I agree with you, it does not have time to review, specially if it is still counting gold time

Let me take this opportunity that you have already studied and passed. I can see here in the simulators that there is an option to add ITTO questions.

I have done some tests today and noticed that these ITTO questions are following the previous PMP format, where you need to know or even "memorize" the inputs and outputs of the group processes, otherwise you are not able to respond them well, apart from guess them.

Do you remember to have these ITTO questions /format to your exam?

I am trying to establish a good way to use these simulators here - I have the Deluxce one.

My fear is to lose time in something that will take too much of my time and energy and then I will be losing the opportunity to put it in the right content.

Thanks again for your help and sharing.
Fabio

Hi Fabio,
When preparing for my PMP certification, I took an in-person class led by a very experienced tutor who had guided numerous groups to success through using the PrepCast Questions and Exam Simulator as a principal tool. Part of our course fees included our individual PrepCast subscriptions. We were among the first of the groups that he led that used PMBOK7 (instead of PMBOK6) as the 'core' reference text. Our tutor told us during our first class together that the ITTO questions and Exam simulation would not be a great use of our limited time, and I don't think that anyone did them. We all passed the real exam first time.

As far as using the simulator, it's important to recognize that we all learn differently, so what worked for me won't necessarily work for others.
For me, I found that doing a few batches of 10-20 PrepCast questions every day in the two months leading up to the exam was the most helpful, eventually answering them all, and then doing one of the four practice exams each weekend in the final month. I did the practice questions untimed, in order to be able to read through all the answers/explanations. This was where I felt I consolidated my knowledge the most.
Then, having the practice of answering the exam simulator questions under time pressure helped the most with preparing for the exam process.

While I do think that any extra learning and knowledge can only be a good thing, if you don't have time to do the ITTO parts, don't be overly concerned. I have written elsewhere in these Forums about the balance and nature of the questions that I encountered in my exam, and I recall feeling that not having memorized the official process ITTOs didn't put me at a disadvantage. (I did have a general understanding of them from having read some other sources concerning the PMP process groups, so I think it's still a good idea to learn as much as possible.)

The bottom line (in my opinion)? Consistent learning across several weeks (at least) to establish solid knowledge and understanding, followed by focussed exam-taking preparation.

Thanks so much again, Dominic. Much appreciate!

Extremelly helpful insights again!

Your insights really helped me, as I am looking for a strategy to get the most out of this simulator.

I started yesterday and I much appreciated the explanations added to ALL the answers per each question (correct/incorrect ones). I am reading all of them very carefully (word by word).

I started with a batch of 60 questions, all timed, as I want to disciplined myself to respond in 1 min / 70 secs max. (I will do the test in English but this is not my first language).

While I enjoyed the first attempt, I felt that took loads of my time to read all the explanations of the answers carefully and I added some of that content in a separate file for my future reads. This took me loads of time to do yesterday.

That's why came to my mind to write to you again. I fully agree with you, I will reduce my batches, perhaps 20-30 max 40 per time. As I really want to spend time in the explanations and not to get too tired. Once I have done a lot of it, then, I will take one of the 4 hours exam practice without interruptions.

I got very curious now. In this training that you did. How was the dynamic/structure of the training? I mean, what you learned, which tools/material you used during the training but in-between the PrepCast when you went to pratice the 10-20 batches and then finally practice the Exam simulators of 4 hours?

Thanks again, much helpful!!!
Fabio

No worries, Fabio; I'm glad to help if I can. It sounds like you've got things well under control and a clear idea of the challenge ahead. That's half the battle.

I'll try to expand on the points you've raised and fill in some other blanks that I think may be useful. (I hope we're not going too far off-topic in this thread, moderators. )

After having tried my first batch of 10 timed PrepCast practice questions back in mid-November 2022, I decided that the added time pressure was stopping me from getting the most from the explanations. I only did non-timed ones from then on.

I generally did groups of 10 or 20 questions in one go, simply due to other life constraints. Yes, I also found that reading -- and most importantly properly *understanding* -- all of the explanations took a long time, but it's really, really worth it in my opinion. It gets quicker as one becomes more familiar with the vocabulary and contexts.
Some days I would do as many as 50 practice questions in total, but never all in one session.

The in-person course that I took was with a local company specializing in training for professional certifications. It was designed to provide about 42 hours of classroom time, so a little more than the 35 hours of formal contact that PMI requires candidates to have had before they can apply to take the exam.
The group was limited to 12 candidates and we had class once a week. I live in a French-speaking region, so all of the training was in French. Having to learn terms and vocabulary in two languages takes longer but it also helped to reinforce my understanding and memorization.

Our classroom time was divided between PowerPoint presentations of salient points, distilled from years of the company's teaching for the PMP exam, and then equally-useful sessions where we could bring problems/grey areas to the group and clarify them together with the tutor. He did lots of coaching on how to approach the question styles of PMI. We also spent a good chunk of time towards the second half of the course on how to draft and submit applications in order to have our professional experience validated by PMI. (It takes longer than we all expected to write and rewrite these texts.)

On the first day, the whole group was tentatively registered at an exam centre for a date that was about one month after the end of the course. The week before the end of the course, we had all had to submit our applications to PMI and hopefully be accepted, so that we could take the exam together on the target date.

From the very first class, the tutor underlined the point that working through questions in PrepCast between classes would be of the utmost importance and that we couldn't leave it all until the last weeks/days before the exam. He asked us to aim for 200 questions per week (!), on top of reading large sections of the PMBOK7 and the Agile Practice Guide.
About five weeks before the PMP exam date, he then asked everyone to have done the first PrepCast Simulator exam, in exam conditions at home, even if we didn't feel ready, and to talk through our experiences in the next class. Most people in the class didn't pass the first one, but he reassured the group that that was usually the case. The company had an excellent success rate for the PMP, so this approach seems to work. After that, he suggested that we continue taking the remaining Simulator exams regularly, around once a week, which I did.

If I recall correctly, I finished doing all of the available practice questions (except the ITTO ones) in the same week that I took the third practice exam, so I was still doing practice questions alongside the Simulator exams. They aren't really any different, you just have the added complication of the 250-minute countdown timer for the exams and the need for greater physical and mental endurance!
Reading through all of the answers/explanations after each practice exam took up my available study time for three or four days following each one. That was even more tiring than taking the exams, but very useful.

By that point, I had built up copious notes (using OneNote) and made hundreds of digital flashcards (using the free version of Quizlet), allowing me to study anywhere that I had access to an internet-connected device. I found studying/learning the complete glossaries of the two PMI texts that I mentioned earlier was an excellent return on investment of my time, helping me to understand the PrepCast answer explanations faster. YouTube is also a great source of content for PMP preparation.

When I wasn't using the above, the rest of my studying was looking things up online in order to better understand why I had got certain questions wrong, trying to find further supporting explanations and to expand on the often limited information in the PMBOK or the Agile Practice Guide. Too often, in those texts there will only be a line or a paragraph about an obscure subject which is mentioned in a practice or exam question's explanation. I lost count of the times that I went down internet rabbit holes looking these up, but the active learning is of great value!

Anyway, I've rambled on enough. Keep up the hard work. There will be days when you don't have the time or energy, but try as much as you can to add to your practice and knowledge each day, even if it's just a single batch of 10 questions. It's all worth it.

Thanks so much, Dominic.

I have missed somehow your last reply!

Thanks again

if I don't want to take a break and keep continue with exam, my question is when can I review unanswered /forgotten/ flagged questions? at the end of the exam?

is there any alert message pop up?

The bottom line here is I know there will be lengthy question which I need more time to answer them at the end of the exam!

thanks,

Hi Habib,
Is your question about the real PMP exam or the PrepCast Simulator? (They differ slightly on these points.)

If it's about the real PMP exam, you can only review the questions of the sixty-question section that you have just done, i.e. at the end of questions 1-60, at the end of 61-120, and at the end of 121-180. Note that you cannot go back and re-review a previous section's questions once you have confirmed that you are ready to move to the next section and/or confirmed that you have completed the exam having reviewed the last section.

Yes, an alert pops up at the appropriate time to remind you.

As for not wanting to take a break, I'm curious: why would you choose or want this?
You gain no extra time to answer questions by not taking the break and the sole advantage in cutting the breaks is to finish the exam earlier than the other candidates.
It is quite a demanding exam experience, in particular due to the time pressure. I haven't met anyone who hasn't appreciated having (just) ten minutes between the sections in which to take a moment away from the screen.

If I continue the exam without a break, can I skip some questions to be revisited later?

Hello Effiong,
If you're asking about the real PMP exam, it's not an "either or" situation. Although there is an important caveat.

You can always skip questions to be revisited later, whether you use the breaks or not. However, do remember that the exam questions are split up into three 60-question sections. Candidates are thus forced to seal off the first 60 questions before embarking on question number 61. In this way, you can only revisit the 60 questions in the section that you are currently working on. So, it's not like you have the possibility to finish off question number 180 and then go back and look at number 50 again, for example.

Do also bear in mind that not using the breaks provides zero extra time to answer questions. You simply finish the whole exam earlier than other people who started at the same time as you. In that context, I don't see any advantage to not making full use of the breaks.

Dominic has it correct: 60 questions (can review) --> BREAK --> 60 questions (can review, but can't review first 60!)

Although I agree with Dominic and Harry, I would add that skipping a question just adds some additional stress during the exam. I mean, you are not just keeping in mind the amount of time for the remaining questions, but also that in the remaining time you need to allocate time to return to all the skipped questions.