TOPIC: Exam Simulator

I have been using the PMP Prepcast Exam simulator which has been a great tool. After extensive studies (I've been at this on/off 12 months plus) I've scored mid 80's in 4 exams and 79 in another for a total of five 4 hour exams over the last 2-3 weeks. Every exam has often presented a different way of asking a question, and certainly made me think and go back to Prepcast/books/notes for study review (after the exam). Some questions were related to subject matter outside of Prepcast and any other book/resource I've used eg. WBS quality principles. Prepcast has been my anchor and feedback from questions etc has been excellent.

As a result of the above, I applied to PMI for the exam. My question is - based on my PMP Prepcast simulator results have I done enough to prepare myself. Should I consider taking a couple other exams outside of Prepcast like BrainBok or InSite or just continue focusing on weak areas.(ITTO's).

I trust Prepcast for my preparation but has anyone else a view on this or is it reasonable to just continue with PrepCast which seems to cover requirements.

I think gaining perspective from other simulators is helpful but be very careful which ones you rely on. During my pursuit of the PMP certification I came across many simulators that were just plain horrible and wrong.

A trick I've mentioned before is going through simulators, submitting the exam (without answering any question - most sites allow you to do that), and then going through the correct answers to make sure you agree with their explanation. If you don't agree, then that warrants some further digging into where the difference or gap lies.

Short answer, by all means try other simulators but be selective. If you're scoring very low in some areas though (<70% consistently) then I'd probably focus on those a bit more in addition to checking out some other simulators.

Thank you - that's good input. I'm not scoring less than 70% in any area and never in the same area because I continuously review. I wish it were one area - ITTO's is the one area where I should do better for thinking through the questions. Your comments are quite valid for exams (a lot of rubbish and misleading info out there) as I found this to be very true in at least one book with end of chapter exercises - so I stopped reading it and went back to RMH primarily.

I just need to stop changing some answers and/or over thinking others on the exam Onwards and upwards.

You know what they say, your first reaction is usually right Try not to change more than 10% of the answers that you flag for review. There are some questions that will jog your memory and you will legitimately revisit a flagged answer and know that your answer is wrong. Unless there's strong justification for changing an answer, don't do it. If you do change answer, keep it to a minimum.

ITTOs are a pain but the key is to understand them, not just memorize them.. You can also use mnemonics to remember some of them as I did and I'll be glad to share that spreadsheet with you if you'd like but it's based on PMBOK 4 so I don't think it's worth the potential of getting confused by.

I think you're on the right track and well equipped to pass the exam. Don't worry, go through more exams using the technique I mentioned (reviewing the answers after submitting a blank test rather than spending 4 hours on the questions) and it might be the fastest way for you to 1) gain confidence that you KNOW the right answer, and 2) make best use of your time to identify new concepts that you may not have encountered before (mostly terms).

Feel free to reach out to me if I can be of any assistance at all.

Great advice -which I intend to follow. Thank you very much,

Anytime at all. Good luck!