TOPIC: Passed PMP on First try-9 April 2016

Hello Everyone,
Finally I am a PMP . I took a PBT on 9th April 2016. My result came on 18th April 2016. I passed it with 3 P's and 2 MP's.
The questions in PMP were mostly situational (70-75%) not very lengthy, Earned value questions (very easy), EMV question, ITTO (2 to 3 questions). The new content only lightly touches the exam, I found only 2-3 questions that were as per the points in new syllabus.
I am not a native English speaker, so I completed the test in 3 hours 45 minutes. Barely 15 minutes were left for checking. Questions were simple but tricky. You can easily eliminate two options out of four for a few of them.
I started my PMP exam journey in September 2015 last week where I undertook a course in PMP examination preparation for 35 PDUS. Fortunately my employer was a REP for PMI and I did that course in company itself. I started studying in Jan 2016 and it was a complete 3 months study plan.
What I learned is the concepts are important. PMP exam is not a rote memorization exam. For me there were only 3-4 ITTOS. I did not memorize ITTOS but understood the links with the processes.
I read the Headfirst PMP. This book is very good and I read it prior reading to PMBOK and Rita. The book takes each knowledge area as a case study with good pictures and visualization.
Reading PMBOK guide twice is a must. And of course, Studying Rita for additional concepts is must. I read Rita Mulchay twice.
Rita’s questions and explanations are of most importance. This is where the concepts and approach really get clarified. The last thing is Practice, practice and more practice on mock exams.
Christopher Scordo’s questions are really very good and I must say, a few situational questions in this are real close to PMP.
Rita FastTrack score-Exam 1-72.5%, Exam 2-78.5 %, Exam 3-79%
Pmzilla questions free-56% (this exam is very very tough compared to actuals). Situational questions are very few.
Pmstudy-81% (taken prior to exam)
Christopher Scordo- Scoring consistently 82-87 %
Edwel mock exam-76 %( 100 questions)
Head first -84%
Saket Bansals izenbridge-81%
I am very thankful to my family for giving me the time to study. A big thankyou to PM zilla and of course Cornelius Fichtner and his newsletter and forums that I visited almost daily. I watched all the free videos of Corlineus from you tube. The content and the explanation is very good.

Congratulations Mahesh and thanks for taking the time to document your journey plan.
but I think the PBT experience is quite different, can you brief us on that ?

Yes Ahmad, you rightly said that PBT experience is quite different from CBT. I preferred PBT as the centre was near to where I live in Pune and also for CBT I would have needed to travel to Mumbai a day prior to exam and i wanted to avoid the travelling , because i believe the day of the exam we should be mentally more stronger and at peace. Well again, PBT or CBT is again a personal choice. The drawback of PBT is that you have to wait for the results. At the test centre I was given 2 pencils , 1 eraser and a handheld calculator. The scratch papers were 3 in number. I wrote down all the formulas as well as the 47 processes with their mapping to 10 knowledge areas. Then we were given a sealed booklet and an OCR. We had to write down the name on booklet and signature on OCR (OCR contained my name printed on it). After that there was a wall mounted digital watch which displayed time. The moment it was 10 am , we were told to break the seal and start. I had kept the target of completing 50-55 questions per hour. For PBT you have to darken the ovals besides the right answer. It takes a little time not much, than when you just click on the answer in a CBT. One more thing, in CBT you can mark the question which is difficult or you would like to answer it afterwards. In PBT , you are not allowed to write anything on the booklet. you will have to write down the questions which you would like to revisit in the scratch paper. I made sure that i marked a very few questions. I completed the paper just 15 mins prior the deadline and i had marked 6-8 questions , so i went quickly through them and submitted the paper after properly checking the booklet and OCR , that I had written correctly my name as well as PMI ID.

Dear All,
You can also read my lesson learned article talking about CTB vs PBT.
pmicontentcollaboration.ideas.aha.io/ide...m_source=idea_mailer

Best regards