TOPIC: Time Management in the Simulator

Hello all,

Happy New Year to you all and to your family.

I am having time management problem on the Mock exams in the OSP Simulator. Attempted 3 so far. To read every question in details and then choosing the right option, clock is ticking faster than I need. End result : beginning answers are mostly correct but mistakes in last 75-100 questions because of RUSH. Score never going above 68-70%

How to improve ? Any techniques/tips/suggestions will be highly appreciated

The clock ticks exactly as time passes. It's not fast or slow and is designed for you to understand the time pressure of the real exam. If you don't want the clock, choose "quizzes" of 100 random questions from all process groups.

Good luck!

Harry

Thanks Harry for the response and certainly feel the time pressure

1. Are majority of the questions in actual PMP exam long and time consuming or a mix of both short and long ? Just to gauge distribution of time utilization/question
2. Other than to improve reading skills, is there any other technique to improve time management on long questions ?

Hi Jaydip,

On my first pass through the exam at Pearson, I automatically skipped all questions that were more than 2 sentences or had any calculations. If a question had more than 2 sentences, I just selected [Next]. Practice this strategy on the next simulated exams you take. This technique made a huge difference in my test score because of PMI’s inclusion of “experimental questions”– 25 long, vague ones that are not counted towards your score. You have to practice this, however, because on THE day, you may get swept up in reading all questions in the first pass.

After the first pass, I started to tackle the 3+ sentence and calculation questions. I was banking on the probability that the unscored, experimental questions were in this second group of longer, more vague questions. If they were particularly ambiguous or lengthy, I skipped them again. I also chose [Flag for Review] on questions that I answered, but felt there was more than 1 good choice.

Why it works: Let’s say you answer 50 questions on your first pass through the exam. If it takes you 2-3 seconds each question to count the number of sentences and click [Next], you only lose 5-7 minutes in skipping the longest questions on this pass. The computer’s response time was lightning fast – no pauses between clicks.

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I noticed you posted another question about how to improve your results in the simulated exams. Here's some advice from Cornelius about reviewing your simulator results . . .

“I would like to add the suggestion that you spend at least the same amount of time reviewing the questions as it took you to take the exam.

So if it takes you 3.5 hours to go through a full 200-question exam, then spend at least another 3.5 hours going through the questions again afterward. Look at all the general explanations for the questions and pay particular attention to those that you got wrong. We now have 'per choice explanations' which tell you exactly why each of the four answer choices is / is not correct. In that way, you can learn from your mistakes and take another step forward.”

I wish you the best, Jaydip, and check in with us after the exam at Pearson!