Just passed my PMP yesterday on 2nd attempt and 4 months of studying, below are my lesson learned:
My journey first started in January 2019 just before my son was born. I thought I could do it before the arrival of my son so I speeded up the studying process and cut a lot of corner, which in hindsight was a mistake- NEVER rush into doing the PMP exam especially if you're not physically (in my case- 9 months pregnant) and mentally ready. The result was very bad as I only had 1 domain that was target, and everything else was below target. That has discouraged me and I thought I would never try again.
However, I've come around to motivate myself to give it another try during the pandemic this year. I studied for 4 months (2-4 hours/day) and using the below as studying materials:
- PMBOK 6th Edition- read through it 2 times intensively at the beginning and on and off closer to the exam
Rita's PMP Exam Prep- read through 2 time, attempted all exercises and took notes
PMTraining Practice Exam- finished 1 full exam and realized the difficulty level was a bit insufficient so I stopped and only do a couple of smaller chunk of questions between my readings
PM Prepcast- my main go-to resource after I finished my reading. For any question that I got wrong I always took notes and re-visit the topic/concept from PMBOK. Due to having a toddler at home, I could only do smaller chunk of questions (30-50 questions). At first it was bad, I only score 50%-60%, but after doing them for a while I naturally see improvement on my performance. That was probably just because I have gotten used to the wordiness/extraneous questions, and after reading enough question after question and answer after answer, I was able to "catch" those answers that seem off, I just naturally got sharper at catching them. Just after I have consistently score from 75%-85%, decided to schedule for my exam within 2 weeks.
The actual exam was hard and easy at the same time(!) See below for the breakdown:
There was only 3-5 calculated questions and I recalled them being easy but required actual memorization of the formulas, only 1 formula required for each question though.
There was only 30-40 questions that I was having tough times and had to do guesses between 2 answers that were very closed.
There was probably 10 questions that I had absolutely no clue what they were asking.
There was about 20 questions that I knew the answers right away from my knowledge
There was 30-40 questions that I was able to pick the right answers using elimination technique
And the rest of the questions I just went with my newly acquired skill of "catching" answers that seems off (mostly from wording, and PMISM "escalate it to the CEO" or "tell the client to back off" types of answers are unlikely to be correct) from doing thousands of question thanks to PMPrepcast.
For those who had failed the exam once, don't be discouraged, take some times to let those emotions passed, when you're ready just try again! In fact, the first attempt helped put you at the front of the line by providing you the experiences of already doing it once. I went to the exam knowing exactly what to do and what to expect and that put some peace in my mind. I finished the exam 1 hour early!
