TOPIC: Passed PMP Exam at Testing Center - 1st Attempt

I sat for the exam this past Saturday and achieved 4 above targets and 1 target.

I was initially scheduled to take the exam at the end of March - and ultimately canceled the test due to COVID, working from home, supporting my son with virtual learning, etc. It took me a long time to get my head back in the game and start studying again. The motivation? The test format changing on January 1...

In August, I booked my test date in October so that in the event I did not pass on the first try, I would be able to re-test before the end of the year. But, that only gave me ~9 weeks to study. I had read the PMBOK and used Head First to study earlier in the year, but I thought I would sign up for the PrepCast to really buckle down and learn the material before taking the exam. Having gone through the PrepCast videos and Exam Simulator, I honestly believe that I would not have passed the exam back in March as I was not nearly as prepared. So, thank you Cornelius and team!

I took the PrepCast advice and created a study plan based on the PrepCast Study Guides - which were key to me planning out my studying. I worked backward from my test date and knew that I needed to complete each week's material in 3-4 days, allowing for extra days before the exam just for practice tests and also making sure I had some float for unexpected days where I was not able to study. I followed the study guides pretty carefully, but in the interest of time, limited myself to watching only the required video segments.

As for taking the test, I chose to take it at the testing center because I knew there would be too many distractions at home. I thought the exam simulator was excellent preparation in terms of how the questions were structured. Instead of taking the full practice exams though, I kept increasing the length of the timed quizzes so that I knew I could do 100 questions in one sitting (due to the mandatory break). I was able to complete the practice quizzes with plenty of time remaining, but I used ALL of the time during the actual exam, which made me nervous. When I felt frustrated by the questions, I just flagged them and took a deep breath.

When the clock ran down to zero and flashed the message that I had passed, I felt such a relief - I had put in a lot of hard work and was thankful that it had paid off. I will be happy to update my team at work later today and share the good news. Good luck to all of you who are preparing for an upcoming exam - you can do it!!!

Congratulations! Thanks for coming back and sharing your experiences with us.

Hi All,

Started my journey in Feb'2020 which was halted due to COVID lockdown in India. Later, again started reading end of July'2020. Initially, I booked my center based exam on 30th Sep'2020 however, with only theory and less on practice with questions somehow, wasn't feeling confident in giving exam and hence, postponed it to 5th Nov'2020. Then on 1st Oct'2020 purchased the Prepcast PMP simulator (after trying free 1 week simulator) and started answering questions (completed all 7 sets with ITTO & Scored 74% to 85%). By 5th Oct'2020 my scores were coming good and decided to prepone my exam to 19th Oct'2020 (from 5th Nov'2020). After all lessons learned from Prepcast simulator and feedback statistics (which helped in improving my weak areas) I was finally able to clear my PMP exam in 1st attempt with 4AT and 1T on 19th Oct'2020!!
Wonderful feeling however, exam simulator only doesn't guarantee and would like others to read a lot. Simulator should be a last leg in preparation.
Below are few steps which I followed -:
1) Read PMBOK and only PMBOK. At least 10 times.
2) Prepcast all 7 and ITTO mocks. Scored in the range of 74% to 85%.
3) Udemy Tridip Roy PMP mocks.
4) I considered PMBOK as a machine to see how all processes are working. This really helped me in clearing concepts.
5) Used to write a lot in register about processes and it's key outputs (sample attached for reference, would have written these n number of times).
6) Saw lot of videos on youtube to clear concepts.
Gave my 100% with preparation to clear the exam. Hope this helps others in their preparation and clearing the esteemed exam - PMP.

Congratulations