What a day it was ! Where should I start and where would I be without Prepcast.
Thanks to the whole team who has invested so much in putting up the beautifully explained Prepcast simulator questions and their detailed answers.
1. Let's get the elephant out of the room. There were few negative reviews about taking the exam online but rest assured, it seems like PMI and PearsonVUE together have improved their services. It was a good experience and pretty straightforward. The proctor kept it really simple and I did not face any issue whatsoever.
2. The exam questions were a bit easier than Prepcast questions. My biggest issue in the real exam was "ambiguity" among the options.
Although Prepcast questions are difficult to understand and interpret, 60% of the questions (excuse my subjectivity here) have answers which are straightforward to select if your concepts are clear and once you have understood the question correctly. Where as in the real exam, so many questions were one liners and only some of them were long, I hardly faced any issue to interpret the question or understand it. I just could not decide what is the correct answer to this question.
Question categories and their answers: A) they all looked the same with minute differences B ) although the options were different from each other, I could perform all the actions in real life and I would not know which one to do first. You still have to make sure that you choose the best one. C) only few questions were in the category where only one option seemed possible and you would never choose other options even with basic understanding of PMBOK. D) only 10% of the questions were extremely difficult to understand, to interpret, then choose the correct answer even if you have spent all energy in understanding that unique scenario E) I did not have a single question where I needed to use a calculator or deal with numbers.
Possible approach to tackle above scenarios,
A) Here you would be required to apply the concepts and the thinking ability which you have developed while practicing Prepcast questions. I think Prepcast could probably include more such questions in the future. But does not matter how much you prepare, you can never have 1:1 kind of scenario. Still just a humble suggestion and I am suddenly not an expert just because I have passed PMP. B ) here is where Prepcast simulator will help you the most. No need to worry about this category if you have solved most of the questions from the simulator. Because sometimes you need to take actions in a specific order and not jump to option 3 before you finish option 2. That means Prepcast has taken care of you in terms of passing the exam. C) It was relatively easy to solve these questions. D) These scenarios were so complex to figure out and the information seemed to be interwoven. God knows, how anyone would manage to answer these questions correctly in 1 or 1.5 minutes. Thankfully, you would still have lots of other questions to score points in the real exam. So just relax in the exam if you face such questions, no need to stress yourself too much about them. E) I would have loved to have these questions but unfortunately they were not there during my exam.
3. I had difficulty managing time in the real exam even though I had passed my Prepcast exams with scores 75%, 81%, 84% and 84%. The initial questions in the exam had lot of ambiguity and also some of them were time consuming. I preferred to utilize both the breaks to refresh myself and it helped. I performed much better in the next two groups of 60 questions. I had a similar exam experience in my second Prepcast exam so I tried to assure myself that hopefully it is a similar experience and I just need to get through it with patience and focus. I think I got a bit anxious in the beginning and recovered later on. So if it happens to you, no need to overthink too much and keep going forward, do your best. You will come out on top at the end.
Preparation:
A] I read material provided by PMI, both the books. B] I also had the book from Andy Crowe from the old pattern, 6th edition. C] PMP Exam Prep Seminar from Joseph Phillips, on udemy.
I also used a blog (
pmaspirant.com/
) for my initial information gathering which was great to have some unbiased information before you jump into any particular direction for your exam preparation.
Good luck for your exam.
