Hello everyone!
I passed my PMP exam with Above Target for all 3 domains on 11/2/21 in less than 30 days! I took the exam online at home, proctored by Pearson Vue. It was offered through my employer and I took the plunge! I attended a 4 day bootcamp Oct 5-8th, which I will say was very beneficial and helped me understand the basics. I have a coworker that recently passed the PMP exam as well and they recommended PrepCast for preparation. I can't thank them enough! If I can buckle down and pass this exam, ANYONE can! The PrepCast Simulator was BY FAR the biggest factor in my success. The reason for this, is because it breaks down WHY you get questions right, and WHY you get questions wrong. Studying the explanations is critical. Most of the PMP exam consists of situational questions and I found the simulator helped me the most for those questions by seeing exam-like questions over and over. I will also say that I felt like the difficulty of the PMP exam was the same difficulty as the simulator. If ANYTHING, maybe a tad bit easier. I tried to do at least 50 quiz questions per day during the work week. I took notes on concepts that I had trouble with and dug deeper to better understand them. I used the PMI Authorized PMP Exam Prep book that I obtained in the bootcamp for reference and also used online resources to better understand concepts I struggled with. I also received the PMBOK 7th edition in my bootcamp, but I honestly may have used it for a total of 30 minutes. Now I'm not saying don't use it, I'm just telling you my experience and what worked for me. I took a total of 3 mock exams in the simulator. First mock exam, I wanted to establish a baseline for myself after the bootcamp. I completed the 4 day boot camp, studied a large portion of the following Saturday (one day after bootcamp ended), and took the mock exam on Sunday. I received a 64%, ran out of time to finish my final 10 questions, but it let me know the areas I REALLY needed to focus on and study. Going through all of my incorrect answers and reading the explanations helped me achieve that. I kept doing 50+ quiz questions a day (untimed) to become as familiar as I can. I didn’t take my 2nd and 3rd mock up exams until the weekend before my test. My 2nd exam I received a 76%, and my 3rd exam I received a 76%. Both exams I also focused on time management and finished within the allotted exam time. I took all 3 of my mock exams at the same time I planned on taking my real exam to simulate as close as I could to test day. After taking mock exam 2 and 3, I spent the rest of each day going through my test and studying why I got stuffed right and wrong. I continued taking notes along the way to document my weaknesses. One tip I would recommend to everyone using the simulator mock exams, use the “Mark” feature for the questions you aren’t sure about. You’ll find a lot of the time you narrow it down to 2 potential answers and u just don’t feel certain either way. Mark them, that way when you go through the ones you got wrong at the end, you can also go through the ones you marked to see if you were right or wrong on those and WHY. After taking those last 2 mock exams, I only had one day separated me from the test. I struggled with myself on whether I should do an additional mock exam (for the 3rd day in a row) or if I should take it easy. I found that a lot of online resources recommended taking it easy, relax, maybe study half the day, but that’s it! So that is exactly what I did! I studied off and on for about half the day, did Zero questions in the simulator, and accepted that I knew as much as I could at that point. I would recommend to everyone to do the same. Try to relax and decompress before test day.
I wish everyone the best of luck in their studying and PMP exam endeavors!
Sammy
