Hello,
I passed this past week.
I scored Moderately Proficient in all areas except for Monitoring & Controlling where I scored Proficient.
The methods I used for passing the exam are as follows:
1) Readings
- PMBOK
- Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep book
- Used this method highlighted in the book review to memorize the Rita Process chart:
www.amazon.com/review/R2C0GL6M87YX3P/ref...ewpnt#R2C0GL6M87YX3P
2) Audio/ Visual content
- Prep Cast
- Work 'study session' similar to the prepcast where a volunteer PMP instructor would review the material, by chapter, in a 2 hour block 1x a week for 10 weeks
3) Practice exams
- Various free 200 question exams found on-line, approximately 1 full practice exam on the weekend for 7 weekends
- Practice questions in Rita's book at the end of each chapter
*) I wrote out my brain dump sheet at least 50 times and it took me about 30 minutes to write it all out. This was very valuable information as I detail below.
4) Day of exam test approach
After multiple practice exams, I found that my best test taking approach was as follows:
- Read the question and answer at least 2x before selecting my answer
- Mark a question if I wasn't 85% confident of the answer
- Take a 2-3 minute break after every 50 questions
- Take a 5-10 minute break after the 200 questions before I go back to my marked questions
- I knew that writing out my brain dump would take 30 minutes, so I used the first 15 minutes from the tutorial and then started the exam and used about 15 minutes of my 4 hour time to complete the entire brain dump. Since I practiced so much, I was not nervous about the fact that I was using my test time to write the brain dump
I finished my exam in about 2.5 hours.
Best of luck to all!!
Judy