Hello,
I passed the PMP exam on April 7th, after 10 long, grueling months. Here is what I did to prepare:
1. Of course I read the PMBOK, plus Rita Mulcahy's book, as well as took the SkillSoft 1-2-hour sessions that followed the PMBOK guide quite well. Rita's book and the SkillSoft sessions were provided to me by my company, and if I had to choose one over another, I'd choose Rita's book because it really provided a different perspective.
2. I signed up for the PMP Exam Simulator and probably went through 90% of the 1,800 questions in there! On weekends I was doing a full 4-hour exam, and during the week, in whatever time I had, I was doing quizzes of varying lengths. I found the simulator to be extremely beneficial, not only for the wide variety of questions that are very similar to those on the exam, but also to be able to time myself. I was always ending the exam simulations early, but also knew that there were questions I was still getting wrong because I was reading through them too quickly. At the actual exam I took the full 4 hours, to read the questions much more slowly, and I think that allowed me to get many questions correct that I'd otherwise get wrong.
The PMP Exam Simulator also allowed me to detect trends in the types of questions I was getting wrong, and why. I actually went through the results every time and categorized the wrong questions into several groupings: I misread the question, had no idea what the answer was, got the ITTO's confused, etc. This categorization then told me what I needed to study more.
I would definitely recommend the PMP Exam Simulator to anyone taking the PMP, I think the ability to simulate the real exam is absolutely essential, and is not something that is available for most professional certifications!
--Jill
