I passed my PMP exam last Monday, Oct 28th. I actually started studying in April using the PMBOK 4th edition, the accompanying PMPrepcast and Rita Mulcahy's Prep book 7th edition. I thought I would be able to take the exam in July before the exam changed, but did not feel confident at that point. I struggled with the decision of whether to just go for it at that point or wait and take the exam based on the PMBOK 5th edition. I decided to wait and take in it October. The updated PM Prepcast was offered at a tremendous discount since I had just purchased the older version in April. That made things a lot easier. I was also able to sell my Rita Mulcahy 7th edition book and put that money towards the 8th edition.
As far as lessons learned, I did the following:
1-practiced creating a brain dump everyday for two weeks before my exam. That included the knowledge areas, process groups as well as formulas. (really helped). At exam time I used 5 minutes of the tutorial time they give prior to the exam starting to view the tutorial and used the other 10 minutes to create my brain dump (they give you paper and pencils).
2-created my own outline of the Rita Mulcahy Prep book to give myself a better understanding of how the information and terms flowed.
3-referred to the PMBOK guide quite often. It was particularly helpful to review the Data flow diagrams for each knowledge area. Really helped me to understand the flow of the inputs and outputs.
4-took tons of sample tests. At least 2 full timed exams. It is important to review the answers to the questions you got wrong. Really helps. I created a spreadsheet to record my test results by knowledge area so that I could get a better sense of my knowledge gaps. I could not seem to get past the mid 70 percentile overall.
5-created screenshots of key pages in the PMBOK and saved them onto a Word document. I saved that as a PDF file and imported it into my Kindle so the I could have those key pages available at any time for a quick review.
6-reviewed those PMPrepcasts for areas the were still giving me problems and that really helped. ( I had already viewed all of the older PMPrepcast version in order to get my 35 contact hours) Those prepcasts are great!
7-dressed comfortably on exam day. Got there a hour earlier and they were able start me 30 minutes earlier than my scheduled time. I took two breaks. One after 60 questions (about 5 minutes). For any questions involving formulas I would make a quess and mark it for review. I found it easier to deal with all the formula questions at one time. Once I got through all the questions, I took that second break (again about 5 minutes) and came back to finish those marked questions with formulas. Ultimately I had 17 minutes left to review all my questions and finished the exam 4 minutes early.
So after six months studying two different versions ( and much prayer and support from my family!), I passed the exam! I must say I almost collapsed when I saw the print out showing that I had passed. Best of luck in your study!
