Yesterday I sat for my first attempt at the PMP Exam, and I passed with Proficient in all but Initiating (in which I received Moderately Proficient)!
I started preparing for my exam about a year ago. I signed up for PMPrepcast, watched the videos, and completed the test for my 35 contact hours. Life got busy last Summer and things got in the way of my studying - it went on the back burner for 4 or 5 months, and I just picked up with it again a couple of months ago.
I started back with some practice questions from PM Exam Simulator, 10-20 at a time. I studied the questions that I answered wrong, and why they were wrong. After I could continuously score 75-85 on the practice questions, I attempted a practice exam but stopped after 100 questions. I used my time/score based on the 100 questions as a guideline for how I was doing. I continued doing practice questions 10-20 at a time, and throwing in the odd practice exam (again, stopping at 100 questions) to see how I was doing. At this point, I started to memorize the formula cheat sheet, and process chart.
The weekend before my exam I did a lot of practice questions and tried to fill in any gaps I knew that I had. I made sure that I could write the formulas & process chart from memory, and knew how to use them.
Monday came, and it was exam time. I followed my normal routine, had coffee and something small to eat in the morning before the exam. The testing center was as I expected based on the lessons learned from others. I used 1 page (front and back) from the 4 pages of scrap paper provided to write out my formulas and process chart. I finished answering all of the questions with about 1 hour to go, at which point I started going back through the questions starting again at #1. After about 25 questions, I decided it was best to stick with my original answers and clicked "End Exam".
As expected, the survey came up, followed by the "PASS" message. The test center prints out a page with your proficiency for each group then you're good to go.
I credit my success on this exam to the following material:
PM Prepcast: This lays out exactly what you need to know for the exam and does it in a way that makes it easy to understand and remember. I did not read the PMBOK, but I did reference it when answering practice questions and didn't know the answers
PM Exam Simulator: Very good question bank, laid out very similar to the real exam. Question difficulty was on par with the exam, though I found the options for answers on the real exam to be a bit more difficult to pick a correct answer (the Prepcast seemed like there were normally 2 answers that were definitely wrong, whereas the real exam wasn't as clear).
PM Formula Study Guide: The formula study guide is laid out perfectly to remember the formulas. The guide helps explain how to interpret the results, and the 105 questions run you through a variety of different scenarios to be able to answer most calculation questions.
Exam Central: I used exam central for their practice questions - they were a good resource for quick, questions when you want to mix it up from the PM Exam Simulator questions. They introduce some different ideas and formats for questions.
I'm happy to finally have my exam over with, a huge weight off my shoulders! Thanks Cornelius for the great products!
