Passed PMP exam today with 4Ps and 1MP which was simultaneously a relief and a disappointment.
Anyway it was a satisfactory outcome and I thought I would express my thanks for the prepcast and also share my study plan / lessons learned:
1. PM PREPCAST (of course). I just listened to the whole series while driving over about a month. Cornelius speaks very slowly and clearly so I had him turned up to time and a half to double time depending on the topic. Very helpful intro to the material for no extra time investment.
2. RITAS BOOK. Did the whole book including all the practice exams and most of the exercises. Highly recommend this resource.
3. PMBOK. Read it all once to make sure I understood everything and highlighted sections i needed to come back to.
4. Made about 20 pages of notes from Rita and the PMBOK of things I needed to remember, then highlighted those few parts I still couldn't remember. Then looked at the highlighted sections twice and told myself to remember them.
5. Did all the prepcast sample exams and went over all answers I got wrong. By the last few I was consistently scoring around 85% and completing inside 2 hours.
6. Morning of exam I read my notes again, skimmed through PMBOK again, studied each process diagram in PMBOK, and prayed for success.
I didn't attempt a brain dump during the exam because by that stage I felt I had retained everything I had seen. The exam of course contained a number of things I hadn't covered as well as several nonsense questions that were actually incorrect themselves - hopefully these were trial questions, but it didn't seem to affect the outcome.
The whole process took me 6 months but i was only actively studying for about 2 of those as other circumstances intervened.
Glad it's over and now hopefully I won't be redundant.