My PMP certification journey started 5 months back when I bough the PMBOK and Rita's book from Amazon. Although I had heard of PMP couple of years back I didnt have the experience to take the exam.
My study plan was to read a chapter from PMBOK then Rita and then hear the PrepCast podcasts. I used the end of chapter questions in Rita and PrepCast after completing the chapter from all three sources. This continued for about 3 months. I used to study when I wanted and never kept a count of how many hours i studied. After completing the chapters I read them again one more time from the PMBOK and Rita. I also bought the Christofer Scordo book to do the chapter related questions and the 50 questions quiz. This whole process of re-reading took me about 1 month. After that I started looking at my application for which I looked at all my emails from last 5 years and created a spreadsheet about all the projects I worked on, their time period and their details in PMI language. After putting all this information in the application I asked my boss to review it. His inputs were invaluable. Luckily, my application didnt get audited and I jumped on to my next phase of the plan. I did all the free simulator questions I could found where I was scoring in mid 80s. After that I bought the exam simulator and did all the exams in it where I was scoring in high 80s and low 90s. So, I was pretty confident about my studies. The last week before the exam I didnt study much but just gave the simulator exam where I was doing pretty well.
On the exam day, I reached the test center 30 min before. I didnt find the exam as difficult as some other guys had mentioned and I was able to finish the exam within 3 hrs. The exam simulator questions were pretty close to the real thing.
My advise to folks preparing for the exam is to know all the processes very well. You dont need to memorize the ITTO but just have an idea which is used for what. There were a lot of scenario based questions but if your concepts and understanding are correct it shouldnt be hard to figure out the right option.
Lastly, I would like to thank Cornelius for putting me on the path to success and also my wife for her support and motivation during this whole journey.
