TOPIC: Hurrayyyyyyyyy cleared my PMP exam in my first attempt !!!!!

HI All,

First of all , I cannot explain in words the way I feel...I really feel on top of the world right now. I cleared my PMP exam in my first attempt today and have joined the "Previleged" club of PMP Certified Project Managers in the World !!!!!

My preparation for PMP started in Sept 2016. I had done by Contact hours classes through KnowledgeHut - an REP provider based in Bangalore. I started off with Head First PMP and felt that it was so easy and thought why would people fail such a simple exam......then in Nov 2016 I read the PMBOK for the first time and felt - man this is going to be tough. However, I was determined to study and I ensured that I read it thoroughly , though it was as dry as a wood. However , it is very informative and I would suggest that all should go through it atleast twice before the exam. Anyways, I do not want to spend too much time writing long stuff on what I did ...below is what I did in a nutshell -

1. Oct 2016 - I went through Head First PMP book - from beginning to end.
2. Nov 2016 - I went through PMBOK 5 Guide - from beginning to end.
3. Dec 2016 - I again went through PMBOK 5 guide - from beginning to end and complete it in 2 weeks ...as I devoted more time to it.
4. From 14th Dec till Jan 4th 2017 - that is approximately 22 days...I used to take a mock exam every day for 4 hours , spend another 2 hours going through the answers.
Also everyday I used to spend 1 hour going through the ITTO process and another 1 hour on the PMBOK glossary.
Luckily for me, I had a Office shutdown for 2 weeks for Christmas and I took another week off, which meant that for the last 3 weeks , I studied only for the PMP exam.I used to spend atleast 10 hrs everyday preparing for the exam.
I took the below mock tests -
1. Knowledge Hut - 6 tests . The tests are average and though I used to score 85% + , I never used to have much confidence.
2. Took Head first labs - 1 free test - available online for free.
3. Went through Oliver Lehmann's - 75 and 175 qns and was able to get around 77% in both (average)
4. Did a Project Management Academy test - 50 qns - available online for free and got around 76% . This I just took yesterday, one day before the exam.
5. Took 3-4 tests of Exam Central - got around 80% + , but again it is not that tough.
6. Finally the one that helped me was PM Exam Simulator. I just came across this by chance and enrolled in Nov 2016. This was one of the toughest tests that I have taken. when I took the 9 tests first time, I scored about 75% in them. Then I went through the PMBOK guide , Head first guide etc and attempted again in Dec and used to score about 85%. Hats off to Cornelius and his team for designing such a set of tests...truly amazing and very good quality .
To be frank my PMP exam was a bit easy, the question were not that lenghty (atleast for me ) and they seemed to be easy to tackle - especially after the drilling by PMP PrepCast.
Today my exam was scheduled at 1PM IST , but when I went at 12:!5pm IST , they checked and allowed me to go inside. So, started at approx 12:30 PM IST . As ,most people might know now, you are not allowed to do any brain dump during the first 15 mns ...so once the qns started, I did the brain dump of the formulaes and spent approx 6-8 mins on writing them down. It took me about 15-20 mins to sort of settle and get into rhytm...especially with so many cameras and Prometric personnal watching you
The first half an hour passed and I had just completed about 18 qns only and I thought I needed to speed up. Luckily I had just marked about 18 qns for review in the end and also completed all of them with about 20 mns to spare .
After the survey , came the Congratulatory message and I got MP , P , P , P , MP .
Anyways thats it for now ...hope my experiences will be helpful.

Once again hats off to Cornelius and his team for giving us a platform for using this and preparing for the exam. By the way - I know 5- 7 of my colleagues who are planning to take up the exam in the next few months and I have personally recommended them to subscribe to the PM PrepCast.

P. S : Cornelius - Considering that many people might start subscribing to PM Prepcast in the future, suggest that you design the website to handle that much of load, incase if it not done already. Maybe a good idea to include this in your Risk Register and have them in your Watchlist , so that you can monitor the m ...(Cmon guys I am a PMP Certified Project Manager now...have to use PMP terms )

Thats it for now .
Thanks and wish you guys all the best !!!!!

Regards,
Sreeram.S

Sreeram,
Congrats on passing the exam!! Thank you for taking the time to post your lessons learned and experience.
Cheers,

Mark

Congratulations Sreeram.

Congratulations Sreeram and thanks for your well and interesting lesson learned explained.
Cheers.