TOPIC: Pass 1st Try Mar 17, retrospective

Study Materials

• Listened to first 9 chapters of PMP Prepcast halfheartedly.
• Completed 7 exam simulator exams.
• A few hours doing book questions, including crunch on procurement pre-exam

My pre-exam results were a mixture of MPs and BP, with only my 7th exam being all MP. I was a little tense. I ended up getting 3 Ps and 2 MPs.

ITTOs and Formulae were largely worthless - spending time on rote memorization isn't needed here. I did not do a brain dump or take any notes at all. Only a few of these types of questions came up and a logical mind should be more than enough to get through them. If you can think in the right units, any formula should be easily derived from the answers listed.

The Prepcast Exam sim is about on average with the exam itself. Hit them all hard, and review your results. Understand why the answer is what it is. The prepcast itself has useful information, but teaches it relatively slowly. Good for drives between work and home but advise against it as a real source at home -- more focused learning will probably get better results.

Good luck to those going for it. Learn how to apply your years of PM experience to PMP philosophy and this will be a breeze.

Thank you for sharing, Adam, and congratulations on passing! Very real advice. I would say that the Prepcast is great for teaching the content you need for the exam, but it is not designed as a "pass your exam" resource as many other tools claim to be. It takes quite a while to get through those podcasts, but there is a massive amount of good information in them.
For those studying now, remember that the value of the ITTOs is how they apply to each other and to their processes and knowledge areas. Just memorizing them will not be enough (and a waste of time). Know how they function and you'll do fine!