Yesterday June 10th I passed my PMP exam on my first try with 2 Proficient’ s in Executing and Closing, and 3 Moderately Proficient’ s in Initiation, Planning and Monitoring and Controlling. I first want to thank Cornelius Fichtner and everyone part of the Prep Cast team. All the tips and reading the posts from all the students really helped me through this journey towards becoming a Certified Project Manager.
Here are my Lesson Learned:
1. The Prep Cast exam simulator and the PMBOK guide were my two main resources for preparation for the PMP exam. Other learning resources I used were as follows:
- Prep Cast Formula guide
- Prep Cast 105 formula questions
- Prep Cast Essentials
- Some free PMP exams from Oliver Lehmann and Headfirst
- PMP practice exams my company offered
- PM courses from my college when I earned a bachelor’s degree
I was a little concerned about how many students were reading Rita Mulcahy PMP exam study material, but I felt confident just using the Prep Cast practice exams, and the PMBOK guide, which I did read from cover to cover. The explanations with the practice exams for each question really helped me understand the topics very well. I started my PMP journey almost a year ago, I know it seems like a long time, but trying to find the right material to use for preparation took some time, and also I found pacing myself around 1-2 hours a day, which was recommended, was working for me.
2. I started studying the Prep Cast learning quizzes. I would start by doing about 40 questions per knowledge area. I created a knowledge area chart listing all ITTO’s in MS Word, and wrote a lot notes on areas I incorrectly answered questions. I also periodically would do brain dumps of writing down all the formulas.
3. When I felt I was ready to schedule the exam. I scheduled the exam about 2 months away, and I would continue to study about 2 hours a day, and started taking full length 200-question exams every Saturday morning. I recommend taking the timed exams, for me this made all the difference. Most of my anxiety for the exam was the time constraint for each question. It is a different ball game when the clock is ticking, so I recommend doing this before the real exam, which includes the learning quizzes.
4. I completed all the 9 Prep Cast simulator exams scoring an average 81-83% on the first 7 exams, then exam 8 and the ITTO exam I scored over 90%. Answering questions starting by process of elimination I found to be the utmost importance in answering each question.
5. I took Cornelius Fichtner’ s recommendation, and a week before the exam I visited the testing center to make sure I had the proper IDs needed for the exam. On exam day, I was extremely nervous, and I did some light studying going over my notes and reading through the PMBOK guide on areas I felt I needed to review. The exam itself was very challenging, I ended up using all of the 4 hours, which included going over the marked questions that I answered, but wanted to check again. I actually had to guess on one question because I ran out of time. The exam really didn’t have too many long paragraph questions which surprised me, however 75% of the questions ended with “What would the project manager do?” and what could have the project manager done?”. I ran into two critical path diagrams, a couple of EAC questions, and many change request questions
I hope these lessons learned helps everyone on their PMP endeavors. I am so happy I made it, this was a major milestone in my career.
Thank you all!
