Hello everyone,
I wanted to thank you guys for being so supportive on this forum, and I hope to help everyone succeed by sharing how I studied.
How I prepared for the PMP exam:
- Took a PMP crash course to understand the requirements of the exam and to kick-start my study efforts ( I knew nothing about the exam going into the course).
- Bought Rita's book and read it twice, and my course materials from the crash course.
- Bought the PMBOK (for reference only)
- Bought PM prepcast exams
- Bought PMstudy exams
- Contrary to everyone else, I did NOT do the oliver lehmann exams
Keys which I think are crucial to acing the exam:
1) TAKE NOTES as you read your study materials
2) Main takeway: PMBOK is horrible in explanation, so you need to make sure you DO LOTS OF PRACTICE QUESTIONS FROM LEGITIMATE SOURCES, and type a KEY lessons learned from the question you weren't sure about or what you got wrong - This is crucial because it helps you remember the "practical" application of the knowledge (i.e. what PMBOK doesn't teach you. BIG NOTE: Be careful of over generalization, certain answers are only correct under specific conditions, you need to learn those conditions)
3) Recognize that you are not going to ace every question and move on if you are behind time, I was about 10 questions behind my targeted timing while doing the exam (and I had to use the bathroom), but I pushed through (even though I guessed the last question, and even didn't press "submit", it submitted automatically).
4) Know how to manage your confidence, I have very low confidence and I literally told the examiner I failed (like I really thought I needed to rewrite the exam). Many questions in the actual PMP is quite tough and you can only eliminate down to 2 answers, take a guess and move on and don't let it affect you.
5) There was a mix of very easy questions and a mix of very hard questions for me - In fact, I felt like majority of the exam was on change and risk - asking the same thing over and over again - just repackaged differently (which is why I suggested documenting the "key takeaways" from your practice questions.
6) There was A LOT OF TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES questions for me (very direct ones), so make sure you learn those.
Here were my practice scores going into the exam:
1st mock: PMSTUDY 78% (1 month before the exam)
2nd mock: Prepcast simulator 88%
3rd mock: Prepcast simulator 89.5%
4th mock: PMstudy 82%
5th mock: PMstudy 86%
6th mock: PMstudy 86% (night before exam)
Various PM quizzes from PM prepcast simulator: > 80%
Personally I like the PM prepcast simulator because it explains every wrong answer, and the "practice mode is" is awesome. However, I feel the questions were a bit easier than PMstudy practice exams, so I switched to those after 2 exams, would hope prepcast can increase the difficulty.
Good luck everyone.
