Hello Everyone,
I passed my PMP exam on 12th July with 4 AT's and 1 T
It took me almost 4 months to study for the course. I’d never heard about prepcast, and happened to read about it on Edward Chung's website, preferred the idea of watching the videos on the podcast, hence bought it with the simulator.
My study plan was…
1) Watch all prepcast videos
2) Read Pmbok parallelly after each of the chapters in the video and then give the end of chapter assessment.
3) Once all videos and the assessments are done, Move on to Rita's exam prep book
4) Read PMBOK atleast 2 times + Rita's exam prep 2 times
5) Give all simulation tests and any free ones which are available
Results of tests…
1) Prepcast end of ch assessments (cumulative) = 69%
2) Rita's exam prep = 75%
3) Prepcast simulation scores: 70/67.5/73/68.5/71.5/64%
4) Free tests: Oliver (75Q) 72% and Pmzest (100Q) 69%
had given some more, though those were more for practice hence didn’t keep a track of scores.
What worked:
1) Podcast videos worked for me, so did the questions at the end of each chapter. The fact that its downloadable, allows for flexibility, rather than being tied down to the desk.
2) Rita's exam prep is a must for anyone who's new to the PMP way of thinking. It is easy to grasp, and also has some additional information (not covered in the PmBOK) which is good to know (again especially for someone who has never entered the PMP world). To clarify, I have over 17 years of experience managing projects, still had to align my experience and thought process with the way PMI expects us to think, I believe Rita's book helps us to bridge this gap).
3) PmBok: First thing to study is either using training (prepcast) or Rita's exam prep, the Pmbok is overwhelming, and that’s just putting it lightly. However, I did start understanding the guide once I was mid-way through the chapters… it is very important to read the guide and not just rely on Rita's book since the later doesnt cover ITTO's the way the guide does. and the guide also is way more comprehensive.
4) Didn’t try too many other resources to study, though Edwards site does have some good study tips (most common confused pmp terms etc).
5) The simulator: The questions are verbose/lengthy and tested my patience. Though on hindsight, there is some merit in having a difficult experience in the simulator, since the actual exam feels lighter (more on that later).
6) I made my own notes from the guide (major inputs/outputs/T&T for each process), memorized the formulaes by reading it every other day (same with the knowledge and process groups).
7) Extremely important to review the wrong questions after using the simulator. That is the only reason I was confident of scheduling my actual PMP exam (even though I avgd around 70%).
The exam:
i) My only challenge was that I havent taken an exam in many years, plus I have a very low attention span, especially sitting in a place for such a long time staring at the screen. The simulator tested me on these challenges more than the PMP questions.
ii) Exam was scheduled for 12:30 pm, (by the way, I reached earlier, hence they allowed me to start the exam at around 12).
iii) Most of the questions were shorter than the prepcast ones. Though vague, if you are strong on how the processes interact with each other (the simulator helps here), the answers are evident.
iv) The strikethrough feature is a bonus. In most of the questions, I could easily strike out 2 wrong answers.
v) I thought many questions were around communication/stakeholder (these chapters are inter linked), 4-5 formulas. However, overall it covered almost all chapters equally.
vi) Had marked about 10-20 questions for review, took 2 breaks of total 15 mins, and finished the exam with about 25 mins remaining.
Overall it was a great experience, especially when the screen flashed the message "Congratulations!".
Would like to thank the Prepcast team, and many of the contributors on this forum, who have given their valuable feedback, which really helped me in this journey.
Best regards,
Rejit
