Hello! I passed my PMP exam yesterday on the 1st try!! Thank you PM PrepCast for the great tools that helped me prepare for this challenging exam. Here is some background on how I prepared for the exam.
1. I originally started studying for the PMP 5th Edition exam with a test date for February 2018. I was doing self study by reviewing the PMBOK, but was not fully committed to making the time to prepare effectively. I therefore changed my exam to July and needed to prepare using the PMBOK 6th edition instead.
2. I originally purchased Rita's PM study guide and was reading that front to back and doing the test questions at the end of each section. I found it to be helpful in some ways, but not helpful in others and knew I needed additional resources to fully prepare to take the exam. I stumbled across the PM PrepCast in early May, signed up and focused for 8 weeks on my studying.
3. On average I listened to the Podcasts in the car, at lunch, or at night for about 1 hour a day. I didn't make it through all the modules before taking the exam. I believe I made it through the end of the Risk Section. I found the Podcasts to be helpful to reinforce what I was reviewing in Rita's Book and the PMBOK. I also found that by listening to the podcasts I was less focused on memorization and more focused on truly understanding the concepts needed for each knowledge area. I also purchased a set of flash cards to become familiar with the terms and I would skim through those as well. Understanding definitions seemed to help on a good number of exam questions.
4. A few times a week I practiced outlining the Knowledge areas by Process group and their main outputs on a piece of paper. There was no way for me to memorize the Inputs and Tools and Techniques, just too much to remember. However, I felt if I could identify the knowledge area in the question and the main outputs I could use my PM knowledge to figure out the ITTOs for the question if necessary.
5. I took 3 Test Simulators and failed everyone. So if you are struggling to pass the PM Exam Simulators, don't worry! What I found really helpful was reading through the explanations for the incorrect answers. That was extremely valuable in helping to understand areas that I was weak in.
6. I practice my data dump sheet for about 2-3 weeks leading up the exam. I took the first few minutes in the test center to offload all of the formulas on to my scratch paper before I got started. This cleared my mind to focus on the questions. I only had a few math questions and didn't need to use most of the formulas.
Helpful Tips: I found that the highlight and cross out tools on the test were really helpful for answering the questions. I highlighted key words in each question and crossed out the answers that I knew right away were incorrect. Then I focused on walking through the question, knowledge area, and ultimately what they were trying to ask. I found the questions on the exam to be much shorter in length then the simulator, but still challenging with lots of pieces of information, some of which had no relevance to answering the question.
I was nervous that I hadn't prepared enough given some of the other comments on this forum. I didn't have time to study 4 hours a day with two little kids at home and a full time job. I averaged about 1-2 hours a night and took days off when I knew that my brain was fried. I really focused on studying the last 8 weeks leading up to the test.
Best of luck to each of you! So glad the test is behind me!
