Cleared my PMP exam last week on first attempt and above Target.
Study Material
PMPrepcast Videos
PMPrepcast Exam Simulator
PMP Exam Prep book - Rita Mulcahy
Study Plan
Subscribed to PMPrepcast PMP Video lessons and Exam Simulator. Went thru videos - 60 hours plus - painfully for in about 2+ weeks. Used every possible time available to videos. Listened while walking, driving, eating and any time available in between. It was painful as it was dry and repetitive and long like same format inputs, output, tool and techniques in each area. I enjoyed the takeaway slides at the end of each video and Q/A part. There are some videos goes thru sample scenarios and that was good but overall good. It could have been less hours than 60 long hours.
Exam Simulator, that is an awesome product, I really loved it. The extend they went to explain every correct and incorrect answers in each question that exceeded my expectation. Brilliant job. I took learning quizzes 30 questions at a time. I did benchmark my timing with timed quizzes initially and my timing was very close and tight. I spent about 4 weeks spending on Exam simulator and did about 37 learning quizzes. I also did 5 full lenght exam.
I scored badly on the learning quizzes - averaged about 60% failed in about 2/3 of it. It really broke my confidence.
Then I purchased the Rita Mulcahy's book and started going thru the book. Mostly skim reading. I attempted all the questions on the Rita's book. I was scoring on an average 70-75% on those.
My real concern was sitting 4 hours for a test. Also timing was too tight take breaks.
I did 5 full length exams in the PMPrepcast Exam Simulator and scored 74-75% in all the exam and that really boosted confidence.
I was able to complete the exam in 30 mins and that gave me option to take at least 2 breaks during the exam.
The key thing is I went thru my wrong answers and explanation for each of the quiz and for each of the exam. So by the time after I have done with 37 quiz and 5 exam, I covered over 1500 question out of 1600 available in the simulator.
The good part of the learning quizzes are you can select the specific knowledge area to attempt. you can also select only not-attempted questions or question answered previously incorrectly.
PMP Exam Day
Day before the exam I took rest and just reviewed the formulas. The actual exam didn't have much of computational questions. There were few but easy. Prometric exam center experience was like going the Airport security. It was antagonizing and demanding. The questions are not the same as the one from Simulator but my preparation helped a lot. Like in the simulator some of the question I have to choose between two answers and I remembered the reasoning from the Simulator.
After the exam - it was a surprise to see my score is above target.
Thank you PMPrepcast.
