Hello,
I passed the exam on my first attempt, with AT in all 5 domains, and I would like to share my experience with you.
Study plan:
I studied the PMP concepts from a handbook that was provided by the company that gave me the 35 contact hours – 5 or 6 full reads – and also the PMBOK Guide, to review in more detail some of the processes.
In the middle of the study, I started to take notes and did a summary guide (mainly focused on ITTO), which I reviewed in each read of the handbook. In the last weeks, I basically studied from my notes.
The PrepCast quizzes and simulation exams were also an essential part of my study. I advise you to do 2 or 3 exams, so you can feel the weight of a 200 questions 4-hour exam, and also test your exam strategy (if you are going to do a brain dump, how many breaks you are going to take, etc.). I don’t think it’s necessary to do more than 3 exams, because it will require a significant amount of your study time and also because you will start to find questions that you already answered in previous exams.
I ended up investing most of my study time in the timed quizzes (40-50 questions) with the "unanswered questions" option selected. After the quiz, I would review the wrong answers and update my study notes if necessary.
I needed a total of 140 hours preparing for the exam, during a 3 month period. The 2 weeks before the exam were, obviously, the most demanding.
Final exam:
The type of questions is similar to what we found in the PrepCast, including the fact that there are few questions with formulas in the final exam (just 5 or 6).
However, comparing to PrepCast, I found that the answer options in the exam were more difficult, or in other words, it was much less obvious witch was the correct answer (sometimes I had doubts between 3 options). This caused me to build up some mistrust and frustration during the exam. After passing through all the questions, I had marked for review 40+ questions, while in PrepCast exams I would typically mark 20.
I needed the full 4 hours to answer and review all the questions, and in the end I wasn’t sure if I had passed or failed the exam. I was very relieved when the “congratulations, you have passed” screen appeared, and the AT in all domains was a completely unexpected outcome given the mixed feelings I had during the exam.
Best of luck to all of you!
