Step1: Attended training in April of this year in EXCEL R training institute, Hyderabad . Here I have to mention the importance of Mr. Anoop sir in my preparation. In the four days of the class he shared lot of things including his personal references and experiences. He didn’t bother about finishing the course; rather he focussed on making us understand the flow of the knowledge area. First he uses to explain the flow, later trends, and then explaining about the processes. Out of 4 days scheduled for training, he extended the class beyond the time for 3 days (delayed as because he patiently clarified all the doubts during the class).I have to thank him specially as he helped me a lot in in my application process also.
Step 2: Started reading PMBOK. While reading for the first time it’s like an Chinese guy trying to understand HINDI. This first time is high level reading.
Step3: I started reading Rita Mulachy where i started to link between the processes. (I slowly understood the flow of the process)
Step 4: I started reading PMBOK again. This time with more concentration. But this reading still remained to be direction less for some areas. I use to feel better when reading that individual chapter . And when switched to another chapter, integration between two knowledgeable areas is difficult .
Step 5: More deep reading of Rita . This read of Rita helped me to understand how integrate between 4 or 5 Knowledge areas .
Step 6: I started to take exam question from Rita, where i used to score in between 50% to 60%. These scores threatened me a lot and understood more thorough reading is important.
Step-7: I was told by one my friend to take some mock exams from UDEMY. I purchased Course of Mr.TRIDIB ROY. This is the greatest help I done to myself .This course helped me a lot and brought me so much change in understanding and analyzing the question. After this I never made any mistakes in change management (which covers almost 15- 20 question in real exam). I recommend you guys for this course
Step-7: I learned from someone that PMprepcast PMP exam simulator is something worth buying by PMP aspirants. I purchased and started taking exam. Out of 7 mock exams in PMP Prepcast , My scores were +/- 5 to 70%. I built some level of confidence through this PMPrepcast.
Step-8: I analyzed my mistakes in Phases wise(Initiating, Planning, Executing, M&C, Closing) instead of analyzing by knowledge areas(Integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communication, risk, stakeholder, procurement).Here i want to mention a thing which i personally felt is while analysing your answer , insteading of just reading and the reason behind is not enough. One should make a note somewhere. My analysis method helped me in thoroughly reading my knowledge gaps on the day of exam .sometimes analyzing one mock exam set of 200 questions used to take almost a day .Simulator help us to analyse by both phase wise anf knowledge area wise separately and combined.
Step 9: Stopped writing mock exams before two days of the exam date as i felt if I fail in the exam, it will totally down my morale.
Step 10: Just one day before exam read one time –Exam out line content by PMI which helped me more to know activities done in each phase (Initiating, Planning, Execution, M&C, and Closing)
Note : thorough understanding of Initiating and closing Phases is very much understanding as both combine 20% of the exam which are easy to understand and will take less time and will help us in making good score in these two phases .
Once we understand the flow, it will be more like an English exam than management exam (hahaha ....as I passed now). Just Kidding. But make sure you understand the question clearly.
On the day of exam
1) My exam was at 8’o clock in the morning and hence got ready by 6: 30 A.M. Just for half an hour i read my own material what i mentioned in step-8.
2) Reached half an hour prior to the appointment. There it took around 15 min to finish the registration formalities.
3) I was given my rough work and the instructor started the tutorial. I thought PMP exam will be like same PREPCAST PMP exam simulator and didn’t read the tutorial and left it on the first page of the tutorial itself. Meanwhile i got engaged in my braindumping process. Later after 10 min of tutorial completed exam started automatically. Here i realized the mistake of not reading and understanding the tutorial. Throughout the exam i tried to highlight the important points in question and tried to strikethrough the wrong answers for the question i flagged. But unable to do as I didn’t go through the tutorial. Till now i didn’t know how to use that tool in PMP exam. I thought it will be same like PMPREPCAST.
4) Now is that I realized I will not have much chance of review as i don’t know how much of time i have to spent on reviewing (re-read whole question and re-understand all four answers and choose the best one).
5) Then I changed my strategy of completely understanding the question, understanding of options and choosing the best in one or multiple read in visit to the question (Means don’t want to come back again to the same question). Instead of revisiting the same question. Hardly i marked 15 questions for review which were very difficult to understand even spending more time.
6) First 10 questions is where I lost confidence as those were tough when compared to the rest of the exam. Later on i started gaining confidence. I took one break at 50th question in first 45 minutes of the exam as i understood i am deviating from understanding the question properly. This break helped me to come back again to my normal concentration.
7) I got only last 15 min for the 15 questions and changed around 5 questions from my previous answers.
Note: In the examination hall other exam aspirants may require them to type fast for their respective exams which creates disturbance to us because of their speed typing. Use sound proof Headphones provided to you in those times. Calculators will be provided by the institute if you request while at registration.
ALL the Best Guys
