Hi Everyone,
Finally, after 4 months of almost-every-day-several-hours studying, I passed my PMP certification exam on the first attempt with AT score in every domain. I had completed 4 full-size exams in the prepcast simulator and answered all the remaining questions in quizzes. My score in the full-size exams was from 81% to 89.5%.
I didn't take off the day before as I really wanted to go through all the questions in the PrepCast at least once. Maybe it wasn't a good idea as I had to drive ~60 km to the test center the following day, so I had to wake up at 5 am. I was very nervous during the first hour and marked a lot of questions for review. But during the next 3 hours, everything was just fine.
I finished answering questions 40 minutes before the deadline and then reviewed the marked questions. In some of them I changed the answer I gave during the first look (especially those I marked during the first hour). It's really true - your subconsciousness works in parallel while you are answering the remaining questions. I think my body just didn't wake up yet, so be well prepared physically and mentally. Don't repeat my mistakes, take a good sleep the day before. Or select the exam slot in the afternoon if you can.
The material I used during the preparation: PMBOK first time a long time ago, and the second time in parallel with the prepcast video lessons (1. watch 2. read), PM podcast (very helpful), prepcast simulator.
Here is the process I personally find very efficient as well: do the exam or quiz --> analyze all the wrong and "not sure" questions --> spot any processes, ITTOs and other artifacts you don't fully understand -- > go search the information, understand them at good level -- > take another quiz or exam -- > repeat.
Another advice: while watching the prepcast lessons take notes, they will help you to find missing ITTOs or processes, and which video lessons you will want to watch again.
During my studies, I also tried to find the tools, techniques, documents, etc. previously unfamiliar to me in the real projects within my organization (this is a very big organization), and also deployed many of them in the projects within my unit or in the projects I managed. This was probably one of the most helpful studying strategies which create strong understanding and provides practice experience so you feel very comfortable seeing them in the questions =)
Thank you, PrepCast team, for your work of delivering such a nice tool for preparing for the PMP exam!
By the way, does anybody know how long it usually takes for the PMI to send the official exam results with diagnostics?
Kind regards,
Dmitry
