I just passed the PMP exam some hours ago, so I guess it'd be good to share my experience as many other people did. It must be accounted that I've done several high-profile certification exams in the last two years (CISSP, CCSP, CISM), so I am pretty used to these exams style, timing and types of questions.
My preparation materials were Rita Mulcahy book and PrepCast test exams. I prepared the exam in a couple of weeks, with some intensive testing the week before the exam, even though I have more than a decade of project management experience, so some things were pretty straightforward (not all of them, for sure).
I was scoring around 75%-80% on the simulator exams, and I completed 5 exams, if I recall correctly. My approach was to take an exam, mark all the doubtful questions, and then go for a deep review of the marked and wrong questions. That proved to be a very good approach. Before the exam, I was quite confident to pass it, but not as much as I had been in previous exams (PMP has a reputation of being hard, and I had spent two months preparing CISSP, that has also a reputation of being hard, so I was not really sure I was going to pass this time). Unlike other exams I had done from ISACA and (ISC)2, having three tries helped a lot to lower pressure.
Regarding the exam, the question style was, I'd say, exactly as the ones in the simulator. The length and description of the questions was spot on. Even though, I found some questions to be a little more trickier, but not much more. I guess the exam environment makes options harder to choose (you can fail at you home desk with no consequences, but in the exam things are somewhat different). I got two "Above target", two "On target" and one "Below target". I am waiting for the detailed results.
To finish, just a couple things.
Formulas is something that I was really scared of at the beginning of the study, but after some tests, I decided to memorize the simples ones (SV, CV, SPI, CPI, TCPI, etc.) and discardes most of the EAC formulas. Let's say I performed a cost-benefit analysis. Unless you have serious memory issues, you should not have any problem with memorizing 90% of formulas; if you leave the most EAC complex ones, the rest are really really easy. The importance relies on understanding that they mean, and assigning the correct values to the variables. Memorize those that you are capable of, and understand what the different variables mean. As Rita says in her book, you can pass the exam without memorizing any formula (but some are so easy that it's just senseless).
Also, I didn't memorized the whole PMP process list, inputs an outputs. I really don't like memorizing things. Sure, you have to be familiar with the process list and phases, but that will come after some study and practice, and (I think) memorizing will not provide you with a huge value for the exam, again in terms of cost-benefit. You have to *understand* what happens in each process and phase, what to do in each situation, and then apply what you know of project management. Tools and techniques are also easy to understand, in general. A problem appears? Ok, log it in the issue register. A stakeholder proposes a new feature? Change request. Something bad you had planned happens? Risk response. There's a repetitive problem? Root cause. You know the detailed work to perform? Fixed price contract. It's not as easy as that, sure, but after some study and testing, you should start seeing the patterns. Always in my opinion, don't worry too much about what *exactly* are the inputs and outputs of each process. Understand the process and the phase you are, who is involved, who is not, what you need, and what you expect to obtain. Also, secure potential questions learning about project manager styles, organization types (functional, weak matrix, strong matrix), PMO types, what means corrective/preventive/repair defect options, types of root cause diagrams, etc. I'd say you can get a good percentage of questions right applying a combination of common sense, option elimination and what you know (after study) of project management, but that's my sole experience.
In summary, you can pass the exam. Sure, you need to study, do testing and apply what you have learned, but it's not quantum mechanics.
