I am so relieved.
Coming down to the days before the exam i felt stressed. Felt like I didn’t study enough or could have done more. My Simulator exam scores were so so - but I decided to stick with it and it went well!!
My lessons learned:
1. Stay honest to the material - in the beginning of my journey I thought I could just read the PMBOK 7 - which I did In it’s entirety and then be ready for the exam. I knew i needed to do some practice exams and my colleague recommended PM prep cast since it had multiple tests and quizzes and he told me the podcasts were really helpful. So I signed up. And truly, the quality of the podcast was next level.
Having it handy on my phone so I could move around, without having to be stuck infront of a computer allowed me to power thru them.
2. Practice Practice Practice - even though i learned so much from the podcasts themselves, the simulator is really where i understood the material and how the exam would feel like. I also did one practice test on the RMC simulator, and PM prep Cast simulator is far superior. Mainly because- after an exam I was able to review the incorrect answers, and the simulator gave detail explanation for the correct answer - but tells you why the other options were incorrect. So reviewing the incorrect answers was actually studying. The PMBOk reference was also available per question answer - so it made it really easy.
3. Sign up for the exam early - i chose to do it in a center just to be safe. But the dates were not plentiful ( i thought there would be all sorts of timeslots, etc) but these centers Pearson vue - do all types of exams - not just PMP so it is all by daily capacity. So I had to choose my exam date even after doing only some quizzes.
The main selling point are the quizzes. Finding 4 hours for a practice test, with a full time job and a family and other responsibilities was difficult. But with the quizzes you can still spend an hour or 2 daily doing some questions and reviewing the answers. Reading up topics I got wrong etc.
some days, all I did was review incorrect questions from previous exams I took, that way when I did get a free 4 hours, which turned out to be about 1 time per week - i was still able to get solid hours of study/ review by doing an hour here, 2 hours there.
Thank you PM prep cast team & Cornelius!!!