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Topic History of : Passed exam with a week of full study!

Max. showing the last 6 posts - (Last post first)
1 year 6 months ago #29810

PO YU TING

PO YU  TING's Avatar

congratulation !!! very strong !!
1 year 6 months ago #29789

Elizabeth Harrin

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That's such great news, congratulations! Thanks for taking the time to come back and let us know.
1 year 7 months ago #29761

ELIZABETH NAICKER

ELIZABETH NAICKER's Avatar

Hi guys I found this forum extremely helpful when I was studying so I wanted to pass on what I can!

1. I took 4 work days off work and studied each day + the weekend so I had 6 days of full study and prep before the exam. I do not necessarily recommend this approach unless you are in a time crunch since ALL I did was eat, breathe and sleep the content for the exam. I also has my husband who prepped food and took care of everything else so I could give every second to this in those 6 days.

2. I spent the first 1.5 days on the Agile Guide - first I spent half a day speed reading it and then I used - which I highly recommend - the Youtube video 200 AGILE PMP Questions and Answers - the BEST Preparation for the Exam! by David McLachlan as a means of studying the guide since it helps you focus on specific areas. Master this book and Agile guys since it is 50% of the paper (as at July 2022 ) this is essential to your success so make sure you get this down. Watch this in the bathroom or on your walk or something and keep refreshing it so you know this well.

3. I then took 2.5 days for the PMBOK- this was how I managed to get through it. I studied a knowledge area and immediately did practice questions on that knowledge area only. 10-20 questions until I got a good result and could see what areas were focussed on. I repeated this for each knowledge area until I covered all of them. Mind you this took as I said me consistently being focussed and not distracted by anything else stopping only to eat and sleep. And what I also had the opportunity to do was do a fast walk/jog every hour. This really helped me study actually - I felt that I was able to retain things and keep going!

4. I then spent 2 days on the exams. YOU MUST READ THE ANSWERS! This is key make sure you read the answer even if you got the question right sometimes we actually might have a different reason which brought us to the same answer in that particular instance but may not necessarily be the right reason in the next circumstance, or we may have guessed - either way read all the answers so you are actively learning. Because this took so much time I managed 2 exams and I believe I was at 69-70%. But since I had a time constraint I had to just write the exam and pray for the best!

5. I did the online exam with Pearson VUE who were absolutely terrible in service, I spoke to someone who admitted me in and then when I requested someone to chat to to check if I could go to the bathroom no one responded the entire exam, suffice to say I basically needed to pee the entire exam and had to push through! Awful service! For those taking your exam this way this is how it works:

- you register online
- you then get contacted by someone who checks the room you are in and table and you send them pics of the space and they add you to a queue of people who are waiting to enter the exam as well. (you can have water but no paper or cell phone or books etc on your desk)
- you need to do a system check, if any apps are open or do not close you will not be able to start the exam. My Skype posed an issue and I could not fix it so I had to uninstall it!
- you then enter the exam and you will have 2 breaks. Once you finish the first section and second 10 minutes each. If you decide to keep going you can choose to skip your break but that does not give you extra time. Once you enter the break you cannot go back and change anything in the first section so make sure you are done.
-the proctor is the person on the other end of the chat button which is in the exam ribbon at the top - as I said no one responded to me the entire time.
-when the exam ends - either when you are done or time runs out then- you will immediately see whether you passed or not. I received a message along the lines of Congrats on your PMP certification. There was no message saying "you passed" which is what my brain expected so I actually did initially understand that I had passed!

6. I found the exam itself to be extremely challenging , this is of course a personal view. The questions were long and took a while to read and understand and then the answers were also long so that took time as well. I finished the first section in good time. I timed myself by watching the clock on the screen and using the on screen calculator I knew how much time I had. The second section is where I actually ran out of time and realized I needed to speed things up. I however went into the last section with like half the time I needed! I decided that there was nothing I could do except just try my best but honestly at that point I was actually starting to doubt if I had passed or done enough to pass looking at how many questions I had left. This is also psychological as well when you start to doubt yourself! My advice is to ignore those voices and keep going because you actually don't know what could happen! I ran out of time with 10 questions unanswered and I passed well above target.

7. My advice when answering the questions would be to think about them realistically since you have learned what you can from the books and the questions will most likely be scenario based - so put yourself in the scenario and then go with the best answer. Trust me I struggled with this because to A LOT of questions all the answers were suitable and I needed to get to a most suitable which in my opinion the questions were so ambiguous even that was like just make a guess! There are questions though that you will be sure of and will be more obvious so nail those.

8. The exam was exhausting mentally (and physically for me as I needed to pee!) but it was a great feeling at the end when you have pushed through and get the result you want. Even if it takes a few attempts at the exam - don't give up just study more, practice more and give yourself grace and eventually you will do it!

Best of luck,
Nicole

OSP INTERNATIONAL LLC
OSP INTERNATIONAL LLC
Training for Project Management Professional (PMP)®, PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®, and Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)®

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