Yesterday I passed the PMP on the first try. I prepared using the pm prepcast, the PM PrepCast exam simulator and the pmbok guide. I watched all of the knowledge area videos, took notepads full of notes on the content and created my own flashcards. I went over the flashcards every day. I did not read the entire pmbok guide, but i did read most of it. I was worried as I took the first 30 or so questions of the exam. I found it to be a bit harder than i expected and here is why. I took 90% of the exam simulator questions and pretty much averaged around 80% on all of the 1600 or so questions I took. I felt good going in. In the exam simulator you are usually able to pretty easily narrow down the option choices to 2. On the actual exam you are able to do this as well for the most part. The difference is, that on the actual exam, it is a little harder to then determine the best answer out of the two options. I would say that you need to have a good understanding of what the 47 process groups do, not just what they are called. When they want to ask you about process groups, they are going to describe what the process is doing rather than what it is called.
