TOPIC: Passed PMP Exam on 1st Attempt

Exam Day
My exam center had folks taking other tests, and I was surrounded by folks who were typing like mad (maybe essay questions). It was very distracting to me! I see several Forum reviews about the PMP Exam being easier than the PrepCast Simulations. I had the opposite experience! I felt that the PMP Exam was much harder, which impacted my confidence slightly while taking the exam. One reason was because I felt that there were several questions that were poorly written and ambiguous. I also found it difficult to answer a question that includes both the PM Plan as well as a subordinate plan in the same set of answers. Moreover, I wish I had spent more time reviewing Charter, Scope and Stakeholders. It took me up to the very last few seconds to complete, and I did not take time for a brain dump, but pretty much knew the formulas anyway. Nevertheless, I came out with 3 Proficient and 2 Moderately Proficient.

My Simulation Result History: Exam 1/ 78%; Exam 2/ 90%; Exam 3/ 84.5%; Exam 4/ 86.5%

Preparation: I had purchased the PMBOK earlier and had started reading through it quickly. I started with a Risk Mgt course at my local PMI Chapter. Then I purchased Rita Mulcahy on a recommendation of someone in that class, which was great (and took the quiz after each section). Then I got the PrepCast which was absolutely WONDERFUL!! I actually outlined each lesson of the prepcast. I literally read the PMBOK cover to cover and highlighted it. Then I went back through my PrepCast outline while reviewing highlights in both the PMBOK and Mulcahy and created a final high level outline that summarized everything while trying to ensure I did not miss anything important. I then studied from the outlines and went back to the books if I had a question or wanted to retry a problem calculation.

After general information review I reviewed the PMBOK “Overview” Figures of each process and performed a special ITTO review making note of special tools as well as the flow of a few specific inputs and outputs. For instance I realized that Work Performance Data was typically and input to most Control processes while WP Information was an output (except in Integration Mgt). I learned the Table A1-1 PM Process Group and Knowledge Area Mapping cold and could recreate backwards and forwards.

Then I took the Simulated Tests at the end fairly close to when I was going to take the PMP Exam. After each test I would study where I was week and watched my test proficiencies shift back and forth based upon my most recent focus. Bottom Line is that I used the PMBOK, Mulcahy, PrepCast videos and PrepCast Test Simulations along with my own outlining and review to learn it pretty well. But I have also had several years of PM experience and actually like EVM the best, because the answers are less subjective.

On a final lighter note: Cornelius appeared in one of the videos, but I was waiting for Justine to show up in one and say Hi!

Walter,

Congrats on passing the exam and thanks for taking the time to post your experience and lessons learned to the forum. I am with you in that I thought the actual exam was much harder. So happy to have passed. Best of luck to you in your PM endeavors.

Cheers,

Mark

Dear Walter,

Congratulations on passing your PMP exam! And, as Mark mentioned, thank you for sharing your lessons learned.

I remember your valuable inputs thru our simulator Live Feedback^TM feature. As for the difficulty of the simulator vs actual exam, I believe it depends on many factors, mostly subjective. The interesting thing though, is that we are receiving many tickets from the Live Feedback^TM feature with feedback text saying that the question (the feedback was provided for) is ambiguous. This is exactly what you are saying in your post regarding the real exam: “there were several questions that were poorly written and ambiguous.” We are trying to explain that the questions in our simulator were intentionally designed that way to mimic the real exam, so that the prospective PMP aspirants would be better prepared for it.

Now, thanks to your valuable lessons learned, we feel we are doing the right thing by insisting to keep those ambiguous questions on our simulator for the benefit of our customers.

Thanks again and enjoy your brand new PMP credentials!

Your point is well taken, Stan. That makes perfect sense. Thanks for your reply.