Last week I passed the PMP exam Above Target in All Five Areas! I am returning to share my lessons learned, as I've found these entries useful during my study. Many thanks to Prepcast for this forum and your materials, especially the exam simulations. I came to the PMP training not personally knowing any PMPs and with little idea of what to expect. I started study in May, watching about 55 hours of the prepcast series and taking notes as I did to try to adsorb content. Based on others recommendations, I bought Rita's PMP Exam Book, and read it through twice in June and July, completing all the exercises as I went. From there I completed all of the PMP quizzes and Rita's quizzes and checked all my wrong answers. I memorized the recommended formulas and practiced writing them out in a few quick minutes. I completed my first full exam simulation with PrepCast after so much study with about a month to go before the test and my first score was 55%. Disappointing. I went through every missed question and wrote out the correct principles and studied their sources in the PMBOK Guide. In additional exam simulations I was getting my scores into the mid/high sixties. Still not happy with my results, I doubled down on study and read the entire PMBOK, which I had avoided because I didn't like the digital format, taking notes on the outputs of each process. I memorized the processes and the order they occur. At about a week before taking the test, I began simulating testing conditions at home, ceasing eating at exam time and fasting until the exam would be over, limiting breaks from focused study or work to get used to the testing environment.
I agree with other commenters that the exam simulations and reviewing the reasons for correct answers is one of your most powerful study tools. All in all, I took five full exam simulations (highest score at home 79%) and I reviewed all questions I got wrong carefully. During the test, I took ~4 minutes to brain dump the formulas and my notes on the processes. I got through all 200 questions in about 3 hours and used the last hour to go back through marked questions carefully.
Here are my recommendations for someone starting out:
Do: Watch Ricardo Vargas video on the 49 processes to get an overview at the start of your study
Do: use more than one study material ie Prepcast modules and another source (I liked Rita's book but did not find it covered everything completely) and make time for taking more than one exam simulation with still more time to study so that you can learn what the questions are like and double down on any study you need.
Do: read the PMBOK guide, or at the very least the appendix at the back that goes through everything in order (Initiating, Planning, etc.). In my experience there were a number of little details in exam questions that were not covered by Rita's book and that I hadn't picked up in watching and note taking 50+ hours of PrepCast lessons. It's hard to spot wrong answers when you don't know which answer options are real and which are made up.
Do: Consider memorizing at least the 49 processes and their order in addition to the formulas. With some memory devices you can get it down and being able to place where a question in the exam is in the process should help you find the best answer out of the choices given several times. I did not memorize the ITTOs in their entirety but I did get really familiar with the outputs of each process.
Don't: Assume you got this with just 35 hours of training modules. The test questions are tricky and even a good learner will find the test difficult to pass without concerted effort beyond just the bare minimum training hours.
I hope this is helpful. After so much study and effort I was committed to doing everything in my power to pass on the first try and I am thrilled with my results. Good luck out there.
