Hi Everyone,
I passed my PMP exam on 19th November with overall and individial 'Above Target' in all the 5 process groups in my first attempt.
My PMP journey:
I prepared for the exam in the span of almost 2 months. I referred to PMBOK, Rita Mulcahy and Head First.
I spent significant time on reading and re-reading the chapters. Read PMBOK at least thrice, read Rita's book once and skimmed through on the day of the exam and Head first in between when I wanted to better understand the concepts.
During the preparation, I spent significant time trying to memorize ITTOs but failed miserably and then started focuing on understanding the logic behind it. Once I started giving the mock tests I realised it's absolutely not necessary to memorize the ITTOs and with logic you can easily answer the ITTO questions.
I started pretty late with the mock exams and couldnt complete the free ones as well as the paid ones. My scores were as below
Simplilearn Free PMP® Mock Exam - 68% (This was just after my 1st reading)
Edwel Mock Exam - 86%
PM Exam Simulator Paid Exam Scores were - 82.5%, 78%, 78.5%
I would highly recommend the PMP Exam Simulator to PMP aspirants. It really helped me get a feel of what kind of questions I may come across in the exam and also uncover my knowledge gaps. The detailed description provided for the answers helped me understand the concepts even more deeply.
Exam had a mixed difficulty level. Few questions I could eliminate wrong answers easily, few it took a lot of thinking.
Few important lessons from my experience are :
1) Though you will find a lot of study approaches and lessons learned across different platforms on the internet, it may not always suit you and you need to develop your own study strategy and method that best suits you.
2) Start giving mock tests as soon as you are done with your 1st reading, it really helps understand the knowledge gaps and simultaneously prepares you well for the exam.
Good luck everyone! I would be happy to respond in case of any questions.
Warm Regards,
Snehal
