Thank you to the PM Prepcast Team for your help in passing the exam. I received AT/AT/AT/AT/BT. Still salty about that BT but I will get over it.
I started studying in late July for the exam. After scheduling the exam for mid-November, I got to work watching all of the lectures and taking notes. I finished all of the lectures in 6 weeks which left me about 10 weeks to take practice exams and review those results. I took 7 practice exams (not the ITTO one) and averaged 84%. I treated every exam like the real thing, did not look at notes or reference materials. I wanted to make sure that had trained hard so that the exam was easy. I felt confident going into the exam and would not have felt as conformable if I didn't know the format or style of the exam, so the Exam Simulator was key.
I did believe that the exam was harder than the exam simulator. During a practice exam, I would mark between 40-60 questions to come back and review if I wasn't 100% confident in my answer. On the real exam, I marked about 100-120 (didn't count) as I was unsure about the correct answer. Not sure how you practice for that, just my opinion.
Finally, since I am a visual learner and try to recognize patterns, I made this Excel sheet which helped me learn some of the ITTOs and the patterns. It can be definitely improved upon, so hopefully someone will be able to improve it (such as making the options into a list). On the side, you type your Input, Tool&Tech, or Output and the chart will highlight where those are located. Be careful if you put in an word for all three, as it will highlight all of them. Additionally, you only need to type some of the word, but as a result, it doesn't differentiate between Approved Change Request and Change Request since both strings include the word Change Request. Hopefully it helps someone to see emerging patterns.
Good luck and stay at it.
