Hello everyone!!

Like many others, I have been a silent reader of these forums which helped me immensly to clear the exam and hence wanted to share my experience.

Materials used: PMBOK 4th ed., Rita's 7th ed.

Practice material: Rita's FasTrack, PMStudy 4 exams, other free stuff on the internet

How I began: First was to scour the internet to find what is relevant, experiences of others, read forums & discussions, etc. to got a fair idea. To say PMZilla was the lifeline is an understatement. I did a trade-off of various options and finally bought Rita's. Second was to book a slot. I registered for the exam in Feb and thought of giving myself two months to see how it goes. I planned for a slot in May with the exact date to be decided in April. Third, was to obviously start!!

Preparation: My going was extremely slow for the first 2 months. I managed to read through PMBOK and about 80% of Rita's by end of April. I decided to book a slot hoping that it will give me a momentum and it did. I booked a slot on 31st May.

The second reading of PMBOK and Rita's was more rigorous. I read both books simultaneously chapter-by-chapter. I also did the FasTrack questions along with the questions at the end of chapter in Rita's book. As I went through the exams, I made a note of my weak areas. Those were Communication, Procurement, Ethics and particularly Closing Group. I re-read these chapters and did the questions again and was then fairly confident. I couldn't by-heart all ITTOs and therefore decided to dedicate a complete wall of my house to it. I pasted all the ITTOs in big font and visualized how these fit into each other. Clearly marking out the similarities and inter-connections did help me a lot to apply logic to remember them. My first-pass of FasTrack scored around 73%-77% and 60%-65% in my weak areas. After re-doing them, all scores were >80%.

Final Lap: I started doing the practice exams from 12th of May...too close I though for the exam, but it worked for me. I first did the free exams of PMStudy, Oliver and a couple others. The scores were around 73%-77%. I was sort of depressed as I scored handsomely in FasTrack. Most questions I did not score were in Closing Grp and it started to become a mental block for me. Again went back to my material and read these items again. Bought PMStudy 4 exams after reading reviews in PMZilla.

I prepared a tight schedule for my last 9 days. It became hectic as I scheduled myself for two exams each day to go with my job where the work was a little heavy. I pretty did all free exams available irrespective of their reviews or rating - Oliver (again), Edwel, Tutorial Point, Certgear, Certchamp, etc etc. Beyond a point, I felt there was no point writing these exams as the questions were pretty much the same. I could easily remember most questions. The PMStudy exams were very useful. These exams cover quite minute areas of PMBOK that it will force you to pay extreme attention to detail. FasTrack has good variety and volume of questions but some of them are unnecessarily verbose. Oliver's are pretty tough but test all areas thoroughly. In all, cumulatively I would have done about 2800+ practice questions.

As much as you would want to improve on your weak areas, do not forget to build on your strengths. For example, I work in a Six Sigma role and therefore Quality Mgmt area comes naturally to me. I made sure that I scored above 90% in this area and ironed out any gaps in this area. Also, my other strength was numericals and my target here was to score 100% which I always did in my practice exams.

Exam day: Do not undermine the preparation logistics for your exam day. Although I did visit the exam center the day before, heavy traffic on my exam day caused fair bit of concern. I managed to reach at 8:40AM for my 9:00AM exam...by my standards, that was very close. Got some time to settle down and then the time came. My seat was not very comfortable as it was right next to an aircon, no alternate seat was available. Against popular belief, I did not do any braindump in the first 15 minutes. The preparation varies from person-to-person and therefore keep things that you are comfortable with. I would not advise to skip any braindump approach but use something that will suit you.

In all my practice exams, I never took more than 150-160 minutes for 200 questions. In the main exam though, I took 202 minutes to complete the exam. Mentally, I had to deal with the stress that I am going slower than my usual self. I took a quick 2.5 minutes break after the 100th question. Had a quick bite of the dairy milk chocolate and got back into my seat.

Getting through 200 questions became a bit of a slog at the end. I marked around 20 questions and reviewed them during the last 38 minutes I had; completed the review with 7 minutes to spare. Took a pointless 2 minute gap and then submitted the exam. The screen went blank for about 5 heart-stopping seconds. The 9-question survey then appeared which I completed in about 30 seconds. The screen flashed CONGRATULATIONS and I thanked God for it!!

Questions: In my opinion, the questions on actual exam had quite less resemblance to the practice exams. The PMStudy came close with Rita's being a good representation. Remembering all ITTOs thoroughly will help you get about 5-8 questions correct while also saving time as they do not take more than 20-30 seconds to answer. Most 'numerical' questions may not require calculation at all; ensure you understand what is being asked. There were a good number of questions related to conflict-resolution strategies (and quite confusing also). Only a couple of ethics questions and more than 75% of questions were situational.

Overall: Ensure you read PMBOK at least once thoroughly. It may be a very dry book to read but you will appreciate it after you write the exam. Be good at ITTOs. Get as many as practice questions under your belt. It may not dramatically improve your knowledge but will definitely give you a lot of confidence going into the exam.