Yesterday, I was browsing through this forum looking for last-minute advise (made me more nervous than anything else). And today I'm a PMP. Just passed this afternoon. On first try and most importantly 1 week before my exam eligibility periode ended. And that was not because I spent all year learning. I just like to procrastinate. If I had failed I would have been out of luck.. :-)

Anyway, here are some comments for everyone who does not have time to read 4 different books, do flash cards and prepare fancy study notes and attend online prep courses (I do lead a PMO in real life though so that experience has definitely helped me in getting some questions right intuitevely). Here is what worked for me: I read Rita's book once and did the exams at the end of each chapter (once). During the past 3 weeks I signed up for www.pm-exam-simulator.com (70$ or so with discount). I took many small quizzes in the simulator (20 or 30 questions) when I had 30 minutes or so and would look up things I got wrong in the PMBOK guide (they give a nice pmbok reference for each response; the explanations they provide in the simulator on each response are not so great). I also did two of the 200-question exams and only scored 72%/75%. IMO this speaks for the the quality and difficulty of the questions in the simulator. By contrast I also did the free Headfirst PMP exam (they have great explanations on each answer btw) and got 87%. It felt really easy compared to the PM-Exam-Simulator (and the real exam today!). The simulator felt much closer to the real exam and I'm glad I used this one to prepare. Actually, I got better scores (at least judged by proficiency levels) in the exam today than in the simulator exams:

Initiation - Moderately Proficient

Planning - Proficient

Execution - Moderately Proficient

M&C - Moderately Proficient

Closing - Proficient

Always had at least one area 'below proficient' in the simulator. Also, I am not a native English speaker so I have to say that I did spend the full 4 hours in front of the computer screen today without taking a single break (because I had to read some questions 4 times to REALLY get it) so don't get me wrong: It wasn't a walk in the park.

Anyway, hope this helps. Just know that you don't necessarily need to spend lots of time and money on different books and other resources to pass the exam. I'm off to enjoy a drink or two now.

cheers!