Passed PMP today 26-03-2012 first try !

I am pleased to share that I passed the PMP exam today on 26-03-2012 in my first try. I was rated proficient in all the areas except closing where I got MP.


I studied for 3 months. I used PMBOK 4th ed (3 or 4 times) and PM Prepcast (once) as the main study materials. I had ESI power prep book, slides and questions from my company but used only the slides and questions there.


I tried only the free exams on the internet like examcentral, pmstudy (1), simplilearn, Oliver L, and few others. I scored 75-85% on average on these exams.


I am into full time IT project management for a captive unit and my on job experience helped in studies and exam.


I completed the exam in 3 hrs and marked about 10 questions for review and changed only 2 in review. I just wanted to finish the exam and know the result, hence did not spend the remaining time reviewing many things.


Overall the quality of the exam questions was very good. There were many situational questions and you need to read it all and understand completely by removing unnecessary information and extracting all the required information to select the best answer. You must read and understand PMBOK. I did not memorize all the ITTOs but from the question and answers I was able to find the right choice. I mean I cannot right them all on the paper but when given as the choices for a question I would recall the right ones.


Thanks to the guys here who posted here and guided me in my preparation. All the best to the guys who still need to pass the exam. Study well and it will pay off ! It is not a rocket science.


Regards,


Kapil Gahlot


 


 

Hi Kapil,


First of all Congrats , I had few questions


1. How many question from ITTO?


2.How many question using formulas?


Can you please let me know which are areas which we need to take care while studying .


Thanks in advance.


Regards


 


 

Thanks Nitin. I cannot get into the exact exam details as you per PMI policy.


1) At high level I can say that about 10% of the questions are direct ITTOs and another 10% ITTO + Process/process group combination ( I.e., if you are doing x activity (indirect reference to a Tool) or using y output etc. which process you are doing or which process group you are in?)


2) You can expect at least 1 or 2 question per formula listed in the PMBOK. I did not have any question with a formula outside PMBOK.


Areas to focus:


1) Change request process


2) EV analysis


3) Risk response strategies - need to know exactly what they are and when to use them.


4) Stakeholder Management


5) CPM (forward pass + backward pass)


Regards,


Kapil