I was a regular visitor of this forum and I religiously read all the LL’s posted past 3 months. Sharing my experience as it might help others like me.

I have been thinking about PMP for few months and started my preparation somewhere around 20th July. I was looking for a 35 contact hour program and that’s when I stumbled to PMZilla forum, looking at suggestions I enrolled into Simplilearn 30 day program. I completed that by end of July. The videos they provided were ok but they gave me the necessary 35 PDU’s.

Next I moved on to Rita, read every chapter line by line; I mostly skipped the exercises she had within the chapter and went directly to answers but I attempted the chapter end tests, I think the average I got was around 75%. My opinion is that Rita is very wordy but it helped me understanding the concepts. I gave whole august to Rita as I was reading it in slow pace and completed it by August end. I never touched Rita after this.

Then I started on PMBOK again read it line by line and completed it in 15 days and finished it by Sep 15. PMBOK is very to the point and may feel boring to some people but it’s the bible and every line is a potential question, so my suggestion is read it very carefully and reread any chapter if needed.

Now it was the time for trying my hands on some tests these were the ones I attempted –

Exam Central 75%

PM Study Free 76%

Brainbok 50 Qs 68%

Simplilearn 71%

PMP for sure 66%

After every test I reviewed the wrong answers and noted down the topics where I had gaps and read them again from PMBOK. Also realized I was constantly getting low % in M&C and Closing so read those process groups again. I was disappointed with my score in PMP for sure so read full PMBOK again and this time completed it in 3 days. I had not taken any notes so far so took some notes this time for my last days. It was just 3 pages on the things I keep forgetting every time e.g. motivation theories, Delphi tech etc.

Scheduled my exam for Oct 20th just one week back and used that week to attempt these tests and review the gaps again –

Headfirst 80%

Oliver 75 66%

Oliver 175 74%

Pmzilla tough 30 67%

Appeared for the main exam and I passed with 3 P in Initiating, Planning and Executing and 2 MP in M&C and Closing. My take on exam is that it was easier than I expected, only a few questions were like very wordy and also the choices were less confusing, what I mean is for most questions I could easily point out the correct choice as other 3 were really out of context. There were quite a few numerical I guess around 15 or so. In short I think the exam was close to PMStudy it was definitely easier that PMP for sure.

It was along post but I didn’t want to leave anything. I would like to thank everyone in this forum for who helped me directly or indirectly; also to my wife for supporting me and keeping me motivated all the way, couldn’t have done without it.

Please let me know if any questions I will be happy to help.