Hi - 

I only found this community a few weeks ago, and have been lurking quietly as I studied.  It's a great resource, and thank you for being here!  Other folks' lessons learned helped me greatly, so I'd like to say thank you and pay it forward.

My master's covered many of the concepts in project management, so I thought it wouldn't be that difficult to take the test.  I took a bootcamp at the end of 2010, but found out after I was enrolled (it was through work) that it was designed to prepare you to study, not prep you for the test.  So I knew I needed to study more, although the boot camp covered the educational requirement.  Life events happened, and I didn't get to the test.

I really started to prep in Sept.  I started with the PMBOK, of course, and Crowe's How to Pass the PMP on your first try.  His was good, but mostly restated the PMBOK with some handy visuals and a bit of explanation.  A friend at work recommended Rita Mulcahy's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP.  He said if I got 90% on her questions I was in pretty good shape.  I think his recommendation saved me.  The last thing I used was the Mulcahy Fast Track.  Expensive, very expensive, but worth it in my opinion.  I passed them all, but was usually in the mid 70% to mid 80%.

The Mulcahy book is wordy, and I did not end up playing most of the games or doing many of the exercises, except in my head.  What it does nicely, however, is explain what the world looks like on a project according to PMI.  Moreover, what it looks like from the perspective of a project manager for the specific type of projects PMI has as a baseline for the test (large, multinational, private industry projects), particularly if that private industry large-scale PMI works every applicable process correctly.  It also explained the various buzz words well enough that I could remember them - memorization is not my best skill.  I read it once, skimmed it once, and flipped through it the morning of the test.   I took practice exams regularly using Fast Track, but only short ones - 20 questions, give or take.  I did take one full length test.  Even though there are some 1600 questions, you will see ones show up more than once, but it wasn't a huge problem.

On test day they also gave me the option of starting early, which surprised me.  The test room was mustier than I expected, so be prepared if you have allergies.  I used every second of the exam time, which was shocking to me - I'm usually a very fast test taker.

I set the calculations in an order that made sense to me and flat out memorized them.  I practiced writing them down in a specific order.  I've heard people argue for and against it, but it helped me.  I had many earned value calculation questions, and most of them were not straightforward - you had to work your way through a couple of calculations to use the variables given to get the one requested.  For me, at least, it helps when I'm thinking "how in the world do I get there?" to have everything in front of me.  Most of the questions were very much like the ones in Fast Track.  A few were just weird.  A couple referenced highly specific terms I'd never heard of.  

My advice is to memorize the calculations, learn the buzz words, and take practice tests.  I didn't take every single one out there, but I used the Fast Track, and I took the 75 question test, and I think they both helped break up the studying and helped me focus.  I'll remember something very clearly if I got it wrong!  If you use a bootcamp, have a good idea of the processes, ITTOs and so forth before  you start.  I didn't memorize the ITTOs, but I knew them well enough to be able to intuit them.  More than the processes I found I needed to know the various theories and concepts mentioned briefly in the PMBOK and explained more fully in Rita.  Keep your calculations - you may end up being able to use them for more than one question.  Keep an eagle eye out for trick questions or ones where you're lookong so hard for the answer that you miss the simple one that is the easily overlooked next step/best thing.

At the end, I had no idea how I did.  I marked a lot of questions.  I picked answers I thought were correct, but could make an arguement in my head for one (or more) of the other choices.  There were a couple I flatly had no clue on.  Waiting for the results to come up - and dealing with the survey in the interim - was rough!  But then it came up.  I had 4 Ps and 1 MP.

Best of luck to everyone.   I hope my story helps.