I am quite happy to share good news that I passed PMP on Dec 21^st, 2012 and scored Proficient in all 5 areas.

It gives me immense pleasure to share my LLs with this forum as many people has helped me on leading me to this success path. Special thanks to Rajesh Nair & Abhishek for their consolidated notes which helped me for last minute brush up.

Background

I am a project manager in Software Company located at Singapore and have around 4+ yrs of project management experience and overall experience of 8yrs.  Main intention to take this exam is that I was challenged by me peers and superiors to prepare & take up the exam within 30days as my 2 major projects were deliverables during end of Oct 2012, so had some time to prepare myself for this challenge.

Preparation background

I started my preparation in Nov 2012 when I took 35hrs of contact hours from PMStudy including their package of 3 mock tests. I would highly recommend their contact hours & mock test package as their standards almost matches the real exams.

During first of Nov 2012, I took PMI membership and submitted my application which got through without any audit. I put my target date for exam as Dec 21^st and prepared a plan (Microsoft Project) for extensive preparation for next 1month.

Preparation Materials

Prepared myself in the following order-

 Overall, I spent around 3-4 hrs on week days and 8-10 hrs on 5 weekends.

Mock Up exams and Scores

Started taking mock up exams during last two weeks of exams i.e. from 3^rd Dec 2012 onwards and was able to take the below exams during weekends.

Last Three days before Exam

Glanced through PMZilla LLs & www.deepfriedbrainproject.com/ for PMP tips and read Rajesh Nair notes. Was confident that would hopefully blast the exam!

Didn’t read anything from 20^th evening onwards and was completely relaxed for next day exam.

Exam Day

My exam was scheduled for 4:00PM and reached center at 3:30PM and was immediately allowed to take the examination.

During initial training of 15min, I dumped formulas and Pg43 in PMBOK on the sheet provided. I planned to take just one break after 100 questions and allocate atleast 30mins for reviewing the marked up questions.

Below is the rough time taken during the exam-

Overall pattern of the exam were as below-

There were around 4 questions directly on ITTOs, 15 Questions on EVM & 8 Questions on CPM.

I had marked up around 20 questions for review & Correct 5 questions for right answers. On click of end exam, I was prompted for Survey. I went and clicked Show results and waited patiently for 2mintues and got a beautiful window displaying ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ with the break-up as proficient in all the 5 groups.

What a big relief and thanked god with great happiness! 

My Tips

1)     

You can pass the exam without much struggle if you seriously take the exam as a project and plan properly atleast for a month.

2) Read just few popular training materials like Rita/Headfirst for understanding the PMI’sm concepts. Don’t confuse & panic by reading multiple training materials. Each of them has their own way of guiding you to the exam.

3)   Take atleast 3-4 full length mock exams to get the brief idea about the exam will be. [This exercise is must & highly recommended]

4)   Take the exam with calm & peace, without much hassle and confusion. Just stick on to your brief plan and proceed accordingly.

That’s all folks. Do let me know if you have any questions or need any help for your exam preparations and I would be glad to help you guys out.