I just want to share my experience. I took my exam yesterday (21 Dec 2013) and passed with the following proficiency levels (2P's (Planning and Executing) and 3MP's). I have more than 8 year's proj mgmt experience, but was getting nervous when I read people do fail in the PMP. I started my preparation in Jan and after some time I realized I needed the 35 contact hours. I spent 2 months trying to gather all the required documentation. Initially I was trying for 5P's to prove myself as I have Project Mgmt experience. But when I took mock exams my confidence blew threw the window as I was just scoring around 70% which I thought was not enough. Then I lowered my expectation's and set the goal of just passing without regard to any proficiency levels. Then around July I realized that the exam is on the 5th edition and not 4th edition. So back to preparation. I went through the following: PMBOK guide and Rita, but I realized I was having hard time keeping any thing. I got Andy crowe which helped me retain most of the stuff (The reson was Andy crowes book has bigger font than Rita, which helped me retain most of the stuff. The structure of the book enhance retaining the stuff). I tried Kim Heldman. But I didn't like one bit. All the question were based on exact ITTO. She tests by giving 2 choices and almost exact. After going through Andy Crowe I went back to PMBOK and Rita which made sense. The only drawback of Andy Crowe was the questions were way too easy.

The other thing was when ever I got confidence and when I went through the forum and realized that people do fail my confience was going down.The day before the exam I thought I forgot every thing even the basic ITTO as I was very nervous. On the day of the exam I made it to the exam right on time due to traffic which increased my nervousness. During the 15 min, I tried the brain dump but was not successful. Once the exam started my confidence came back as I felt really comfortable with the questions and thought I would pass. I could finish the exam with 30 minutes left where I went through all marked questions. I marked way too many even though I was sure some were obvious.

Coming back to actual exam, it was heavily conentrated in the following order: Risk, HR, Cost, Procurement and Quality. 4 to 5 questions just on Tuckman and Risk Response. After I finished my heart was pounding thinking that I might fail the exam. Once I saw that I passed it was a huge relief. The day before I couldn't sleep properly. Now I lookback i realized that I was unnecessarily getting pysched. If you guys are confident on the concepts then you should be able to clear the exam. I felt the questions were kind of easy but not completely straight forward. If you know your stuff you should be able to clear the exam. only 1 question (Theory X) on the exam was not in PMBOK. All other questions came form PMBOK. Only 4 to 5 ITTO's were in the exam. If you guys having difficulty in memorizing then don't stress out.

Before the exam started, i jotted down mini mile stones as answering 25 questions very 30 mins. After every 25 questions I went and check marked them

If I had to redo I would do the following
1) Go through Andy Crowe
2) Go through PMBOK
3) Go through RIta (in General it covers not in Andy and PMBOK)
4) Take all the mock exams

I am glad I am done with the exam. Now I just have to maintain the PDU's
All the best