I was a silent reader of Pmzilla.I passed the PMP exam today with 5 P's few days back.

I work in Ny, and My journey for PMP started 2 years ago in 2012 .I attended a PMP training course in 2012.But unfortunately due to work commitments and laziness could not fill the application till last september.

Around last year July I suddenly got the motivation for doing the PMP and submited the application during september 2013.Now the exam syllabus was changed and my materials and books from previous trainings were of no use.Also ,I did not want to refer them since I was not sure how much was changed from previous version.

I started reading Rita's book in december 2013. I tried to study it instead of just reading and it took more time than I anticipated.I read it two times by April.Then I registered in the PMPForsure site and took the free test.I failed with around 62% and realized that I am week in the actual concept and iTTO .I registered and bought the all the tests from pmpforsure and that uncovered so many shortcomings in my study refering only Rita's book.I bought head first PMP after seeing the reference by someone in PMZIlla.I went through head first next and that solidified my gaps especially in schedule,cost and risk knowledge areas.Head first was really helpfull in CPM and EVM area. I also got a 500 PMP question book by Sean Whitaker and practiced questions from that.I also bought some apps with questions from applestore to practice while I commute on train.I also watched some videos from Saket of izenbridge on project selection methods like IRR,ROI etc.

Next I tried the PMP tough questions from PMZilla and I could score only about 50-55 %.This actually affected my confidence and I postponed my plan for giving the exam and started reading PMBOk guide.Reading PMBOK guide helped me in understanding the ITTO concept and everything started to make sense.After finishing the PMBOk guide I got a very good idea of all process inter relations and inputs and outputs.Now I felt like I am ready for the exam.
By this time it was June and World cup soccer was starting.Being a big soccer fan I wasted lot of time in watching soccer matches and could put only very few hours for PMP preparation.by July first week I got the reminder letter that my one year validation period is ending in september.I was tensed and knew that I might have to pass it in the first try itself because hardly any time was left.
The day worldcup ended I booked the exam for august 18 and ordred RMC 's fast track software.I also bought Pmpforsure exams again and started getting 75-80 % on each of the tests. By that time my fasttrack software also arrived and started practicing on knowjledge area tests and I started scoring around 83-85 % in each of the knowledge area in the first attempt itself.I also did a super PMP and pmp mock exam on fast track and scored about 86%.
I did not practice any free tests from any sites.I practised around 1500 questions from RMC , 1000 questions from pmpforsure and 500 questions from sean whitaker book.
I also purchased and practised the PM maths formulas and 100 maths questions from pm-prepcast which helped me in memmorizing all formulas.

By the time I had done all mock tests and reviews I had only one week left.These mock tests and question reviews takes a lots of time than you realize.

During the last week before the exam I was mostly concentrating on understanding ITTO and trying to make a mental map of all process interactions and all tools and techniques in each knowledge area.i was mostly going through PMBOk guide since I felt more confident reading the PMBOK guide at that time so that no topics will be missed out.I also gone through PMBOK guide appendix glossary's and made sure that I know most of the meaning and explanation of each glossary item.

My problem areas were stakeholder and communication management during my preparation.

Now coming to the exam itself:

I passed with 5 P's but the exam was really tough for me.Until the congratulation message came on screen I was not sure of passing and was really tight on time.
The first fifteen question were really confusing and tough and I had to mark all of them for review.(Never got the chance to revisit them at the end).I have read from many people that they finished 200 questions and reviewed 30 questions at the end.I wonder How they managed to get the time for that.

Most of the questions are situational questions and they test our analytical ability.PMI really test whether you really understood the PMBOK processes and the process flow.Some questions make you think a lot and could even take few minutes to make a decision on correct answer.So time management is the key and I did not manage my time well.I spent too much time on some questions.I was very slow in answering first 100 questions and had to rush on the next 100 questions.
By the time I reached 200th question it was 3 hours 58 minutes and had only 2 minutes left .I had a lengthy evm question previously which I had to skip and come to 200th question.I went back to that question but could not finish the calculation because my time was up.
I answered almost all the questions thinking logically and applying my PMBOK guide knowledge acquired in the past 9 months.So I was somewhat confident when the time up message came up on the screen.

To sum it up ,there is no use wasting time in memorizing any book page by page.You have to understand the processes and how each knowledge area compliment each other.They are testing how we apply the knowledge in a real life situation.