Hi all,

First time poster, long time follower.

My studying began in March, here is the path I followed:

1. Bought Rita's and Andy's books

   a. Read through Andy's book twice (Read 1-3 Chapters per week)

   b. Revisited the book countless times over the month

2. Got PMBOK from Friend

  b. Read through PMBOK once (Read 1-3 chapters per week)

  c. Revisited the book when I felt more attention needed in a certain area

3. Spent 2 hrs virtually every night April 1-May 14

4. Sat and Sun 6-8 hrs per day

5. May 11-14 took PMStudy exams 1-4 (took one each day and spent the remainder of the day reviewing all questions even correct ones)

  a. The PMStudy exams are a little tougher than what I experienced in the real exam

  b. I really recommend at least taking the free one if not all for a true assessment

  c. I never scored above a 69% on any of the mock exams from PMStudy.  I’m NOT recommending anyone take the PMP exam based on my experiences!

6. Ended up only using Rita's book to review the three primary areas of study; Time Scope and Quality

7. Used Rajesh’s notes as a final prep/study tool.  Thanks to you Rajesh!!

  a. I highly recommend using his notes, they are; concise, accurate, well placed and are relevant

Thoughts:

Studied very little day before, maybe 2 hrs

Arrived 45 minutes early, started exam 30 minutes early

Wrote down Process and Knowledge area matrix during “tutorial” (helped keep me calm just knowing the list was there)

Exam was not overly tough, 4 moderately proficient and 2 proficient scores

2 math equation questions that I actually had to use the formula for (I had written down all 13 equations during the “tutorial”)

Most questions were very short, one or two sentences

Quite a few ITTO questions that required you to know the flow of the processes

A lot of Quality and Change Control questions

Several very specific Code of Ethics questions

You must know the flow ITTO not just the topic areas

Good luck and God Speed to all of you!

John