after 31st Exam.... complexity ? ****Attention Please*****

we hav to be more careful now ....i think

now even qwestions and complexity of exam q will be selected based on indutry and role and candiate experience(?) please gothorough this... which is  published by PMI ( 2nd & 3rd paras of introduction)

try to interpret the content:

http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP/Updates-to-PMP-Certification-Exam/~/media/PDF/Certifications/PMP%20Examination%20Content%20Outline_2010.ashx

RP's picture

Interesting...

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Exactly.

I've posted a similar thread on the topic, urging failed candidates (advice applies to those that are yet to take exam) to read the PMI handbook carefully.

1. All questions do not carry equal weightage.

2. Level of exam difficulty appears to decided on basis of candidates profile.

There was no follow up on my thread.I thought if concerned candidates post their scores and professional profiles then we'd be able to dignose and get an approximate idea as what exactly PMI does for each exam or question set.

Anyway, I see lot of people still going by their mock scores and have a blind faith in the myth of 61% passing score.

Neither does PMI follows a score based passing criteria any more nor do they even implictly or remotely confirm 61% passing score.

 

RP's picture

This would be of great concern to me if I planned an exam post August.

i could have missed it .............

but all i am to understand here is that they dertermine a level of expected competence through the RDS and that is what they test against.

I think i am missing how the exam dynamically adjusts itself according to who is in the chair every time a new candidate sits down. Questions carry percentage weights, so if you get a ton of hard  questions you need to pass fewer of them to overall PASS, if you get a ton of easy questions you better nail them all correctly to PASS. While i cannot know or speak to distribution or level of difficulty, i believe my test was about 60% easy questions and 40% hard (maybe even 70/30).

 

I sat and passed in July 2011 (1st attempt). Of course, like everyone else, i used 80% as my goal in all practice tests. In my research i subscribed to the knowledge in the below links regarding scoring. Regarding practice test scores i too used the 80% mark, IT IS JUST A REFERENCE POINT FOR YOU. I came to realize that practice tests, if designed well, are like a weight set (dumbells, if you will) for your mind.

Practice tests serve several purposes.

1. They test content knowledge
2. They desensitize you to difficult or ambigious questions
3. They strengthen your mind and resolve for easy questions, difficult questions, and test duration.

An 80% on practice tests means, in general, your mind is strong for the test so you have a good chance of passing. I improved my practice test scores largely by learning to slow down and read carefully, this was a huge reason for my initial low scores.

An 80% on practice tests does not mean you will pass the exam because:

1. Questions are not assigned fixed points in the real exam
2. While the source content is the same the exam developers are different
3. PMP exam is the test - practice tests are exercises only. There is not a direct translation.

PLEASE READ EACH PART BELOW if you are interested in trying to understand how you will be scored. It helped me to better understand and better focus in preparation.
(I would copy and paste content but the site prevents that (and i am not about to transcribe)

Part 1
http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/2009/11/pmp-exam-passing-score-number-g...

Part 2
http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/2009/12/popular-myths-pmp-exam-pass-sco...

Part 3
http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/2010/04/best-kept-secret-of-pmp-certifi...

 

 

Well, the talk about exam dynamically adjusting itself against the candidate is purely based circumstantial "evidence".


As I posted elsewhere that I attended my first PMP contact program for the 35 PDUs way back in 2006. Naturally I've been in touch with folks that cleared the PMP exam and the ones that failed in our organization. 


I've seen too many suspect cases sailing through. I can understand architects, quality managers, configuration manager and even senior developers passing the exam because these people assist project managers in day to day project management activities, and many of these people function with considerable amount of decision making authority vested with them.


What about developers with questionable performance records? I do not buy the suggestion that a bunch of people, that should not be in our industry at the first place, are suddenly sufficiently versed with project management knowledge. AND THE FACT that these people perform equally miserable when made part of the project management team simply confirms my line of thinking.


On the other end of the spectrum are the veterans. I work with Siemens and we have project managers that manage really large projects (airports, rail networks, ports, etc.). How do these folks fail the PMP exam? I know a program manager with 6 failed attempts and a senior project manager with 8 failed attempt.


My suspicion is that the questions sets (i.e. an exam) are graded once they enter the question bank which makes it possible to fetch a possible set matching a profile.


Not only that there seems to some fine tuning missing, hence it allows inexperienced people to get in towards the lower band while the upper band seems to be bit too difficult even for genuine cases.

Deleted. Repeat Post

have we seen ....


-inexperienced candidates fail?


-highly experienced candidates pass?


 


I too have witnessed highly experienced candidates repeatedly fail the exam but i believe there are many variables i would target before i began theorizing about PMI profiling candidates