Hello All,

I accidently stumbled upon pmzilla site and it was very welcome & happy accident. The sheer amount of info available here is amazing...and which helped me a lot.. The chronology of event is as following,

1. Registered for PMP last year July and enrolled for PDUs through Celtum, Banglore ( I live in Mumbai)
2. Due to some reason or other they could not arrange a programme in mumbai for long time & finally it happened in August last year.
3. Completed my registartion in December 2012. I was studying little bit through Rita's 4th edition in between but nothing serious. My target was to appear for exam before March 2013.
4. Got a new job in September, where I had to manage a very challanging overseas project so got extremly busy....no time to study till March end.
5. Blessed with baby in Feb 2013, so few more months went by.
6. Finally from April onwards I decided to get serious about it as found out that from August onwards exam will be based on PMBOK 5.
7. Started studying hard with Rita & PMBOK in May/June. Not scoring well in Rita's chapter wise test..just about managing 60-70%.
8. In june end tried registering for exams...and surprise...surprise...no seats available in Mumbai till sept end :(.. I had thought about giving exam in delhi as seats were available there. But, one wise friend suggested otherwise).
9. Now no option to study as per PMBOK5. And as a resgistered member, I could download 5th edition and to my pleasent surpise it is much much better than PMBOK4.
10. I booked my seat for 24th September exam and started study on full steam in july, august & sept. I decided not to buy Rita's 8th edition and relied completely on PMBOK5. which turned out to be wise decison.
11. Around 15th Sep..I started feeling like I am fully ready as did almost 2000 questions and 4 full 4 hour mocks.
12. Reached prometric center at around 11.15 for 12 noon exam. at 12.30 we were told that, there is some problem with their recording equipment and exam is delayed due to that. Now, I really started getting worried and my worst fear came true, when they informed us after 2 hours that, exam is cancelled. It was really getting worst for me now.
13. Now, I had lost my tempo and didnt feel like studying anymore. I just meandered through next few days and res-scheduled my exam on 3rd october and hold your breath the time was 8 am in the morning. I stay about 50 kms from test center.
14. On the exam day got up at 4.30am, left house at 5.30..reached center at 7.20am.
15. The start of the exam was mini-nervous breakdown. Even after doing 4 full mocks..i started falling behind time. First 80 questions were quite tough & I was slow. Thereafter I picked up pace and finished 200 by 3.15hrs..another half an hour taken for reviewing skipped and marked questions. Finally, able to review about 50 questions. Hello..there was no break in between..all exam tipes flew out of the window and finally I sat through 4 hours non-stop. There were quite a few on EV and that was my strength. Can't decribe the feeling when I saw that message.."CONGRATULATIONS"..haha!! I got 2 MP in Intiating & Planning & 3 P in Execution, M&C & Closing. Overall I am very satisfied with the result.

Following mock tests & rough order of preparation which I did,

1. I solved all the questions of Rita's 7th edition.

2. I did Chris Scordo's 18 mocks and scored around 70-80%.

3. Oliver Lehman's both tests and scored 70%

4. PMP & CAPM test of 262 questions (Tough) scored about 70%

5. Full mocks of PM Study ( Very tough - 55% in first attempt, 70% in second), headfirst and few others.

6. One handicap I faced was there were few mocks available based on PMBOK5. Anyways, didn't spend any money on tests. The wise decison was to get a PMI membership as it also saves on exam fees as well as you get acess to lot of PMP material on their website.

Even after so many tests, I can tell you actual exam will drive you crazy. Also, read questions twice and carefully that itself will elimnate incorrect answers. Finally, I am relievd of this braindrain and feel very light :)

All the best to everyone here and I hope my experinace will help you in getting through this. Will be happy to answer your any queries!!

Bye,

Uday