Hello All,

I have been a silent follower of this website and all I can say is that, this website is an excellent resource for PMP aspirants like me. Thanks to all the subscribers who shared their Dos & Don'ts, LLs, etc.  Also the notes by Rajesh's and Chowdhary's notes are phenomenal and I am planning to use them for my revision in the last 1-2 days prior to exam.

I need advise as to what should be my strategy to prepare in the last 8 days in order to pass the PMP exam. Here is my  study plan/progress so far:

1. Started in Mid-Feb by taking eLearning courses from a 3rd party vendor offered by my company followed by a quick online instructor led training. But gained very limited knowledge.

2. Started with the PMBOK 4th edition but just after reading the first 2 chapters, I stopped as it was very confusing. 

3. Started reading Rita 6th edition and read it once cover to cover from mid-March to Mid-April. I took longer because of the workload and other family priorities which I couldn't avoid. Needless to say, I stopped attending any b'day parties since March. But due to the work schedule, I would only study on weekends and very little during weekdays. So I would have a huge GAP and had to get into the right state of mind before continuing the following weekend. I took end of chapter exercise questions (Rita) and scored between 63% (tough areas such as integration, scope, time, cost, comm., procurement) and 75 %  (HR, Risks, Quality and Ethics) after the 1st round.

4.Took one 4 hour mock test so far just to guage where I stand and scored 68% which gave me some confidence and I found out what my strengths/weaknesses were.

5. Then started reading PMBOK and Rita 6th edition in parallel solving end of the chapter questions in Rita's book (2nd time) and saw great improvement in the results. I have been consistently scoring 80% +  in all of the chapters (except for Time - 76%) which were in the 63-70% range in the 1st round. Also scored better in the areas where I had scored good in the 1st round. So this strategy helped me get the Bigger picture about PM and improve my overall knowledge.

6. Read through Rajesh's notes, ITTOs, formulaes and spent extra time with difficult math problems in time and cost while solving questions (Rita's 6th edition FASTrack) whenever I got a chance. Scored good in some of the KAs and average in others.

I have yet to read chapters 9 -12 from PMBOK (1st time) and Rita 6th edition (2nd time time permitting) but I only have another 8 days for the real exam. Also I haven't given any other 4 hour mock tests. I am also a nervous test taker which is my other worry. I have  good experience managing IT projectsand I did try to apply all the knowledge gained from my study in my real life project that I manage.

Apart from having PMBOK 4th ed. and Rita 6th ed., I also collected (mainly borrowed) following materials from my friends:

1. Kim Heldman's 6th Edition book and bonus audio CD

2. Andy Crowe's 4th edition

3. Headfirst PMP 2nd edition - for the older exam.

4.Few other books from various authors but may be for the old exam.

5. URLs for the mock exams that I collected from this website.

I have enough study material, however, I am running out of time and torn between whether to read the remaining chapters from the PMBOK and Rita (2nd time - time permitting) or  just revise Rajesh's notes and start taking Mock exams to see where I stand. Weekdays was and is impossible due to demanding work schedule. I do study 7-8 hours/day on Sat/Sun. But it is not enough. I am planning to take the last 2-3 days off from work in order to study extensively.

So I would appreciate any ideas/advise as to what should my strategy/study plan during the last 7-8 days should be as I want to pass this exam.

Thank you in advance!