I have used this site and felt a need to contribute a little. I passed the PMP exam in the first try today (01/24/2013). I got 3 P's and 2 MP's. My preparation took a little over 2 months. Below is what I did.

1. Lazy read of PMBOK 4th edition

2. Read Rita Mulchay 7th edition in detail

3. Took 4 exams at PM Prepcast, my scores were 78, 74, 73 and 71. Yep the decreasing scores bothered me, which is why until 2 days ago I thought of postponing and realised it was too late to do so. At that point I looked over where my weaknesses in the scores were, read those topics again in PMBOK (in the reverse order) and took the exam.

4. It is not necessary to memorize all the ITTO's. Infact I memorized none, there are few things I hate more than memorization, so it was not an option for me. Formulas - you have to memorize. Even there, if you try to grab the 'concept' and the 'logic' you can get it right most of the time. That said if you are comfortable memorizing, go ahead.

I am a family man with 2 kids, so finding time was tough. 80% of my prep was when my wife and kids went on an overseas trip. If you have time, I recommend reading both PMBOK and RMC in detail. Also when you read the second one (whichever it is), do it in the reverse order. The Integration Management Chapter made a lot more sense to me when I went through it after finishing RMC and after working through the Knowledge areas in reverse (thats where some of my weaknesses were).

Also note of caution - this is what I mean by read in 'once'. For e.g. when I go through a chapter and I dont understand a topic, I re-read that topic, usually two reads are good enough to grasp that topic. I never read the entire chapter again, as some people try to do when they say they read the book twice or thrice (infact RMC recommends you read it 3 times!!!). I didnt do that though and am not sure is necessary. Just read the chapter once and be sure you understand the 'logic' and the 'concepts' behind the flow.

The exam was fairly tough. I was hoping to be done in 3 hrs 30 mins, cos thats what my practice test timings were. But I literally had to race to the finish to get all the questions answered. So in summary, if you try to grasp the concepts, memorize the formulas, you still should be able to clear the exam on your first try without memorizing all the ITTO's.