Hi,

I had been thinking of posting my LL for the last week. But did not want to do it with a half hearted effort. So now that I got more time, just wanted to share my experience of 5-6 weeks of PMP preparation. Please excuse me for the long LL. But wanted to share everything that flashed through my mind while writing this, hoping it helps atleast someone over the next few months. Before I proceed any further just want to thank my family for bearing with me and my employer as well for letting me spare some of the office time for my preparations and not to forget, special thanks to  PMZilla and all the wonderful members for providing so much thoughtful insight and information about the exam.

To begin with, the specifics -

PMP study start day : Feb 17th

Preparatory Material
PM Prepcast: Took the Prepcast to complete 35 contact hours. Was useful as for me hearing something tends to sink in quicker then reading something. Having heard about all the topics once, reading through them became a lot easier.
Books:  Kim Heldman (Once) not really needed - but a good read for project selection methods - PV, NPV, IRR etc, closing processes.
 Rita - 6th edition (Twice) - must read for procurement, handling change section is good and will help with situational questions.
 PMBOK (Twice)
Mock Exams: All free exams - Simplilearn, Edwel(iWebExam), Skillsign, Headfirst(200), Scordo's (10-18), Exam Central (just took 1 exam), PMStudy1 (free), Oliver Lehmann (both 75 and 175)

Date PMP given: March 25th
Score: 4 P's in Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitor and Controlling and 1 MP in Closing.

The 1 MP in Closing is a significant contributor in my writing this LL. I wanted to improve on my Closing Process for my project - "Become PMP". :)

Here's my somewhat detailed project: Become PMP

Initiating Process Group:
 My project charter was straighforward with a clear objective - Become PMP; and a high level time constraint of completing my certification by March end.  
 Key stakeholders were Myself, My family, my employer.

Planning Process Group:
 Created WBS based on Books to go through and Mock exams to be taken. Further broke down the book level WBS components by knowledge areas. Schedule activities  comprised of reading the various chapters and determined the effort needed using bottom up estimate. Came up with the high level schedule with contignecy included and fixed my exam date as March 25th.

Execution: 
 Followed the Study plan and schedule and went through the collected preparatory material. Gave chapter end questions on both Rita and Heldman. Gave mock   exams every time after going through an iteration of all the chapters of a book.

Monitor and Controlling:
 Continuously monitored the Scores from the chapter end questions and mock exams to determine areas needing additional study and incoporate that into the study  plan.

Closing:
 Slept for 8 hours on the night before the exam. Did not give any full 200 question mock exam in the 2 days before the exam to save myself from the   exhaustion of going through 200 questions at a stretch knowing that I would have to go through it on March 25th. If you want to give mock exams in the final   days preceeding the exam, I would advice giving exams of 50 questions at most. Scordo's exams on PMI website are pretty well suited for this.
Then on March 25th gave the exam. Completed the exam in around 3 hours and 10 minutes with 25 questions to review. Reviewed the questions in another 20 minutes  and ended up pressing the submit at around the 3 hour 30 minute mark.

 Was delighted to see the PASS word.
 
 Finally documented the LL and now filed it on PMZilla.

Lessons Leart
1. Fixing exam date - This is utmost important and it is best to set it up well in advance as part of your planning to make sure you align your plan and studies accordingly.
2. Try to read through atleast one book in its entirety over a week or two to give yourself an idea about all the process groups and their processes. Then attempt one or 2 mock tests to see where you stand. This will help you focus on the right content when you read the books again.
3. Try to remember Page 43 of PMBOK as early as possible. I actually started my preparation with that. Once you have that in mind, it will always be very easy when you are reading books.
4. Give as many full length mock exams as your preparation time permits (atleast 2). I did not go for any paid mock exams and having given the actual exam personally  feel that they are not required. There are a lot of free online mock exams to give you a fair idea about your preparedness.
5. The actual questions are somewhere in between in terms of difficulty. Most of the mock exams either have very simple questions or very complex ones (made by adding a lot of unneccessary wording). Doing a lot of mock exams will prepare you to handle different kinds of questions.
6. For ITTO's memorize the tools and techniques as they will give pointers to Inputs and outputs for the specific process and you won't have to memorize inputs and outputs explicity. If you do plan to memorize tools and techniques - a possible way is to use abbreviations with first letters of all tools and techniques. eg TAPER for Estimate Activity Duration would cover Three point, Analogous, Parametric, Expert judgement, Reserve Analysis
7. Try to find out similarities across processes within a process groups eg - control processes for cost, schedule and scope use work performance info as input to produce work performance measurements as ouput; work performance meausurements are input to quality control and report performance (only M & C processess);  
8. Another point worth mentioning is the time taken on the final exam. With regards to the time taken on the final exam, just want to say it normally takes longer for the first 40-50 questions because of the anxiety. So don't get concerned. You will pick up pace as you are going through the exam and gaining confidence with every quetion you answer. I used to complete the mock up exams in about 2.5 hours and seeing my self struggle to complete 40-50 questions in the first hour on the final exam got me very worried. But as I was going through the exam, the anxiety went away, and the pace picked up by itself. So don't get too jittery in the first hour if you are doing the questions relatively slower when compared to your mock exam experience.
9. EVM - This is probably the most important topic that you should have an excellent grasp on. It will easily give you around 20  questions and probably the most easy to score. Make sure you understand the terms used in the formulas. If you understand the terms used in EVM, you can actually think and come up with the formula. Questions will not be direct. They will play with the wording and you would have to understand whether it meant PV, EV or AC.

10. Most of you may already be doing this. But just putting this out as I did not do this for some of the initial mock exams I gave. While going through mock exams make absolutely sure you understand why one choice is better than the other for situation based questions. We generally have tendency of going through only the questions which we got wrong after mock exam. I would advice that mark all questions which you are unsure of while giving the mock exams and after completing the mock exam, check not only the ones you got wrong but also the ones you marked to make sure your understanding is correct and aligns with the actual reasoning behind the specific answer.

Usual disclaimer - You are ready for the exam when you are scoring 75-80% on the mock exams. If you are scoring above 85%, I believe you would probably get more than 3 P's on the exam. The most important thing on exam day is being confident and going in strongly believing you would be passing the exam and writing your LL.

Thanks,
Daljit