I'd like to say a big thank you to PMzilla. This website greatly contributed to my exam success. PMzilla's PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt forum was my study buddy!

Study Materials:

I studied Rita’s PMP Exam Prep book and the PMBOK. I read Rita twice and never really completed the PMBOK. I read Rita first and then read the corresponding chapter in the PMBOK until HR management. I still used the PMBOK as reference though.

For practice tests, I used:

• Rita’s end of chapter questions
• Riata’s Fast Track
• PM study 1 & 2
• Exam central
• Oliver Lehman 75
• PM Road Trip
• 101 sample questions for the PMP exam – really good for the math. - http://www.scribd.com/doc/28680971/101-PMP-Sample-Questions-for-the-PMP-Exam

 Rita and PM study were the closest to the exam and the layout of the PM study simulated test is very similar to the exam.

Exam day:

My exam was scheduled for 12.30pm , I did my normal school run and headed to the exam center to have a feel of the place.  On my way back home, probably due to anxiety, I developed a headache and took some medication. I joined two work related conference calls, glanced through some notes, laid down and waited till it was time to leave for the exam.

Exam Experience:

I followed the advise of so many on here and did a brain dump. I dumped the formulas, page 43 and Rita’s planning and execution process chart. While doing that I realized I hadn’t written anything in a long time using a pencil as my fingers started to hurt and my exam hadn’t even started!!   The time for the tutorial elapsed and the exam was launched.  My strategy was to mark any question I wasn’t sure about for review with the worst-case scenario of having a maximum (hopefully less) of 60 questions marked at the end of the exam.

I also had concerns regarding timing if a lot of math’s questions got thrown my way as I had the time consuming habit of summarizing math questions prior to answering them, I do that because maths has never been my strongest point. I totally avoided looking at the clock till I was more than halfway through 

I got quite a number of questions that were asking simple definitions but you needed to be able to understand what was being asked. I also got a few questions that clearly had ONE obviously correct answer and three obviously wrong answers – freebies I guess and about 15 – 20 math questions

As I progressed through the exam, I decided to leave questions I wasn’t sure of unanswered, mark them for review and come back to them later. I finished my first pass with about an hour and 29 minutes to go and took a bathroom break. After my bathroom break, I reviewed my unanswered questions, selected answers, counted the number of questions I had marked for review and ended the exam.

In my opinion, my exam had the same difficulty level all through, it neither got progressively tougher nor easier. On the whole I’d say the overall difficulty level for my batch of questions was medium.  I never remembered to refer to my brain dump first and mostly wrote out what I needed again J