Thank you Jesus! I passed the exam this morning!

1st and foremost I'd like to thanks Jesus for his mercy and grace

2nd I want to thank my beautiful fiancee for taking on the bulk of the work in all areas so that I could study for this exam

Lessons Learned

This is my 2nd go around as my 1st exam exposed many knowledge gaps that I did not realize...

To start, I only registered for the online course by PMstudy. I did use the PMbok or RItas book. The website made references saying this online course is all you need....they were WRONG...

Don't make this mistake. Defintaely buy Rita's book, as for the pmbok  book, I would say most of the topics were discussed by Rita in much more detail and in an easy way to understand, so I would say you COULD go without it...but if you want to be on the safe side then read through it as well.

1st time I took the exam I only studied using Pmstudy online course and the 4 practice exams. I went through all the exams and read through all the justifications as well as take good notes to understand the justifications and try to map all the peices together. I was able to pass all 4 exams easily by the end of my study.

I also used other practice exams online as well as google...and PMZILLA! The notes from Abhishek's Version - Rajesh Nair PMP Notes is AWSOME...definately use that as a guide. I also recommend using the 00_PMP_Formulae_CheatSheet_Anil_Tanguturi to memorize all the formulas, it was the most comprehensive sheet I found. There is also an ITTO excel sheet on PMZILLA that was VERY helpful when tyring to quickly go reference ITTO, this was very helpful as well.

*Note, I did not have enough time to go through the PMZILLA notes until about 3 days before the exam which did not help...

I took my 1st exam and did not pass, 3 BP and 2 MP.....but I was surprised because while taking the exam I was pretty confident that I passed because none of the questions were hard/tricky to understand.

I was very puzzled and confused because I though I should have passed....so I signed up for the re-take 2.5 weeks later...but this time, I purchased Rita's book and the PMbok book....

I read through RItas book in 4 days and the PMbok book I read through in 3 days. This was when I realized why I failed...Rita goes into very good detail about how the questions are asked and how the answers are tricky...I did not realize how tricky the answer choices were...I highly recommend buying Ritas book and reading it at least twice...and as she mentions...do not skip over or skim through the book.

For the 2.5 half week period before the exam, I did the following:

1) Read Rita's twice, once word for word, second a skim through and focused on Quality, Risk and Procurement

2) Read the PMBok once, was very dry and Rita went over most items in better detail and in reference to how the exam will ask the question

3)Went through all the notes I found on PMZILLA, especially the ITTO excel sheet

4) Went through all my hand written notes

5) Practiced my brain dump which included All EVM formulas, All the Processes written out in the same format as you you in the notes i.e. initiating, planning, execution ect (this may sound difficult but its not if you really spend time understanding the process, I would start with writting out the planning processes first, then work your way across the process groups), and lastly, I spend some time understanding the Direct/Manag Prof Work output (wrk prof info) and where it feeds into i.e., controll scope,schedule,scope,report perf ect..

6) Spent alot of time on the ITTO, not memorizing but understanding what each one means and why they go into certain processes

I took the test this morning and passed with 3 Ps and 2 MP!!!!!!!

I hope this helps! Don't be discouraged if you don't pass the 1st time but at the same time make sure you set yourself up to succeed by buying the right materials!