Hi All,

    Happy to say that I have passed PMP(first try) today with 2 Ps (on executing and M&C) and 3 MPs. Honestly, I was not sure if I will be able to make it after hearing few things from different sources that PMI raised their passing score and/or complexity of the exam is increased.

Like everyone, I also had excuses about busy work schedule for the preparation(which I thought about it an year ago). Actual preparation started from July 2012. I studied around 1-2 hrs on weekdays and around 4 hours/day on weekends. However I took a day break in between from the studies. I was unable to prepare for few days in between due to work.

About preparation:

    I bought Rita's Prep book last year , but I felt it was a little dry and not a good starting material (I knew I had to skip few pages in Rita initially). Parallelly I bought PM prepcast (by Cornelius Fitchner) and it was good to start with. Still I felt I am missing some understanding of concepts. Then I heard about Headfirst and bought it by end of June 2012. It really helped me to understand the concepts and really motivated to go ahead with my preparation and progressed well. I read Headfirst for Quality/Risk/Procurement/HR knowledge areas. Then I referred other Knowledge areas quickly from Headfirst and tried Rita Fast track PMP and scored around 63%.

 I bought PMBOK book and started reading it. It took time to read it, and was tough to read it initially. At the end , I read it cover to cover once. I bought PM study 1-4 exams 3 weeks back and scored between 65-74%. Tried PMzilla free test and scored 49%.Tried Oliver's 75 and scored 66%. PMPfor sure free test -2 weeks back(61%- alarming).

I was a little worried that I was not getting consistently above 75 or 80%. I was not sure if I was ready for the exam after seeing the scores in mock test. Then, I decided to go ahead and try the actual exam after several revisions on the topics (this time I took help of Rita's book and PMBOK). I was prepared to face failure and try next time, in case if I am not able to make it.   Last few days, I referred Rita on few topics and I felt that I should have read Rita a month back to get a lot of concepts and in the right order. Ritas process chart was helpful, especially the planning part.  I could not memorize ITTO, but I tried to read the PMBOK ITTO pages(suggested by few previous lessons learnt posted in this site) multiple times. I know its a lot and can be confusing sometimes. Read and understand it well on why it is needed. Read Glossary in PMBOK(again, thanks to Pmzilla members for suggesting this). Referred PMBOK again on certain topics like ITTO/Risk/Quality/Procurement.

Exam @ Chicago Prometric center

  A lot of situational questions and really requires concepts and understanding of tools/inputs/outputs. Few direct questions, few indirect formula questions, network diagrams, lot of EV questions etc. Few questions were wordy. Its hard to concentrate for 200 questions where your brain is working a lot for these questions. Took a break after 100 questions. Marked around 10 questions for review and completed the test in less than 3 hrs. Exam had few questions with a lot of unnecesary information, approach I took was read the last line of the question and find out what the question is about. For few questions, I didnt have to read the whole paragraph because finally the question was about the process , not about any situations. First few questions were a little tricky and luckily I didnt loose focus for rest of the exam due to these initial tricky questions. Exam pattern was similar to PMstudy or PMPforsure.

Brain dump:

----------------------

Rita's process chart(order of planning process)

PMBOK page 43

Formulas

Few Motivational theories.

---------------------

Thanks Pmzilla and members. You guys are really helpful in preparing and motivating the test takers, especially Saket/Pawar.  Also thanks to my family for their support.

For future test takers, these may be helpful:

1) Like one of our member said before in one of the LL, there are people who had passed the exam after 10 days of preparation. Keep that as motivation and try to focus on preparations and also on your weak areas after the mock tests. Its tough to prepare for the exam , since most of us are working and also passed out of college, a long time ago.

2) Refer Deepfriedbrain project blog for the topics. Thanks Harwinder.

3) Try to understand Rita's process chart especially order of planning process.

4) You can search few diagrams like Influence diagrams, affinity diagrams in google/youtube to know how it looks/contents/usage etc and it will help in remembering the diagrams and its purpose.

5) Try mock tests, especially Pmstudy and PMPforsure. Better to practice atleast 5-6 full length mock exams and understand the answers(especially the wrong ones and the ones you had doubt on). Refer back to Rita/PMBOK for additional reading on that topic.

6) Try Rajesh Nair's notes(Abhishek's version). I was not able to read it multiple times, just read it once. Better to read it multiple times.

Pray to the god and try exam with confidence. You can make it.

Thanks

Naveen