Passed PMP 11/18 5MPs - LL

Submitted by hindsight on Mon, 11/19/2012 - 14:12

 I passed the PMP exam yesterday and thought I would pass along my LL along with my metrics on the mock tests.

Prep:
Week 1-2: Read Rita's book once, took the end of chapter quizzes.

Week 3: Skimmed the PMBOK guide and took mock tests on pmperfect.com.  Found the questions to be very good in Mock Lite 1-12, Mock Lite 13-17 are ridiculous and no where even close to the real exam (Skip these).  I ended up averaging around 81% on these.

Week 4: Re-read Rita - This time I took a fresh notebook and defined all of the terms in the "Quicktest" at the beginning of the chapter.

Week 5-6: All mock tests: Lehman, PMPforsure, Headfirst, PMStudy 1, PMStudy 2, PMStudy 3 - I will detail my scores below.  As it has been said many times, PMStudy is super close to the format and degree of difficulty to the actual exam.  The actual exam is about 10% more difficult.  Lehman's mock is worthwhile and Headfirst if you have time.  SKIP pmpforsure - This is the WORST mock I have ever seen, with so many recommendations on here (could be spam, I have no idea).  The questions on pmpforsure are poorly written, the grammar is horrible and they are super confusing.  Not confusing in a "trying to trick you" kind of way - confusing as in, "huh????" 

 

PM Study 1 - 61% (Took this at the beginning of week 3, as a benchmark)

The rest of these were all taken in weeks 5-6

PM Study 2 - 72%

PM Study 3 - 70%

Lehman 175 - 68%

Lehman - 71%

Headfirst - 86%

The Exam - For my braindump, I had figure 3-1 (Page 43 in PMBOK) and all of the formulas.  Having table 3-1 probably helped me get at least 7-10 questions right.  Lots of questions on Quality and Risk, 10-15 formula based questions.

In summary - I have read many posts on here to try to gauge my performance to predict if I was prepared enough to pass.  From what I have read, scoring in the low 70%s on PMStudy consistently is probably going to yield a passing score i.e. 5MPs 4MP - 1P (something close to this).  The higher your PMStudy average scores are, the higher you're, probably, going to score on the actual exam.  

Best of Luck

Forums: 
PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.
  • Log in to post comments
  • 2585 reads

thunkins

Mon, 11/19/2012 - 16:46

hinsight,

 

Great intell on your prep and the exam.  Congrads for passing!!!!

501796652 (not verified)

Mon, 11/19/2012 - 17:51

Hi,

Congratulatioin on your new pmp.

I am planning to take in 2 weeks, Do you thing page 43 is enough? This just have the processes and don;t have the inputs or outputs or TT?

Did you memorise the ITTOs?

 

Thanks

arun

 

hindsight

Mon, 11/19/2012 - 19:11

Having page 43 should prove to be very helpful.  In addition to this and the formulas, the other pieces of information I forgot to mentioned were these memory aids http://pmzilla.com/memory-aids-pmp-exam-pmp  There are plenty of questions related to ITTO, but memorizing all of them would be a considerable effort and would be a waste of time.  Focus more on being familiar with how the processes relate and you should be able to logically deduce, when asked specifially, what the ITTO is.  

rit_mis

Mon, 11/19/2012 - 23:37

Hey, Just wanted to know,  are these paid test or you tried three times the one available on their website for free?

PMStudy 1, PMStudy 2, PMStudy 3

~Cheers

 

hindsight

Tue, 11/20/2012 - 00:52

PM Study 1 - Free

PM Study 2 & 3 - Purchased

PMPerfect - Purchased

Looking back, I believe you can buy all four, PM Study Mock Exams, for a better price ($60?).  I would highly recommend purchasing them, as taking the same free exam multiple times is going to skew your progress data.

bonnettja@msn.com

Tue, 11/20/2012 - 04:38

I am sitting for the exam in about a month.  

These are my impressions of the mock tests so far:

Headfirst- very well written and gets the basic concepts-I scored in the 80s

Lehman- I scored in the low 70s, this was a little harder to follow.  

I have the Rita book and scored in the 90's on the end of the chapter quizes (after a 2nd attempt)

Andy Crowe book-85 on the 200 questions(all great).  This is a great value and comes with a free week that you can finish your PMP hours with.  This book was well worth the money.

PMCampus full length tests were very difficult to read.  I bought them as part of my class, and I have decided not to use these at all.  Had I known about the Andy book prior to taking the online class...I would have never bought this.  

Now, I have limited to time to study and looking for the best use of my time.  Would you recommend using the PMStudy exams first?  I also heard transcender has decent exams, but I haven't heard much about it in this forum.    

Thanks!

 

 

hindsight

Fri, 11/30/2012 - 01:07

 Yep - I would definitely recommend buying all four of the PMStudy exams.  Best of luck on the exam!

anand2381

Sat, 11/24/2012 - 13:54

Congrats on your PMP.


How are the process chart of Rita helpful and how did u memorize them?


Was it helpful during exam? An example of how it helped and how to read them will be helpful.


Regards


Anand.S

hindsight

Fri, 11/30/2012 - 01:10

 I actually didn't memorize Rita's process chart (though similar).  I memorized page 43 of the PMBOK.  I wrote it out about 10 times while looking at it and then tried writing it without the book, did the best I could from recall.  After I couldn't recall anymore, I went back to the chart and filled in the blanks.  I repeated this about 5-6 times and had it memorized.  I found this to be very helpful during the exam and would estimate it helped me get 10-12 questions right.