Hello All,

I am very very happy to annouce that I passed the PMP exam on 19th April on my 1st Attempt with P in Initiating, Planning and Executing and MP in M&C and closing. 

I did pace the exam very nicely and had finished 1st pass when 29 min were left. I had to read many qusetions twice or even thrice to understand better.

I did 2 day prep course in PMStudy in Bangalore in Dec 2013. I started studying after that I started studying for about 2 hours a day and 3 hours on week ends. I did not read PMBOK even once. Yes you read it right. I did not. I just referred to PMStudy book which they had given during the course. 

I also had downloaded PMP ITTO and PM Study free mobile app. I have daily 2.5-3 hours commute to work which I used in reading info in these 2 apps. 

I think the key is to solve as many questions as possible and give as many practice tests as possible. I think think Rita's PMP simulator V8 is too good. It makes your concepts very thorough and metally prepares you for the 4 hours grill. It matched the actual exam questions. Below are practice exams I took and the scores:

Rita mulchay 1 - 200 - 73%

Rita mulchay 2 - 200 - 68%

Head first - 200 - 76%

simplilearn 1 (free) - 200 - 70%

simplilearn 2 (paid) - 200 - 73%

simplilearn 3 (paid) - 200 - 77%

Edwel - 200 - 68%

OliverLehman – 175 – 70%

examcentral 1 - 200 - 76%

examcentral 2 - 200 - 77%

PMStudy (Free exam. 2nd attempt)- 200 - 86%

PMStudy (Free exam. 1st attempt. I took this in 3 days of completing the prep course and without reading anything)- 200 - 47%

PMZilla 30 tough questions - I got 17 correct out of 30. I took this 2 days before real exam.

In addition to this I solved almost 1200 quetions in the last 2 weeks of the real exam from Rita's simulator by selecting different process groups and knowledge area. 

I found PM Zilla very late in the game but it helped me in preparing for the exam in the last couple of weeks by reading the experiences posted by fellows.

One last tip - be careful with the calculator. When you are closing it if you click it outside accidently and if you have selected the answer it will get unchecked. I had read about this in one of the posts in PMZilla so I was aware of it and it helped me to avoid any surprises at the end while reviewing the questions.