Hey everyone,

Just passed my PMP today with the scores below:

Initiation - P

Planning - MP

Executing - MP

Monitoring and Controlling - P

Closing - BP

First off, let me tell you about my background. I am a young professional that currently does project management full time in my job. I have only started working about 5-6 years ago since I am in my mid-20s, have a bachelors in management information systems and a master in business administration. My organizational is a balanced matrix but we deal with projects on an everyday basis.

I'm not sure how I got the BP for closing since I focused on studying initiation and closing throughout my prep. I started by reading Headfirst to understand the concepts and ideas behind PMBOK. I tried reading Andy Crowe, Rita, and PMBOK but nothing stuck because the material was so plain, dry and boring. Headstart really made it better to learn and understand everything. Throughout reading headstart, I made sure I read every page and wasn't too worried about memorizing or understanding everything 100%. I skipped the end of chapter questions and whatever exercises were provided by the book. After headstart, I read Rita and skipped all the activities, and questions at the end of the chapter. I started on PMBOK as my third book. Once I go to PMBOK, everything made a lot more sense and was easier to read. I started to memorize things without much effort. After PMBOK, I decided to go ahead and re-read Rita again but this time in detail. I made sure that I fully understood everything but I still skipped the questions and exercises.

I decided to read Rita again because I was running out of time till my test date and didn't want to start a new book (Andy Crowe). For all the books that I've read, I usually completed one or two chapters a night and I did three or four chapters on the weekend.

After I finished reading my first book (Headstart), I started to answer PMP test questions from the many study materials that I found online. I probably had a question bank of about 1000 questions. My scores for the mock test are below. I never once finished a 200 question mock test during my prep, I found it easier to do 10 questions at a time or 20 or 30 or 40 etc etc. It made it really easy during my studying to catch up on my TV series to relax and rest my brain for a bit.

My scores for the complete mock test that I've taken are listed below.

PMZilla 200 Tough Questions - 50%

PM Study - 63%

BetterPM Iphone application 200 questions - 78% (I found this very very very helpful)

On my free time, while I sit on the toilet, I take my iPhone out and start answering questions using the BetterPM Iphone application.

On test day, I was still getting about 60% on my practice test by taking about 10 questions at a time. My PMP test was very hard and I had a lot of calculation questions. I also had questions that contained terms mentioned in Rita as correct test answers (EX: Monte Carlo). The night before the test, I only slept about 4 hours because I couldn't sleep but I am glad now that it's all over and I can have my life back.