Hi All,

I cleared PMP on 8/July(yes, this is coming a bit late) as follows:

Initiating : MP

Planning : P

Executing: BP

M & C : MP

Closing : MP

Preperation:

Started reading Rita on weekends last August onwards or so. Enjoyed reading it. Aslo did chapter end questions.Somewhere when I was through half of it, met an old freind of mine who was already a PMP. He told me to first do the 35 hours classroom, if I had any serious intent. So, enrolled in a class in Oct, and found myself to be in fairly good shape.

Spent most of November writing content for application. Only to realize in May that each project desc was supposed to be 500 charecters, Not WORDS! So my highly motivated spirit in november was wasted in writing a lot of proj desc text.

Come December , Boss came from US for year end procedures, so I was out of prep till mid feb.

Picked up from where I had left in early march, but motivation was low.

Then, I ran into PMZilla, and saw all this motivated, exam-oriented posts. Started following sucess stories and tips on PMZilla. That is when I downloaded the invaluable Rajesh Nair.xls notes, which really changed the whole confidence game for me.

In the meanwhile, also ngot a hard copy of PMBOK. Actually found it quite OK, since I had gone through most of the topics in Rita earlier.Also read notes given in 35 hour contact classroom.

What I picked from PMZilla:

# Read PMBOK logically, dont try to rote learn

# PMBOK Glossory: make sure nothing is french for you here

# Must have gone through Rajesh Nair notes umpteen times (Thank you Rajesh Nair!)

# Anil_Tanguturi Cheatsheet. Make sure you do a good drill of each math formula. A good strategy is to do all maths practice at once , since you would be in a math-frame-of-mind.

# PMStudy exams: I did one free and one paid. Do all in the week before exam, its worth the money.

# Christopher Scrodo exams: I clubbed 4 50 Qs tests together to make one 200 Q exam.

# Time yourself while appearing for mocks. The 4 hour psychological readiness is very important.

The Exam:

My center was mumbai, and I booked a room across the street at Hotel Granville.

Walked to the exam center as it is next door.

There were a lot of Earned Value questions, and many had a lot of tricky language with more data than you needed to reach the result. Marked a few questions on the way. Once I completed 150 questions, with hour and a half reamining, signed a breather. Took a break, and went out. You have to go through the frisking again, but those those 11 minutes spent in break refreshed me to review what I had marked for review. Take your own judgement call, based on time remaining. Make sure you keep yourself in a good state of mind. Keeping pace in the first 100 questions is crucial, as it is the psychological game maker.Got a survey to fill, after I completed the exam. (Grrrr..tell me my result)...completed the survey, screnn went ghost white...and.....Congratulations! whew! what a trip!!

Thanks to CN Patil for posting a scribdd link with good maths questions(maths is a saviour!)

Thanks to Rajesh Nair for a wonderful summary of notes.

Thanks to all PMZilla members who helped me become more exam oriented by posting their success stories.

Good luck to aspirants!