Hi All! Thank you so much to the past contributors it definitely helps to know how others are preparing. There is some great advice and tips that were really helpful. As for my own preparation, I planned to first take the exam in dec 2011 but would have been 4 short weeks  so I postponed it to Feb instead, I started with Rita, 6 edition no need to buy the 7 th. It took me a good 3 weeks to read it. On a friends advice I switched to HeadFirst. a real good book , actually got me interested and made the basics very clear. After I was done reading , I spent a weekend just going through the book once again , after each chapter i also attempted the questions in the Rita and took the 200 questions exam. Scored 82 very encouraging. I went back to reading the Rita and this time it was definitely easier to understand. My problem was I was reading sometimes for 1 or 2 hours a day and on weekends for 5 to 6 hours but i felt I never knew what belonged to what chapter. Overall I understood the concept but I could not remember what was happening in each chapter.  I completed the Rita and then took one exam from PMP Fasttrack scored around 65. Very discouraging. I went through all the answers and tried to understand the thinking behind. Went back to reading the Rita a week before and on advice of others glanced through PMBOK.A few of the postings have said its not necessary but I think it is very important. I also read the code of conduct after I had taken PMStudy on  which I scored an 85. It is very important to at least read it once and preferably read it along with the Rita. I read one chapter here and one chapter there during the last week. I also took the oliver Lehman 175 and scored 73 percent  Some of the questions in the Exam had terms that only existed in PMBOK. 2 days before the exam I started practicing the ITTO. I wish I had done it earlier. In the PMBOK there is a complete ITTO at the beginning of each chapter. Once you understand that and try to recreate it you know what is in each chapter.I had scheduled my exam at 1 pm so I would have the morning to just go through all the chapters and ITTO's. All my past tests I was able to complete in under 3 hours. But my actual exam it took me   3.5 hours . There were many direct ITTO questions , even the mathematical questions werent straightforward. And what stumped me was not one question on the exam I had seen before. Lots of questions on Quality and procurement. I left a couple of mathematical wordy questions for the end. In the last 20 minutes I went through all questions marked for review I didn't get a chance to go through all of them before my time was up. A couple of times during the exam I felt I wasn't going to pass as i had to think for each question. Even the easy ones I read them twice or thrice. There were some questions on what comes next or what should the PM do first  where all 4 choices didn't make sense. It is a hard exam but I was proficient in 3 areas  and moderately proficient in two. Good luck guys and hope this post helps.