Passed my PMP

Just came back from Prometric and passed my PMP. It's like all this weight has finally been lifted off my shoulders. I am still trying to grasp the fact that I do not need to study tonight. The last time I felt this much stress was during college finals.

The exam itself was pretty tough. There were plenty of questions in which I was caught off guard and a few I had no idea. This was to be expected from everything I have read re: the exam. What exacerbated the situation was this one girl taking the NASD exam who kept sighing and another girl typing an essay for some other test. I scored lower than the simulated exams from Rita Mulcahy but in the end I passed and that is the most important thing.

Some people have asked me how I prepared. I started studying in Sept of last year but did not do a deep dive until Dec. The following was my method,

1) Did -not- study the PMBOK ( I may be reprimanded for this but it's true).

2) Used only Rita Mulcahy PMP® Exam Prep System - 5th Edition and did the following

- Read Rita's book in entirety once with making notes in book itself.
- Re-read Rita's book and this time made my own notes on key concepts, "gotchas," formulas, sample problems, etc. on 8x11 sheets. When finished, I had hand written about 35 pages of 8x11 notes summarizing the ~400 pages of material from Rita's book.
- Took a stab at all ~1430 questions on the Exam simulation CD by knowledge area only. I scored in the 65% - 75% first time around. Again, these were knowledge areas and not simulated exams.
- Reviewed all missed question test answers from knowledge area and supplemented my notes.
- Took 3 simulated exams scoring 85% - 92% but did not feel ready/satisfied as a good number of the questions from the 1st & 2nd exam started to appear on the 3rd and did not cover enough of what I felt were my weak areas.
- Went back and redid all ~1430 questions on the Exam simulation CD by knowledge area only and this time scored 80%-90%
- Reviewed all missed question test answers again from knowledge area and further supplemented my notes.
- Reviewed Rita's Flash cards
- Made a table summarizing outputs (Really close to the exam at this point and so I ran out of time for inputs ..bad, i know )
- Took a simulated exam again and scored 97% but by this time I was familiar with a lot of the test questions.

I would say making my own notes, doing all of Rita's exam questions, updating my notes with key tidbits from the missed questions were key to understanding the exam material and identifying gaps in my knowledge and really helped boost my confidence.

I am not necessarily recommending that PMP candidates do exactly as I did above. But just wanted to share my experiences FWIW. YMMV + usual disclosures. In the end people need to decide themselves what works/what doesn't.