First of all, thanks God... you are faithful.

Score: 4 Proficient

            1 Moderate proficient (Closing)

I just have the enough required experience required for presenting the exam (around 4 years), so I could not trust on my experience, also English is not my first language (as you may noticed in my writing), but I prepared my whole study in English. Here some few but important lesson learned:

Background Info:

- It took me 2 months for preparing the exam, studying 2-3 hrs Mon-Fri and Sat 8hrs, Sun just rest.

- My family was not in town during this time, so it was the perfect time for preparing the exam, every day after finish my work day, I arrived at home and start studying.

- During my lunch hours I was eating and presenting some tests.

 Preparation Info:

- I started by taking a test in one of those free PMP Mock sites. Result score 40-50% (really bad). But this gave me a big picture of my current status and most important , I started to learn term and concepts that I didn't have idea.

- Books: I just studied 3 books in this order:

1. PMBOK, I even created an abstract of it, this helped my a lot to understanding and learn all the terms and concepts that I identified in my initial test.

2. Andy's book, I was expecting more from this book, but it just really gives you concepts and things that you should know, and at the end you know a bunch of this (which is not bad at all) that you don't really know how to apply or how they really work as a whole.

3. Rita's book, this book was EXCELLENT, it really explains the purpose of each input, tool and outputs and how they relate each other and what's the purpose of each one.

At this point I had clear all concepts, inputs, tools and tech, outputs and processes, and most important why I really need them, how they work as a whole in the project and finally clarified the whole messy with projects initiated by contracts or internally.

Preparation Tests:

I guess I resolved more than 2000 question, reviewing each single question and understanding each answer in there.

I started taking 25 every day first week, 50 every day second week, 75 every day third week, 100 every day last week. Saturdays of weeks 3 and 4, I took full 200 simulated PMP exam (which I passed with this score: 78% and 82%)

I resolved all the questions in Rita's fast track (especially from executing group), those questions are hard but give you a really good understanding of all situational questions which are the ones that are really hard.

Exam Day:

I finished my studies on Sunday and the exam was next Thursday (today), so Mon, Tues, Wed, I just reviewed some concepts and reviewed the answer for my last full simulated exam.

I just took the 200 questions straight, and finished after 3 hrs, went to WC, and I was back in 2 min, then I took the rest of the time to review the marked questions (~30) and finished 8 mins before 4 hrs.

The questions were not easy I would say medium to high, but I was well prepared for them, so I speed up at the beginning and then slow down after question 75, by that time 1 hr had passed. Very important keep in mind the time other ways you will feel the pressure, I was able to control my performance thanks to the simulated exams, which I used to finish in around 2.5 hrs. But for the real exam why rush?? Lest just take the needed time.

Some final recommendations.

- I know why you guys feel about taking the exam, but put this is your mind, it's not impossible; it just required compromise and passion to really learn and not just pass an exam.

- God is with my, so who or what against me? Nothing.

- Don't read all those forums about people saying that the exam is very hard and they have read 10 books, 3 times each and they failed. That think really scared my.

- Know the difference between READ and STUDY a book; I just studied each book once.

- My goal always was: answer correctly 200 questions, not only the 106 that all the sites say you need to achieve the 61% that you need to pass, you don't know if the 25 not scored questions are included into your good answer questions, which will make low your overall score (assuming you have the rest of questions wrong).

Hope these tips help anyone preparing for the exam.