Hello Fellow PM Zillers,

This afternoon I passed the PMP exam after studying full time for approximately 6 weeks. I had until July 31st to pass with the PMBOK 4, so this is probably some good advice for those who are just beginning to prepare for the exam before the deadline.

I come with a background in IT, delivering small projects, so definitely the PMI standards were high for me. I was a bit worried, so at first I decided to stop everything, including, work, family, etc. for 3 months and fully immerse myself in the study work.

I purchased the Rita book and began to read it alongside the PMBOK. This proved a bit difficult, so I stopped reading the PMBOK and focused entirely on reading Rita alone. One read was not enough, I still had many questions.

I decided to read Rita again, except this time I highlighted the areas where I had gaps.

Once I finished with the second Rita pass, I decided to read the PMBOK, and boy did things make a lot more sense. I was able to connect the concepts learned in Rita with the framework of the PMBOK.

During the first pass of the PMBOK, I decided to highlight the gaps since there were few concepts I wasn't familiar with at this point.

After that, I decided to do a run through all the stuff I had highlighted on Rita and made nearly 1000 flashcards of every concept I couldn't understand. Every now and then I would go over them. Both the process of making the flash cards and reading them helped.

Mind you, I forgot to say that I completely disconnected with the real world. I became an owl. Waking up at 5pm and going to bed at 7am. It was definitely hard with my 13 month old baby screaming "dada, dada" in the mornings! But somehow I managed to sleep.

At this stage, about 5 weeks had passed and I felt I was somewhat prepared. The fact that I wasn't working was taking a bit of a toll on my finances and my clients were getting upset at my late responses, so I decided to take a risk and take the exam early on. I also had the chance of taking 2 summer classes for my Master's program, so it was a no brainer. I had the choice to study more, take a class (which at this point I found worthless), or memorize the ITTO's, but decided to schedule the test for the 6th week and risk failing. 

The very pressure of failing made me study even harder, so I studied like a wild savage beast for a week. Just going through my flash cards, notes, practicing the exercises in Rita, reading PM Zilla's posts ;), etc.

The exam day came. I went to sleep at 2am thinking I would wake up at 10am and take the test at noon. Nope. I ended up waking up at 3am thinking about every single question and process. I managed to sleep for 3-4 hours total. I woke up groggy and went to the test site after taking fish oil, drinking coffee, and having a light breakfast.

The test... well, I can't share much about the test. The only thing I can say is that I was not prepared well for the earned value questions, but I suppose my exam results say otherwise. 

Anyway, I got 3 MP's and 2 P's. I would've been happy with the bare minimum, but seeing P's on both Execute and M&C which are supposedly the most difficult areas, made me very happy.

I would be happy to answer any non-PMI compromising questions you guys may have about my methodology. I cannot share the Flash Cards because they are written word for word from Rita in some aspects, sorry.