Hi All,

I had been a silent observer of this forum and going through the forum mainly LL posts everyday.

I was aspiring to take the PMP exam since more than 5 years now, but due to work pressure, personal commitments, frequent overseas travels, I just could not devote proper time and kept on postponing. At last I made up my mind and started to study from April.

Now coming to my preparation, the overall preparation time was around 3 months. I started studying from April 1st and took the exam on June 27th. Due to my demanding work nature, I was able to study for just about 2-3 hours each day. During weekends I used to spend more time atleast for 6-7 hours.

Coming to my preparation, started with the great PMBOK guide, skimmed through the book the first time fully. After that read Rita Mulcahy's book and it helped me to understand a lot of concepts better. By the time, I finished reading PMBOK and Rita Mulcahy, I had already spent 1 month. The next 1 month, I again read both the books, however this time, I read the books simultaneously chapter by chapter and making notes and highlighting points. This is where I grasped a lot of concepts and really understood PMBOK pretty well. Along with these books, I also referred Andy Crowe's book for certain chapters. The last 2-3 weeks, I again read PMBOK about 3 times quickly as I was already aware of the contents and reading was much quicker.

In the meanwhile, I got registered to PMPrepCast since I wanted the PDUs, but to be honest I did not really spent too much time in hearing to the lectures. No offences here to Cornelius Fichtner, but I just felt that the content of the lectures was just the repetition of the stuff which is already available in PMBOK. Hence I only used PrepCast to really get my PDUs and take sample tests. This is only my thought. I have read that a lot of people have benefited with PrepCast.

Coming to the tests, I spent the last 2 weeks only to take tests. I took tests from
- Head First PMP book
- Andy Crowe's book
- Rita Mulcahy's book
- Free tests in Internet like pmstudy, Exam central, simplilearn, oliver lehmann etc.

A word of caution here. These tests helped me a lot in preparing for the exam however the actual PMP exam is much tougher than all of these tests. Still please don't skip taking the tests. I would recommend taking as much tests as possible going through various websites, even though you feel some questions are repeated. It will really help.

The PMP Exam :
There were a lot of questions on EVM calculations, Leads/Lags, Integration management and Quality management. Surprisingly there were no questions on CPM and Ethics and Code of Conduct. I did not plan the timing of the exam well. By the end of first hour I had only completed 34 questions. After that I picked up the pace, still the last 1 hour I had to answer 70 questions and I had to really rush at the end. When I completed the last question, only 30 seconds were left and I could not review any of my marked questions. Just to mention that I used to finish all the practice tests within 3 hours, so you can make out that the real exam is lot tougher. At last after I clicked the submit , the screen appeared with "Congratulations". It really was a dream come true. Overall results were pretty impressive too..

Initiating - Proficient
Planning - Proficient
Executing - Proficient
M&C - Proficient
Closing - Moderately proficient

Lastly thanks a lot of PMzilla members for their inputs, suggestions. It really helps PMP aspirants like us to pass the exam. Thank you very much !

Regards
Kumar