Hello all,

Pleased to announce that I passed PMP with 4P-1MP in my first attempt on 7-Oct. Many thanks to folks sharing their experiences and tips on PMZilla which helped me.

My PMP preparation was kind of ON-OFF and I have been studying in bits and pieces for the last 3-4 months.

Materials I referred to:
1. PMBOK
2. Rita Mulcahy

My suggestion would be that you need to read and grasp the PMBOK thoroughly, no shortcuts despite the dry content.

What helped me towards the end to reinforce and sharpen my PMBOK knowledge was the PMP Exam Prep practice questions from Christopher Scordo. The answers had references to appropriate PMBOK pages where I would go and read the full section. It is freely available for PMI members on http://pmi.books24x7.com/

Also recommended is the McGrawhill PMP Certification Mathematics.Lot of questions for practice there.

I took the 4 practice exams from PMStudy.com which were helpful.I took some other free exams as well but had the following observations:
1. Some of the free exam material questions are still referencing 4th edition though they claim to be aligned to 5th!
2. Answers to some similar questions are conflicting for different sites especially the ones related to deciding whether Ethics and Compliance need to be factored in.

Regarding the exam, fair amount of questions on EVM, Tuckman ladder, integrated change control, control charts. Simple keyword based questions (like progressive elaboration) are sprinkled across the exam.

During the first hour, I was worried that I was going too slow but my pace automatically picked up in the following 2 hours. The key point is to not get stuck on questions for long, just select the answer you think is the most suitable, mark it and move on. Come back to it at the end.

Wishing all the best to PMP aspirants!