Hello friends, with dedicated hard work, family support and with God's grace I was finally able to clear the much acclaimed PMP exam on 5th Jan 2015.

My journey started in April 2014 through 4 days of classroom coaching which provided me with the required PDU's. I appeared for the exam in June 2014 but wasn't able to clear it and now I know the reason why.. "It requires dedication".  I always wanted to give the exam again, but wasn't finding the time to study with proper dedication. Then, in Sep 2014, I think it was fortunate for me, that, I lost my job due to retrenchment. I was devastated as this came to me as a shocker...But then, I realized that this happened because I was not able to get time to study and maybe this was an indication from almighty that here's the time you need and go and get what you want..like we say in Punjabi (chak de phatte!!). Once I realized it, I devoted myself for clearing the exam.

I started with PMBOK, read it once and took the printouts of ITTO sheets for all the processes. Then referenced Head First which helped me in getting a thorough understanding of concepts. I prepared notes from both Head first and PMBOK on the ITTO sheets. Up until now I was starting to get hold of the concepts but still had some doubts. So, I took Rita's book and made my hand written notes by combining all the three books. This gave me hold of the things and I was able to correlate all the processes. Then I started giving mock exams. The first exam I gave was Oliver's 175 quest. and scored 70.2 % which gave me confidence and helped me schedule my PMP exam, which I did on 13th Dec 2014 for 5th Jan 2015.

Now comes the best part which I did. I purchased PMStudy 4 mock exams and believe me they are the closest of the real exam. I scored 72% in first exam, 67.5% in second, 69.5% in third and 72.5% in fourth. But there were still some doubts which needed clarification. I purchased PMZilla 200 tough questions. I gave  Eam central test and scored 78%. On Simplilearn test I scored 67.5%. Since I am Tech savy, I made full use of my gadget and bought the android app of PMP Exam by Oliver Lehmann which has 553 questions. I did that in any free time I got since, you can choose the number of questions to answer.  I watched Izenbridge videos which helped me clear my doubts especially on Earned Value Management questions, conflicts, PTA and EMV. I gave IZenbridge 15 tough numerical questions and scored 100% which really boosted my confidence level to a new height. After all of these tests and videos, I finally gave the PMZilla 200 tough questions exam, 1 week before my final exam, and I scored 62.5% in the first attempt which really carved my way for the final exam as the scenarios are really great on this exam and the questions are really great and lets you think in the correct way. I studied both correct as well as wrong answers from this exam. Gave the bonus 100 tough questions exam but only managed to score 52% on them. I further cleared the little doubts and gave the 200 TQ exam again a couple of days before my final exam and was able to score 79%. This was the preparation as it went through.

A day before the exam, I took my hand made notes and PMBOK and looked at both of them for getting the stuff together. On the day of the exam, I reached the exam centre just in time due to massive traffic jam. Got the initial checking done and started the exam. I was able to answer most of the questions. I finished first 50 questions in 1 hr which was my defined time, the next 50 questions took 1 Hr and 4 mins and so on. At the end of the 200ques. I had around 25 mins remaining which I utilized for reviewing around 30 questions which I had marked for review. The questions were not that tough apart from a couple questions for which I had no clue at all, like how will you analyze from a set of tasks from a displayed RACI matrix, that which of them is not following the correct RACI matrix. There were a lot and I mean a lot of questions related to Change Management. I did not noticed even a single question on code of ethics or professional responsibility. After filling in the survey when I clicked the End button, my heart must be beating at 100 bpm and then I saw the words "Congratulations" and that was it. That was the reward of all the hard work and sleepless nights and 3 month of complete devotion and dedication towards the PMP.  

Finally I would like to thanks the PMZilla website and it's members coz I was a regular visitor of the site and read a lot of blogs and gained knowledge as much as possible. Also, I would like to thank my family and especially my wife for supporting me and pushing me towards my goal of becoming a PMI certified Project management Professional. Thank You..