Hi All,

Let me share the journey with you...

It was a treachorous journey to say the least...I am saying this because I had to stop preparation midway TWICE for some personal emergency. I had startedpreparation around Dec last year and decided to take the exam within March this year. I went through the PMBOK once and marked what seemed importatnt to me...this I did so that I did not have to read each and every line the next time. However it all seemed very dry...I could not make out much relation with the several process areas/knowledge groups and they seemed disjointed. Next I started with Rita's book and slowly things started falling in place (it was somewhat more interesting to study). I studied Rita once and was scoring around 50-60% in the chapter exams so i knew I still had a long way to go.

Once I became somewhat comfortable, I started practising with Rita's simulation software. The questions seemed pretty tough to me but I hang on, trying to grasp the explanations for the questions I answered incorrectly. It was mid of Jan this year and soon I was forced to discontinue studying for some mergencies.

I started again during first week of March...everything seemed new so i had to repeat all the steps as mentioned above. I practised day in and out and suddenly Rita questions did not seem so tough any more !! I WAS MAKING A BIG MISTAKE (I will clarify later)...at this point of time, again I was forced to stop preparation...it was March end.

Two months went like this...by this time I was failrly frustrated and was wondering whether to quit or not. However I decided to give it one last try before the Aug deadline. Since I had practised Rita's test exhaustively, I started looking elsewhere for 'free' sample questions. I found few (the common ones...Oliver Lehman, Head First etc). To my utter surprise, I found I was scoring not more than 60% in any of them.

Now this gave me a rude awakening and it was obvious I was missing something in my training. I discovered that I had overestimated Rita's software and expected only similar questions in the exam, which was not the case !! To overcome this, I started practising as many exams as I could and more importatntly, understanding the knowledge gaps. Here I made another mistake...I got influenced by the 'PMP dumps' and was thinking this is one sure shot way of passing the exam. Believe me, it is NOT...I came to understand this once I took PMStudy free exam..Yes I was doing better than before but not what I would like to do in the real exam.

I was searching for alternative study guides/sample questions that would help me. FInally I zeroed in the following options : PMZilla and PMStudy. I decided for the former and could score around 60%. I immediately concentrated on the questions I could not answer and this did help me a lot.

I had so far rescheduled the exam for 4 times (due to lack of confidence) but I was now ready for the exam. For few days before the exam, I went through PMBOK and Rita as well as ALL of the notes I had prepared. On the D-Day, my exam was from 3 p.m. I packed the usual snacks, drinking water, Photo IDs etc and reached exam centre by 2:30. and waited patiently for the exam to start.

When the tutorial started, I started to write the necessary things quickly on the rough sheet provided...but then I was horrified to find that I was not able to remember anything at all to write!!! I was tense for some time and laid down my head on the desk, trying to breath deeply. Slowly I remembered all that I needed to jot down and did that (Lesson : Please DO NOT panic if things are not going as you intended, try to be calm and focussed)

Regarding the exam, I would like to mention few points:

1> I could finish around 100 questions within first hour (without hurrying too much)...I could manage around 70-75 at home while taking practise tests.

2> I finished the rest within next 1:15 hours...I had not skipped any questions but had marked many questions for review. I decided to take a quick break and have some food (not because I was hungry but I thought I might be later). I utilised around 10 mins and came back to exam room refreshed with 1:30 hours to spare.

3> I started reviewing the marked questions quickly but found I wasn't able to progress very quickly. I actually planned on reviewing all questions so I needed to hurry. I changed around 40-50% answers for the marked questions.

4> Regarding maths problems, I expected around 15-20 but got only 5-6. They were pretty simple except one (not sure if I answered it correctly)
 

5> Coming back to review, when I finished reviewing the marked questions, only 30 mins were left. I started reviewing the remaining questions but by this time, I was feeling a bit tizzy and after 15 mins or so, I decided to submit my answers. I was feeling that I would fail to make the pass marks (I am not usually a pessimist but thats what I felt at that point) and was a bit frustrated.

6> On submitting, the screen went blank for some time. I was too afraid to look and when I looked again, there was a screen for taking a survey. I decided to skip it and the screen went blank again. Then to my utter surprise, I saw 'Congratulations' on the screen. I had made it !!! :)

Material used:
1> PMBOK (4th Ed)
2> Rita's Book (6th Ed)
3> Rita's Simulation software
4> Rita's Flash Card
5> BrainBok ITTO (useful tool...highly recommended)
6> PMP Maths by Vidya Subramanium (this has certainly helped me build my confidence, though I received very few math problems)
7> PMZilla Question set (I found this useful to fill the gaps in my knowledge...use this only if you are serious and can use in later part of your preparation)

Mistakes made:
1> Relying too much on Rita's questions. In fact I attempted the same questions multiple times and could remember answers by seeing the questions. DO NOT do this with any question set, instead try as many different questions as possible.
2> Putting too much faith on 'dumps'...you can try them for variety but thats it.
3> BIGGEST MISTAKE...keeping ITTO to 'memorize' for later part of my preparation. There were many formulas floating around for memorizing them but I did not find them of any use in the way that remembering witout understanding did not work for me. Please pay attention to this from the beginning of your preparation.

Thats all from me...please let me know if you have any specific queries.