It was a great feeling when I saw the congratulations message on screen. Thanks to all kind souls on this site for sharing their successful experiences and study notes.

I came across this site while searching on the net for practice exam recommendations. I must say that I immediately felt the connection with the group on this site. Though I was late in finding the site (just 2 weeks before the exam), nonetheless the experiences posted with exam scores made me feel confident to face the exam.

Coming to my own Journey: I decided to write the exam in August and started studying PMBOK since Sep. I studied for 2-3 hrs on weekdays and 8 hrs on weekends. It took me a good 1 month to finish the book end to end and at the end I couldnt recall what I studied except the KA and process titles!! My exam score was just 60 - 65%.I lost hope and took break in Oct(full month). Then in Nov I started again but this time with Rita's exam prep and fast track. Book was amazing and boosted my spirits leading to schedule exam on 18Dec. My scores in fast track also started improving to more than 70%. At this point, I came across PMZILLA and started to try the exams listed by other PMP'ians. I tried almost all:

Rita Fast Track (between 65-75%)
Exam central 74-79%
PMStudy - 74%
Oliver F LehMann 75%
F T Anbari 75%
Head First 76%
Scordo (1-12 about 80% but 13-18 dropped to 70% and less!!. This made me little nervous as I was getting close to the exam date)
Kim Henman (72% but only tried risk, Quality,HR,Procurement which are my week areas)

I was not confident as I didnt score 80% in any of the exams and my score during Scordo papers and Kim were very discouraging. I was exhaustedputting almost 12 hrs a day in last 2 weeks but with determination to finish in 2013, I braved to proceed to write the exam without cancelling.

3 days before exam, I stopped attempting any exam. Just revised my hand made notes on each topic(mostly from the questions I answered wrongly) and ITTO's. The only other thing that I read in PMBOK is glossary (Definitions). I recommend all to read atleast in the last week before you attempt the exam. Unlike others I only read PMBOK twice and Rita once. I tried all available exams listed above and finding the reasons in my mistakes. Some questions I found contradicting answers in different sites but referred to PMBOK to reason out.

On the day of exam, I was very nervous. Woke up in the morning and quickly jotted down the ITTO of the 47 process, Quality theories, motivational theories and formulas. I must admit that ITTO were a challenge for me. I could never recall full list correctly.

In the actual exam, the questions were no where near to my practice exams or may be the questions were phrased differently which made me more nervous. It took me a good 2 hrs to complete first 100 questions with atleast 60 marked for revisit!! I took time in reading the questions again as I want to get the clue as to what exactly is the focus of the question. All mathematical questions I just marked without even reading to the end. Next 100 questions, I was kind of rushing in my mind to read and answer first time which ever comes to my mind. Managed to finish all in 3.5 hrs. Went back to maths questions (about 10 of them. Took 5 min to answer). Revised about 20 questions but only corrected 3-4 questions. By then the time ended and white screen came out. My heart was pumping to see the result and my mind was blank to think of any outcome. I felt the exam tougher than the numerous practice tests I attempted.

My advise to all is to stress on the ITTO and the reasons like why and what is the purpose of ITTO with respect to each process. Make your own notes on the mistakes made, identify week areas and improve on them. The exam scores you see during your practice is just a benchmark only. Do not panic if you are in 70's. Just face it. You will surely emerge as winner!!

All the best and Happy new year in advance.