Hi All,
I am happy to say I completed successfully my PMP (edition 4) certification on July 26th in the first attempt.
 

Total time: approximate 6 months.

I thank my wife for encouraging me to complete this & my kids for not bothering me much.
 

1.Started with reading the PMBOK, as others have mentioned numerous times, I could not understand a

  thing other than Organisation types from that book. It is so bland with no examples that sometime I used  to flip the pages without reading.

2. Moved on to Head First book; read half way thru then there was a break in reading due to lack of

enthusiasm...wife would remind. I read around 3 times end to end to get complete picture.

3. Read just few chapters of Rita, gained bit more knowledge. I did not read the entire book though.I started feeling more confused after reading Rita's book due to author's own process model.

4. Went back to reading Head First one more time.

5. Started taking mock tests from "PM Prepcast". I took 9 out of 10 tests; my highest score was 68.5% -- did not feel confident at all.

6. Took head first mock test -- scored 89%.

7. 2 days prior to the test, started reading PMBOK, only the paragraphs not the entire book. Thanks to many PMZilla members who recommended reading PMBOK thouroughly. It helped me to understand few more concepts clearly, perticularly the procurement contract types.

8. In the entire time of preparation, I did not feel comfortable with the ITTO's at all.

9. The day before the exam, did not touch the book - wife reminded, did not budge -- wanted to be relaxed.

10. The day of the test, did not touch the book.

11. Went to the exam, bit nervous & was not too confident either. In the first 15 minutes, went thru the introduction quickly, did not bother to write down the formulas or the ITTO's.

12. Started the exam. I started elimation & most logical method of answering based on my experience. For questions with calculations, I did the math before answering. 7 - 8 questions I marked as they were too lenghty to read & answer .

13. Did not take break during the exam as I was racing against time neck to neck, no water either, went on
answering the questions.

14. When I was reading the 200th question, the time left was 1 minute. By the time I answered, time left was just few seconds. Did not get time to revisit the marked questions.

15. The time ended.....heart started pounding ... eyes started to become blank as I did not take any breaks and no water...then came "CONGRATULATIONS" message, re-read that message few more times to make sure...it was done & then the eyes and the heart became calm.

I am happy I was able to complete it in one shot.

Lesson's Learned & Suggestions:

1. Read the PMBOK book after reading other books, the book definately makes sense then.

2. Don't judge yourself based on the mock test results either way, it dependes upon how you answer in the actual test.

3. Use the mock tests to develop patience, which is very much needed for the exam.

4. While in the actual test, there were few questions I was reading over & over and still could not get the best answer; so out of frustration I answered something & moved to the next question. My inner voice said not to do it, so went back right away to the same question, peacefully re-read the question again, I am glad I did because the answer that I had selected previously were incorrect & since I was able to understand the question correctly after re-reading, I was able to select the correct answer. So have patience while answering.

That's my experience.

I wish all the PMP aspiring candidates best of luck.

Thanks,
PDS