I passed the PMP exam yesterday.  Happy and relieved.

 PMZilla forums were a great source of knowledge and motivation.

I began with Andy Crowe's book for PMBOK4, read it cover to cover twice and took about four of Crowe's mock tests. Scored a consistent 85+ on these tests. More procrastination. Hello and welcome PMBOK5.

That actually was a blessing in disguise. That's when I started to look for PMBOK5 study material and stumbled upon PMZilla. Andy Crowe's makes one a tad more optimistic about one's readiness for PMP than one can afford.

Started my efforts afresh and read PMBOK5 cover to cover. Its a tedious read. Read experiences of pmzilla members and the mock exam ratings by a couple of the members was particularly helpful. Took about four mock exams from various sources and a free one from PMStudy. Scored the lowest (69%) on pmstudy, but heck I had taken my exam date and I was gonna stick by it.

Two days before the exam, I discovered Rajesh Nair's notes on pmzilla. Its like the notes from the topper classmate from your engineering days that you photocopy and read the day before exams. Thanks Mr. Nair!

About the actual exam:

While the actual exam is nothing like the mocks (its tougher), the more mocks you take exposes you to more of the pattern of the PMP exam and points out the common pitfalls. Its also an endurance test.

In my actual exam, I took one break of 5 minutes and finished with 3 seconds to go. Didnt have time to review the marked questions.

Having said that, the free test from pmstudy was the best of the lot.  Also, I personally do not believe in taking any mock exam that's less than 200 questions. A big part of the exam is testing your responses under duress. And the stress of a 200 questions 4 hour exam is a whole lot more than a 100 questions 2 hour exam.

I did not memorize either the processes or the ITTOs and instead tried to understand the reasoning behind each process and related ITTOs.

Thanks pmzilla and good luck to PMP aspirants.

Chirayu