Hello Everyone

I am writing this 2 days before actual exam (scheduled for Saturday 16^th of August).

This forum has been a great place to read through people’s experiences and lessons learned and also to compare their scores to what I am getting, giving me a lot more confidence to take the exam. Most people schedule a date two months in the future and then race towards it, but I employed a different strategy. I started my study on July 11^th and studied until I felt ready and started getting good scores, then I scheduled my exam for the same week (since there is a lot of freedom to choose from possible dates)

So far I have spent a raw 185 hours and passed a total of 3040 questions of activity related to preparation, currently at 186 lol (I am keeping detailed tracking of my activities). That my application got audited (bummer) and I had to  chase my previous manager from a different country didn’t help either J

I’d like to ask everybody to quickly review my preparation , check my scores of the mock exams I have taken .. and please point any advice you may have for me on anything you may think I maybe missing. Also any thoughts on how to prepare 2 days before the exam.

11^th of July – START

Read PMBOK chapter X , read RITA’s chapter X, do chapter end questions, do 30 questions from ITTO test simulator http://www.webgale.com/free-pmp-itto-mock-exam/ .. rather easy when done by chapter, success rate for ITTO simulator in 95%

Repeat step for all the chapters

End chapter results always taken one day later from reading of chapter (to simulate real exam conditions of not so fresh knowledge)

End Chapter test results – average 81%

Special IBM Study internal materials – average 83%

27^th of July – FINISH first pass study

Read through Kim Feldman’s PMP review (very useful since it gave me a much needed second dimension to the knowledge as it is organized by process groups).  It also contained some stuff not found in PMBOK nor Rita

02^nd of August – Start real Mock testing

It is important to note that I did my very best NOT to do any mocks twice .. so all the results here are on first pass only. For some of them I also deliberately did them while watching the Olympics or while being at work , to see the impact of low concentration on my scores … this proved to be about 5% or about 10 questions missed if I was not trying very hard to read and think.

A friend gave me this http://www.actualtests.com/exam-PMI-001.htm ... I did 100qs but found it to be of very bad quality – 100 questions – 75% … after which I threw it away. I started with this low quality just to warm up and saved the quality questions for when my knowledge would be higher.

Kim Feldman end chapter average – 70%

Exam Central 200qs – 86%

PMStudy 4 – 85%

Exam Central 200qs – 86% (I stopped using it after this as questions began repeating and was becoming rather easy)

Special IBM internal prep mock (close to PMStudy but a bit off) – 79.5%

Lehman 75q – 74%

Fastrack 200qs – 78.5% (very disappointed that many questions repeat from end chapter)

Lehman 175q – 82%

PMZilla tough mock – 69.5% (I spoiled my score on the last 30 questions where I scored only 56% even tough risk and procurement are my strengths in other mocks.. go figure)

Review PMBOK in detail (really helped and I saw it with different eyes this time)

PMStudy 3 – 81%

PMStudy 2 – 85% (I actually enjoyed doing this one, was hitting the questions like never before)

PMPForSure free 100q – 74% (very disappointed on this one, lots of grammatical errors and half of the questions I missed even after reading the explanation I did not find myself satisfied with the answer provided) I heard a lot of good reviews about PMPForSure on this forum… but having passed through all the rest .. I decided not to pursue it any further… Maybe if I don’t pass my exam I will give try the rest 900 questions. One specific question had a different ‘correct’ answer than the very same question from PMStudy mock… so go figure J

16^th of August – Last 2 days plan

2 days to go – Do all closure questions from Fastrack (Through all the mocks I realized the most problem I have is with closure and also the ambiguous questions from HR in executing)

1 day to go – PMStudy 1 – full simulation, full concentration mode .. will also simulate a small break at question 100. Review wrong answers & very quick final full PMBOK review

Day 0 - 2 hours before exam  – inside the bus (a 2 hour ride) will go through the ITTO of PMBOK. May take 15 sample questions to use an hour before exam to get my brain in the right mode (I realized I have most difficulty in the first 10-15 questions until I get into the rhytm)

I will not be using any brain dump since I have no need to memorize any formulas (I understand the logic behind them so is very easy to deduce them) .. maybe I will replicate the order of planning processes to make sure.

To be honest I am pretty dissapointed with the PMP exam format. Even with maximum preparation and extensive knowledge it is very difficult to go over 80% on tougher mock exams .. which means I am getting wrong every 5th question.. and not so sure about every 4th question... I was under the illusion when I started that with maximum preparation I would be able to go to 90% ... nope :(

So please let me know what are your thoughts.. any places you see for possible improvement or ideas what else I could do in the last 2 days.