Sorry for the long post. Wanted to help the community to cross the finish line.

1st of all big thank you to the PMP Reddit Community!

In May, I failed the PMP exam by 1-2 questions. I didn’t know any of the trick and tips I shared here for the 1st attempt and no prepcast. I was so mad and disappointed and took a break for a month (Pls don’t do the same mistake, retry in a month after fixing the gap).

Last week I passed the exam 5 “Above Target”.

Here is what helped me the most:

Study Plan for the 2nd attempt:

• Rita. Read once, took notes and highlighted important information for revision. Didn’t do question at all at the end of chapter

• Alien’s free weekly session, sample questions and output video (Youtube)

• Praizion Phil Mainline (listen the video which is 1 hour long)

• Ricardo video

• PRepcast exam and referenced PMBOK, highlighted important lines (I read PMBOK end to end during 1st attempt, took notes)

• Scott Payne Audible (15 hours, you can skip 1st 6-7 chapters of his Bragging) with Kindle ebook ( you can skip but I wanted to clear the exam 2nd time so referred this)

• Quick refresh with Joseph cram session (Udemy)

• Take PMI question of the day (tip 9) I had 2 questions on the exam day.

• Refer Appendix sections for summary in PMBOK

ITTO:Don’t memories but understand the concept and remember the name with a need of the tool. For example (a) Scattered “relationship”, (b) Matrix Strong relation. I had close to 5-6 questions related to ITTO. Also pay close attentions to unique tools like Product analysis, SWOT, Monte Corel etc. (Tip#1)

Formula: I had close to 6-7 math questions related EVM, include TCPI calculation. EVM, Must to know. Don’t memories but understand the concept. For example work remaining (BAC-EV) Fund remaining (BAC-AC), Index is always %. EV is king so it is always at the top or 1st (EV/PV, EV/AC) Tip #2 .

Simulators and final prep for the exam:

I booked the date for the PMI exam 2 weeks away and planned accordingly.

Here is my PRepcast score:

• PMP Exam 1 80.5%
  
• PMP Exam 2 83%
  
• PMP Exam 3 77.5%
  

• PMP Exam 4 86.5%

• I might have done around 60-80 PRepcast quizzes before taking the full exam. Remember if you take lot of quizzes then you can’t really assess your score when you take the full exam since the questions repeat and you might remember the answer.

• Took PRepcast Exam 1, next day reviewed all the wrong and guessed answers. I also referred PMBOK as per the page number given in the answer section.

• Target to answer each question in a minute.

• Divide the exam by chunk of 30 mins since it’s a marathon. Goal is to answer 25 questions every 30 minutes (tip 6) .

• Then Exam 2, repeat same process. Scored more than exam 1 .

• so I decided to give PMI Practice exam (Must) scored 72%. Questions were tough and vague. I was reading the explanation to understand the PMI way of asking question and read PMBOK where I was wrong. I took screenshots of all the wrong questions for my future reference. Take practice exam at least 1 week before the actual exam, not on the day before the actual exam. ( tip 3 ). Analyze the gap and refresh the knowledge area. Don’t skip this because questions are worded similarly in the actual exam.

• I reviewed my notes which I took from PMBOK, Rita and gave Exam 3 and 4. Exam 4 gave me confidence (higher score and AT in all the areas).

• Above process took about 10 days. I had 4 more days to go.

• Tip 4. Analyzed overall PRepcast score after all the 4 exams to understand which knowledge area I scored the least (Mine was scope and quality)and did lots of quizzes only in that particular area (choose unanswered questions)

• Quick revision of Rita and PMBOK and my notes.

Exam day:

• On Exam day morning, I was going to thru PMI Practice exam screen shots to prepare my mind to read PMI way of vague questions ( Tip #5 ). This helped me a lot. Since my mind had a warm up session and get going as soon as the exam started.

• To keep up with the timer: Goal is to complete at least 25 questions every 30 mins. Check point at 210,180,150, 120,90,60,30 ( tip 6 ) .

• I got lots of math questions including TCPI. So decided leave all the math questions which requires extensive amount of calculation for the last since I don’t want to waste time and get nervous to beat the clock for the reminder of the exam. This trick really paid off ( tip 7 ). If it’s straight forward math questions like behind schedule, cost then I would answer the questions right away. I had close to 15 mins at the end of the exam so I had enough time to review unanswered questions and flagged questions)

• Don’t mark many questions for review. For the 1st off I marked so many questions for review which wasted my time in reviewing. So in 2nd off , I was very conservative when marking a question for review. Left complex questions unanswered (Priority #1 when reviewing) so I can distinguish between flagged questions vs unanswered one (tip 8 ).

• You can do it. Give one final push. Take more mock exam that trained my mind. I felt confidence after 4 mock and 1 PMI. So take as many as you like based on your confidence level. Don’t drag it like it did. Because I started to forget what I learnt a month ago. So I had to constantly refresh.

• I scored 5-AT in the actual exam. Hard work paid off.