Udemy AR’s PMP Prep Course 35 PDU Unit (4 days)
Finish the education requirements. I took AR’s Udemy course. It was very insightful and helped me more than anything else. Make sure you understand the contents because all the questions will be some variations of fundamental knowledge you learn from these videos. I watched it x2 and took note on Notion while I watch it. Sometimes, Andrew will say this will be on the test and I made a special note of them. Here is my 4-day split.
- Course: PMP Certification Exam Prep Course 35 PDU Contact Hours/PDU | Udemy
- I took some of the mini quizzes but not all. Focus on understanding the contents because you can practice exams later in the stage.
Application and TIA’s exam stimulator (2 days)
You will need the PDU certificate to apply for the test. So, once I was done with the online course, I applied for the exam first. It took me about 5 days to get an approval.
Then, I decided to take TIA’s exam simulator. It was a good resource but didn’t really like the explanation of questions. Most of the explanations were pretty much “A is not the right answer because it is not the right answer.” Didn’t really help. So, I only finished only 2 mock exams (60 questions each). Failed both times with 68% score. At this point, I was very frustrated because for one, I was getting a low score but had no idea why my answers were wrong. So, I decided to switch to PMI SH.
Picked the Test Date and PMI’s Study Hall (3 days)
This was useful in a few ways. 1) The mock exams have the same format as the real exam (time and structure), it gets you prepare for the long actual exam. 2) It shows you in what areas you are falling short.
My strategy was to focus on the practice exam part. I didn’t watch any of the videos and didn’t go through Learning Plans.
I went through mini exams first. The first run, I was getting around 65% but score gradually went up and I was getting consistently 75-85%. For one exam, I even got 93%.
Once I am done with the mini exams, I took the 2 practice full-length exams. The first one I got 57% because I had to pause in the middle but didn’t know that I have to exit out of the exam to stop the clock! When I calculate the score again based on the ones I solved, I was getting around 75%. When I took the second test, I got exactly 70% with expert level questions. Without the expert level questions, I was getting solid above 80%.
At this point, I was feeling pretty confident because SH says that the practice questions are intentionally hard and if you are getting 60-70%, you would pass the exam.
While I was working on PMI’s SH, I got an approval from PMI and picked my exam date.
David McLachlan’s 200 Agile PMP Q&A (1 days)
This was the last prep. I went through about 50 questions pausing before it reveals the answer. I fast forwarded the video to check the answer. If I got wrong, I reminded the video to check why I got them wrong. If I got it right, I just skipped the explanation. I was getting most of the question right so felt I was ready for the test.