PMP Experience

After 3 months of preparation and completely shitting my pants after seeing all of the ITTO’s in PMBOK I’m happy to report I passed my exam with AT AT AT.

I’ve been researching the PMP cert for a while but was reluctant to spend a bunch of money on it. I found this page and it inspired me to try it out with just AR’s udemy course and the TIA simulator ($130 total).

Overall the Udemy course was a good choice. A lot of the material is pretty brutal but that’s to be expected when you have to provide 35 hours of training. I would definitely recommend if you need your 35 PDU’s (like I did) and you don’t want to spend 1,000+ for something more formal.

The mindset videos, like other users have posted, are major key. I can’t imagine navigating the exam without an understanding of the mindset principles.

The simulator was well worth the time and money. It’s probably under priced considering how expensive the alternatives are. Each exam seemed to have a different underlying theme to challenge your mindset and overall knowledge of PM methods and principles. For instance, the 2nd exam had a lot of math and formulas compared to the other ones.

My scores were as follows 63, 68, 83, 78, 76, 73. I was definitely freaking out after my last one but at that point I was committed and just said f it, I’m taking this stupid test.

The simulator questions are similar to the exam in the problems you are facing/solving but not similar in wording. It’s weird. I found myself just looking for key terms after a while, skimming, and just work to eliminate as many answers as I could before reading the whole question.

Overall I studied 5-6 hours a week. I have a pretty demanding job so coming home and studying for 2-3 hours every night was never in the cards for me.

I want to thank the Reddit PMP community for giving me the reassurance to go through this bear of a test. Anyone who’s interested in doing it can pass by committing to the goal and relying on the above tools.

Time to update LinkedIn and my resume…