Hello all!
Thank you to the this reddit for existing. You all really helped me pass my PMP exam and I appreciate the guidance so much. I wanted to share my experience here in case it is helpful to anyone else and pay it forward.
I decided I wanted to get my PMP certification in January. My job gives us a free LinkedIn Learning account, so I decided to go that route and get my learning hours for free rather than buy a course. I took a plethora of LL courses and all of them were helpful but Career Essentials in Project Management by Microsoft and LinkedIn was by far the most helpful. It covered all the basics that I needed to know and was the course that I paid most attention to. If you happen to want the full list, I am happy to give it to you.
I work full time with long hours (12 hours a day) so I took it slow and prioritized between an hour or 2 a day of getting my learning credits in. I am old school and have not taken a test like this in quite a long time, so I handwrote most of my notes. It really helps the concepts stay in my brain.
I finished the learning hours by the mid February and applied to the test. I used Copilot to format my application and got approved without audit within 3 days on February 18th. I decided to also get PMI Study hall.
I bombed my first two 15 question practice tests. That is when I discovered this Reddit and found the PMP mindset principles. To work that out, I watched MR's 23 PMP Mindset Principles all the way through on 2x speed. I hand wrote notes for this video. I also watched MR's 10 PMP Questions You Need to Know for the Exam and wrote these notes out as well.
I attempted to watch AR's mindset principles and a few of his videos as well, but my goldfish brain couldn't latch on to him / focus so I moved on.
In March, life happened and it set me back for about a month. I did not study at all. By the last week of March I decided that I needed to get it together and schedule my test soon since the criteria is changing. I decided to do it at a test center and the only available date before test criteria change was May 4th, so I dived in.
For almost every single day starting from April 1st, I studied. I did all 717 practice questions, 2 practice exams, and 10 of the 15 mini exams. I studied for about 3 hours a night after work or in between free time during the day. I watched no other videos and anything I did poorly on, I retook it. I averaged about 2.5 hours per practice test as I am generally a fast test taker. I did not flag questions for review to avoid overthinking. On my practice tests, I averaged between 73%-93% once I was done with my retakes.
The weekend before the exam, I decided not to stress myself out. I studied a little but not much. Maybe an hour between the 3 days. I figured I was going to know what I know and enjoy my weekend.
The night before the test, I slept absolutely terrible. Despite my best efforts, I had some pre-test nerves I think. I did my usual morning workout and had a light breakfast. I attempted to review another short practice test before leaving the house but decided that was just stressing me out instead lol.
Got to the testing center ready to go. I'm in the US, so be sure to bring your ID and prepare to lock your stuff up in a locker. They provided noise cancelling headphones and ear plugs. I choose the earplugs.
The test itself is almost exactly like Study Hall. Lots of folks say they find the test easier, but I found it be equal in difficulty. I surprisingly took almost the entire time (which did not reflect my practice tests). The People domain tripped me up quite a bit which is why I got Target. I had a very difficult time divorcing myself from how to deal with people in real life vs what the PMI wants. Be sure to study the principles very hard for this reason. I think if I had gotten better sleep that night, I would have gotten AT on that domain.
Overall, not so bad. I found the test difficult but felt prepared for it based on what I had done. If I could do it over, I would focus a lot harder on the mindset and take steps to ensure I got better sleep. I think I would have found the test to be a bit easier if I did.
Hopefully this helps and good luck to everyone!