Passed PMP today with AT/AT/AT on my first attempt
Figured I'd make one of these posts since reading this subreddit helped me calibrate where I was at during studying.
Background: I'm a software engineer and took a new role a while back that required at least the CAPM. Since I already had enough experience to qualify for PMP, I decided to just go for that instead.
I studied for about 4 weeks total. Honestly, the biggest help by far was just doing practice questions and reviewing why I got things wrong. I started by reading through the Study Hall plan/content and personally found most of it pretty useless. I finished it in about a week, but after that I mostly focused on questions in the remaining 3 weeks.
I used PMI Study Hall Plus and completed:
- All practice questions
- All mini exams
- 2 full-length practice exams
- Everything except the Japanese content
- Never reset any questions
My Study Hall scores were generally:
- 60s to low 70s on most practice content
- A couple mini exams in the 80s
- 73 and 79 on the two full-length exams
For anyone stressing about scores, low-to-mid 70s seemed completely fine from my experience.
I also had some AR videos running in the background occasionally, but honestly Study Hall was basically my only real prep source.
The actual exam felt generally easier than Study Hall overall, although there were definitely some questions that felt different enough that I had to make educated guesses. It was not one of those exams where I felt 100% confident on every question.
There was one drag-and-drop question about stakeholder power/interest. Half of it felt obvious and half felt pretty debatable. There were also several questions where I narrowed it down to two reasonable answers and just had to pick the "best PMP answer."
The biggest mindset things that helped me were:
- Servant leadership
- Analyze before acting
- Avoid knee-jerk escalation
- Focus on coaching and collaboration first
The exam itself felt like a good mix overall. Mostly agile/hybrid, but definitely some predictive questions too. Nothing super calculation-heavy or overly deep.
I took it at a test center. Had to leave home at 6 AM and drive about an hour and a half to get there. Finished with over 100 minutes remaining and didn't review anything. I just answered and moved on.
Afterward I celebrated with food from a local drive-in, listened to more of the third Magic Ex Libris audiobook on the drive home, picked up a carrot cake for work, and then still had to go back and finish the workday.
Thanks to everyone here who posted their experiences and scores. Seeing other people passing with similar Study Hall numbers definitely helped reduce the stress going in.