PMP Passed!! What I learned.
Passed my PMP last Friday! Here are some things I learned that may assist you or help clear some anxiety/confusion leading up to your exam.
I followed AR/TIA's course and study plan exclusively. You can absolutely pass the exam with only AR's videos and course if you also get his exam simulator (this was crucial IMO). I also made sure to do the 200 ultra-hard questions, but did not have time for the 100 drag and drop.
My only note on AR's mock exams is there is a degree of language interpretation that can create some frustration while studying. English is his first language, and I'm unsure if all the questions are hand-written by him or not, but there are quite a few grammar errors or nuanced phrases that only make sense through the lens of his speech patterns. I missed quite a few questions on his mock exams because of this. It created a kind of mind worm in my head that had me quadruple checking every question and answer, adding hours to my total study time. When you're doing these exams, your mindset should be checking +mindset, +phrasing, +project stage, but with this nuanced issue, I was adding an additional step of checking the possible interpretation of English phrasing. This was a major source of stress for me, but I guess helped me slow down even more when reading questions.
Again, you can absolutely pass the exam first try with AR only. I did. I'm sure Study Hall is excellent as well as other educators, but AR was simply the horse I bet on. I wanted to make my experience crystal clear for anyone getting into AR's stuff because these frustrations had me googling like CRAZY the week before my exam if I was about to walk into a forest fire with only utilizing AR's content. Thankfully, the over-prep in analyzing questions actually helped! The exam felt easier than the 200 ultra-hard questions and while the 200 Q's took me almost 5 hours, I actually had 40 minutes left at the end of my actual exam.
Let's talk tech issues. I did my exam online. It was super easy, but almost fell apart for me because of my tech. I have a personal laptop that I use for work as a freelancer. A company I used to work for required I install their VPN security software on it, which I forgot about leading up to my exam. YOU CANNOT HAVE THIS ON YOUR PC, EVEN IF INACTIVE. I ended up buying a whole new laptop (8GB ram, I wanted no chance for performance issues). The company I worked for went out of business a few years ago and there is no one for me to contact about removing the software (RIP). I also found out that you CANNOT have a touch-screen laptop (another thing I forgot my laptop has (HP Spectre)). Avoid these issues so you don't get flagged at the start of your exam. Don't give any room for error after all the build of anticipation leading to your exam. Double-check, triple-check that you have everything you need.
My best advice--slow down. Mindset is everything, but you also need to understand where projects are at in these questions. I hit 83% on average on AR's exams. I got a 70% on the 200 Q's (there is a test form you can do without the video on YT that I did). I got a 77% on the mock exam that is part of AR's core course.
You can do this!