Passed last week, AT/T/AT... The test wasn't what I expected
10 years of applying and putting aside the PMP, I finally sat down, studied, and took the test. It wasn't at all what I expected! AT/T/AT so I'm happy to have gotten through it.
I used Study Hall and David M on Udemy. I am a visual learner and reading the PMBOK was a recipe for failure. Study Hall was not far behind so I focused on the test questions only there. Another recent poster said study how you learn. Totally true! David's voice and excitement in sharing the content helped me quite a bit.
The exam was taken in a testing center, but the format wasn't what I am used to seeing in "adult tests." The questions are not fact based. I found most of the questions were formatted exactly like Study Hall asks them, asking you to apply some concept to a situation. Many, many times, I had to default to a mindset versus trying to recall a fact. In actual content, I didn't recognize a single question from my Study Hall notes so remembering answers from there was pretty useless.
I could summarize 90% of the questions as "You've been asked to lead a project and problem x has occurred, what do you do first?" One EV calculation question and one drag and drop question were in my test.
What I think helped the most! Two weeks before the test I focused only on doing Study Hall practice tests and watching AR's complete mindset video on YouTube. He is spot on about how you need to approach the questions. I would go back and forth and I did see my mini exam scores slowly improving, scoring 80 and 87% in my last two the weekend before my test date.
----- More detail if you're still with me-----
Sitting for 4 hours staring at questions is tough! Take the breaks, stretch, drink a little water. The testing center paused me after every 60 questions so it was easy to pace from there. I ended with around 40 minutes left but I will say I was hitting a wall right around 150 questions. I was reading questions three or four times just to understand it. Not because the question was hard, I was just that mentally exhausted. Highly recommend a Study Hall full exam at the same time you plan to take the test so you can get a feel for how tough it will be mentally looking at questions for that long.
72% on my SH full exam
65% Average score for the mini exams
Interesting tidbit for me was the lowest scoring sections in SH were also my lowest scoring sections in the actual test when I received my breakdown. I still don't understand their questions around remote teams and I lead remote teams in my job!
Last note, you can do this! Good luck