Passed my CAPM on Monday June 29
I wanted to take a few minutes to add a post to this very helpful thread/group/whateverthisis.
I accepted a job in January that hinged on me completing the CAPM exam within 6 months of acceptance. I come from decades of front line public service in health care. I've upgraded lots over the years with extra courses, training, university, but always in the vein of healthcare. Project management and business analytics is not my domain (haha see what I did there?)
My manager showed me the PMI CAPM exam prep course and the exam that I was required to write. I registered for the course almost right away and starting working an hour or so a day on it. Granted, I do work full time at a new job, I have two almost teenagers in sports and a household to run, so I don't have a lot of time to study but I watched the modules and took notes and reviewed the questions they emphasized. It was a grind for sure. These were almost all new concepts to me and very business heavy, but I pushed through and completed in two months.
I then came to reddit to find what I needed to study for the CAPM exam which I booked for two months later. I was worried about not passing the first time so I made sure I had enough time to write again in my 6 month window.
ALVIN the PM was the most helpful. I used his cheat sheet for the PMBOK guide and I ordered the 7th edition as reference. Alvin suggested pocked prep so I signed up for the subscription and practiced lots of questions everyday.
I used the PMI guide to exam content that breaks down the domains and I expanded each domain into my own explanations. I read the Agile Practice guide cover to cover and listened to lots of YouTube videos about the PMBOK guide 7. Richard Vargas was good for this.
But mostly I practiced questions. I was failing the questions at first, but the pocket prep was awesome. It would ask me if I understand the answers when I got them right and wrong and would coach me and show me stats about how I did against the community. I switched to level up eventually and moved up to level 10 for each.
I also used Landinis. Landinis was the closest to the exam style questions and I FAILED landinis questions on business analysis over and over and over so I went back and kept rewatching the PMI course modules on BA. I would ask chat GPT to help me understand but I was still not always getting it.
After two months of daily studying of practice questions and completing 3 mock exams it was finally exam day. I wasn't super optimistic as I was still only scoring 74% on most of landinis online quizzes and around the same % for the mock exams.
I arrived early at my testing centre and they let me start early. I was exhausted the morning I wrote and I flew through the exam just wanting it to be over. At one point I was so sure I was failing and would be rewriting but I was thinking what I would I study for the next exam as these questions seemed impossible to answer. I breezed through the first half in 55 mins or so and only stopped to break for a few mins. I kept going and took about an hour to answer the rest. I think all the practice questions got me used to skimming the questions for certain key words. When I got to the last question I hit submit so quit and never even looked back. It immediately flashed congrats and told me I had achieved a great accomplishment. I was very surprised. Like shocked! but I went out and they handed me a printed sheet that said passed AT/AT/AT/AT. lol ok. how? I seriously thought I failed but turns out I didn't. lol.
Thanks to all for posting all your tips and tricks and strategies. It was really helpful to read them all and put them to work for me, especially telling me to use multiple sources to practice the questions.
Good luck to all those waiting to write!