It was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

I passed the CAPM yesterday with AT/T/T/AT.  Sharing my experience here to add to the preparation threads which I found very helpful while I was preparing.

Background:

Full-time job

160 total mile daily commute

Took my exam from home

My CAPM certification journey from start to finish was 3 months. However, my focused study period was only 3 weeks roughly 3 hours on weekdays and around 10 hours on weekends. With a long daily commute, I also used read‑aloud apps like Voice Dream to go over material on the road, which helped a lot. I did have to reschedule once due to being sick, and because it was outside the free window, I had to pay the rescheduling fee; avoid that if you can it is an unnecessary expense.

My Resources

• Andrew Ramdayal CAPM Course
• “Pass the PMP with NO STUDY” by David McLachlan
• “Want to Pass your PMP? DON’T DO these 6 things!” by David McLachlan
• “50 CAPM Questions for the Current Exam” by Andrew Ramdayal
• Peter Landini Practice Questions
• CoPilot (AI)

My Memory Didn’t Carry This Exam — Understanding Did

The CAPM isn’t a “memorize and pass” exam. Learn the testable topics, and when you do mock exams, focus on why each correct answer is right and why the others are wrong. Use AI tools to assist with clarity with terms and processes especially during the mock exams. That makes a huge difference on test day.

Taking your exam at home?  Breathe; you’ll get through it

I took my exam at home, which IMO ended up being the most time‑consuming part of the process. I chose the online option for the scheduling convenience, and some of my anxiety came from it being my first-ever proctored exam. I was also nervous because I usually read aloud, but I managed to get through the exam without the ability to read aloud. I recommend running the system at least twice. Be sure to check in 30 minutes ahead of your scheduled test time; my check in took 26 minutes (much longer than I expected). Review the workspace dos and don’ts ahead of time to speed up check‑in. Expect a short wait for the exam to load. If anything goes wrong during the exam try not to get overly flustered, the proctor will message you in the app and calmly guide you through the fix.

During the Test:

I was nervous about running out of time since I’m a slow reader who usually reads out loud, but the questions were more straightforward than expected. Take your time and read each one fully none felt like trick questions. I used about 140 of the 180 minutes to complete both sections which left me plenty of time for review.

I had around seven formula questions, all very manageable. A quick formula reviews the night before helped.

Final Thoughts

I hope my experience shows that you can pass this exam even with a packed schedule and test‑day nerves. Learn the concepts, use your resources wisely, and trust your preparation. Wishing everyone on this journey clarity, confidence, and a smooth exam day.

I'm currently studying for the CAPM, and I'm wondering: for people who have just passed or have taken it, are the questions on the exam similar to the ones on PocketPrep or on Udemy?

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!

It was tough journey!

I passed the CAPM today with Above Target (AT) in all 4 domains, and I wanted to share my experience because Reddit helped me a lot during my preparation.

Background:

• Full-time job
• New organization
• Night shift
• 50 km daily commute
• Work from office

It took me around 6 months to prepare. Not because the syllabus is huge, but because life was happening at the same time. Looking back, I'm glad I waited until I felt ready instead of rushing the exam.

My Resources

• PMBOK Guide 7
• PMI Business Analysis Guide
• Andrew Ramdayal CAPM Course
• Peter Landini Practice Questions
• A few Udemy mock exams

Mock Scores

• Landini Final: 83%
• Andrew Practice: 83%
• Udemy Mock 1: 85%
• Udemy Mock 2: 71%
• Udemy Mock 3: 70%
• Bonus 200-question mock: 82%

About the Real Exam

This was probably the biggest surprise.

The real exam was NOT like the harder Udemy mocks.

Those mocks were much more focused on confusing wording and extremely close answer choices.

The actual CAPM exam felt much more reasonable.

Questions were mostly situational, but I didn't feel like PMI was trying to trick me on every question.

Difficulty

I'd rate it around 6.5–7/10.

Not easy, but definitely not as scary as some third-party mocks made it seem.

Topics

Without violating the NDA:

• Business Analysis was important.
• Agile had a solid presence.
• Predictive concepts were well represented.
• EVM formulas were minimal and mostly interpretation-based.

Biggest Advice

Don't chase an "official passing percentage."

PMI doesn't publish one.

Instead:

• Understand the concepts.
• Learn the PMI mindset.
• Review your mistakes instead of just taking more mocks.

The quality of your review matters more than the number of questions you solve.

Good luck to everyone preparing. If you're consistently scoring around 80% on quality mocks and truly understand why the answers are correct, you're probably in a good place.

Hope this helps someone who's stressing before their exam. Good luck! 🚀

A little about me: I'm currently a M.Sc. Finance student but not from a very reputed college and I passed CAPM on the 26th. Now that I'm beginning my job hunt, i'm not seeing any project coordinator roles or PMO analyst roles at the entry level. How are freshers with CAPM and finance background supposed to be project managers moving forward when there are no jobs in the first place? I think i'm definitely missing something or i'm approaching the job market the wrong way. Please share your insights/suggestions/advices i'll be grateful.

I am planning for CAPM. I'm wondering how easy is it to fail?

Also those have attended the exam, please share what could be the reasons for failing even after studying?

Sharing because a post similar to this helped me. I took Joseph Phillips course on udemy to get a full understanding of all the concepts listed in the PMI objectives. Going line by line in the objective and writing out everything I know about the topic and then finally I used Landini’s practice exam books to prepare 3 days before.

The practice exam book cost $5 on amazon (best $5 i ever spent) i was getting 64%-70% in a lot of the test categories which made me feel like I was severely unprepared. Landini’s practice exams seem a bit outdated and grammatically incorrect when it comes to schedule planning formulas like calculating early start his answers use Day 1 as 0 but Joseph Phillips teaches Day 1 as Day 1. I recommend going with Joseph Phillips method for your exam. The real exam has grammatical errors as well so this was great practice in slowing down and figuring out what is it they really want me to answer. I only took them all once because I was short on time. The practice exam taught me that knowing the topics is not enough. You have to be able to eliminate the obviously wrong answers and highlight the key words in the question that make the right answer stand out from the tricky answer.

While taking the exam I definitely didn’t feel good about how I was doing and at times I got frustrated and almost gave up, but I’m glad I didn’t because i passed Above target in 3 sections and on Target for 1 section. 2 of the targets i passed AT in were the same sections on the practice exam i kept getting a 64-66% in. I definitely recommend memorizing the formulas and jotting them down as soon as you get to the exam. I only ended up needing Schedule and Cost Variance for about 4-5 questions and thankfully no schedule planning float etc calculations. But your exam may be different.

Good luck yall!

I'm 19 and I'm looking to work my way up the ladder at my job, i work in food manufacturing. I'm new to all of this and didn't even know what the CAPM was until a couple days ago, I barely know. My question is, if I'm looking to get into management is this the right certification to work towards? Are there any better options when aiming for a supervisor position? I need stuff that will look good on a resume while still providing optimal skills. I'm good with money so I'm willing to pay a decent amount for classes so long as it's an actual investment and not a waste.

So I took AR's prep course and solved over 1000 questions on pocket prep with 822 correct (82% average) and gave two mocks and scored 83% and 90% in them. Despite all this, I feel underprepared and feeling a bit anxious.

BT / T / T / T

I wish they gave you a good breakdown of the why. Time to regroup and prepare again.

Just took my exam this weekend and passed with AT's across the board! A huge thank you to everyone in this community for contributing their methods and resources for studying (special shoutout to this post). That being said, I'd also like to contribute my story in case it can help others in the future :)

CAPM Course: Andrew Ramdayal's course on TIA

To be fully honest and transparent, I had a difficult time actively listening to all the content and ended up not taking any notes. It took me 4 months to finally finish the course, so as you can guess I did not retain much information either. I took my exam 3 months after finishing the course and started really studying for the exam 2 weeks prior. 
What worked best for me was to use the practice exams/questions/videos below and truly process why each answer was the correct one. So if you are in a similar position as me (someone who's already been accredited with the course hours but is questioning if they actually learned anything or finished the course months ago), I hope these resources help you!

Quizzes/Exams

1. the practice exam at the end of AR's course
   - I took this exam three times (64, 80, 84) with some time in between the attempts

2) Peter Landini's Practice exam
- I bought the kindle version (~$6) to get the passwords to the tests 
- One of my biggest resource and I took each of the quizzes and the practice exams until I averaged 80%

3. Free three set of exams
   - I took the first and second exam with an average of 65 %

4. Free Quizzes
   - I took all 8 quizzes until I was able to get 90 % all across

5. Free 20 question Quiz

 

Video Resources (I started watching these the day before my exam and averaged 80%, which was when I knew I was ready to take the exam)

1. David McLachlan's PMP and CAPM Practice Questions 
   - He does a great job explaining why the answers are correct

2. Andrew Ramdayal's 50 Practice Question 
   - Another great set of practice questions with explanation

3) Yassine Tounsi 150 Questions** **
- This was by far the most helpful video with explanations

Don’t feel discouraged if you are not hitting an average of 80% in the beginning! It took me several attempts on each practice questions/exams to get this score. Hope this helps and good luck! You got this. 

I have a masters in art history. I spent a few years as an “executive” coordinator at an art gallery, a couple of years as a collections technician and then spent the last 20 some years working in art conservation at a state museum. I’ve traveled the world, I’ve handled some of the most precious objects on the earth and a really love what I do. But guys, I’m getting old and I need a better salary. There’s no upward mobility at my institution. I’m starting to look at quick certifications that I can add to a resume to land a better paying state job (I need the pension). I haven’t ever been a supervisor and I’m worried I won’t be able to land a better role. Any advice for what certificates I can study for to make up for my lack of senior skills? Obviously I’m leaning toward project management. I at least have loads of experience working with teams to install exhibitions so I think I’d excel.

I’m still unsure about the exam application and I couldn’t find an answer online. So to apply for the exam I need 23hrs of project management education, does it have to be from a PMI Authorised Training Provider (ATP)? Or do courses online (such as Andrew Ramdayal’s course on Udemy) count as well?

Also, is it better to take the exam at a testing centre or online? Is there any real difference?

Hey everyone, does anyone have any Promo Code for the CAPM exam this month?

It will be of great help to me since I am a student and I have already tried majority of the codes available online but none of them are working :(