Passed PMP with AT/AT/AT yesterday!!

I wanted to share the exciting news that I passed my PMP certification exam (1st attempt) with AT/AT/AT yesterday!! I took the test at the Pearson Vue Testing Center at 8 am, received the preliminary PASS score report from the check-in personnel right after the test (on my way out) and received the official scores via email from PMI around 9.30 am this morning.

Many thanks to Andrew Ramdayal for his prep content and materials and PMP peer mates on various platforms for lot of helpful insights.

Sharing some insights here for peer PMP mates. I used the following:

Andrew's 35 hr Udemy PMP Prep course. Pay attention to the Mindset sections at the end. These helped me decide between 2 correct /similar answers.
Andrew's PMP Prep book (this is a great hard copy of condensed notes that are very simple and easy to follow).
Andrew's recent Udemy Cram course (that was a saver for me to review what I read from a few months ago).
TIA simulator mock tests (both regular ones and the Beta tests). I am glad I tried the TIA Beta mock tests because (a) they were a 180 question set and (b) they were relatively tougher than the regular mock tests on TIA. Taking these Beta tests felt relatively harder and lengthier than the non-Beta tests but they helped challenge/prepare me to handle lengthier and a couple of tricky questions on the exam better and boost my confidence/readiness in the process. The real exam had a few questions that were fairly similar to the Beta question format but slightly less lengthy. Overall, it is best to definitely do the non-Beta tests and try the Beta questions for additional practice.
I attended Andrew's YouTube Live Stream Tuesday sessions.
Ricardo Vargas' Process Video (YouTube).
A regular and disciplined study regimen.

I found that the exam was very close to the original (non-Beta) TIA mock tests. I did take the TIA Beta mock tests before the exam date and even though they felt tougher, they did boost my confidence and sense of readiness for the test. Time management is key during the real exam as well as understanding the process flows and the Mindset (Andrew explained how to track time performance in his Udemy 35 hr course). My exam was about 65% Agile based questions with the rest interspersed with Predictive, Hybrid and Project Management concepts/definitions.

You can use the elimination technique to first weed out the wrong answers on the real exam. On a few questions, I was able to read just the answer options and almost immediately identify the correct answer - this was due to similarities in TIA non-Beta mock test questions. Few questions on the exam were lengthy (3 to 4 sentences) and took time to read, re-read and understand but they were manageable. There were about 4 to 5 drag/drop questions, a couple EVM (calculate based on provided amounts and deduce the project status) and lots of scenario based questions : what should the PM do, what should the PM do next, what should the PM do first, etc. I took both breaks to stretch/recharge my mind and that really helped to pace myself during the test. I had about 5.5 minutes to spare at the end of the exam.

Word of caution on the breaks: use the break time carefully. It lasts 10 minutes but keep in mind that each time you re-enter the test center after the break, you will be patted down quite thoroughly. So I effectively just took about 5 minutes of the 10 minutes to allow buffer time for the security pat-downs and enough time to get started on the next section of the exam.

Overall, as long as you study, keep the mindset in mind and take lots of practice tests and most importantly, take the Mock tests (and Target 80%) in a timed environment to simulate the test day experience, you should be fine.

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