PMP Exam Tips
Good Morning everybody,
I hope this will help you during your exam. I took the exam at the Prometric location on 290 and therefore the following may or may not be exactly applicable to all locations.
Check the traffic pattern from your house prior to setting your test time as it seems that you will face traffic getting to this location wherever you are coming from.
The location was very clean and professional.
The rest rooms and water fountain are located right outside the test taking area and will not cost you a lot of time if you need to use them during the test (there are no scheduled breaks so if you need the restroom, the clock keeps running)
The room temperature was comfortable, I suggest a T shirt and sweater as it can fluctuate. You will not be allowed to put the sweater on or off in the test room during the test, you will have to leave the room and do it outside.
You will be provided with a locker to store your personnel stuff such as wallets cell phone and even your watch and you will not have access to it during the exam. However if you need food, snacks, drinks or you sweater, they will allow you to just put them on top of the lockers prior to exam start and you will have access if needed. By the way, there is no coffee available anywhere, so plan accordingly.
They will make you empty your pocket and will do a search with a metal detector just like at the airport every time you chose to leave or reenter the test area.
Scratch paper: You will be provided with scratch paper (yellow at this location). It’s in the form off a booklet that has to stay assembled. Why is this important
If you need additional paper they will take the entire booklet away and give you a new one. In other words your entire brain dump with your formulas would be gone. So manage your paper specially if you tend to write big.(There was more than enough for me)
I suggest that you open the scratch paper booklet to the middle page as soon as you are ready for the brain dump and write all your formulas on the top quarter of the left page and use these pages to only do calculations for questions that need the formulas. This setup will save you the effort of going back and forth to look at the formulas when you need them.
I recommend using the back cover of the scratch paper booklet for your knowledge are brain dump because that will make it easier to find when you need it (no need to flip through pages)
Exam content:
I recommend knowing everything that is in bold in the crosswind book as these can give you a lot of easy points on the test.
Throughout the crosswind book, there are boxes with an exclamation point emphasizing you need to know something. Read "how" that box emphasizes the point as it is a good indication of how the question may be asked on the exam.
I did the practice exams at the end of all the chapters prior to reading the chapter and I gave myself 22 minutes.
This has 2 advantages:
these questions help you realize what don't know and you can focus on these areas you read the chapter right after the quiz. The book is so well written that if you just read it without doing the practice exercise first , it will completely make sens and you will not realize that you just have a superficial understanding in some areas that will not be enough for you answer all the questions.
This is a timed test, so you need to be learn to establish a rhythm. Remember you have enough time to read the questions so don't rush. On the other hand you need to keep moving.
If a questions seems long or that it would require to many calculations just skip it and keep moving. After you answer question #200 you will be given the opportunity to go back and answer all the skipped questions one ofter each other without to much navigation.
If you are unsure of answer and would like to come back to double check "mark" it on the test and you will be given an opportunity to look at all marked questions after you answer question #200
At the end of the test you will be asked to take a survey, you don't have to take it to get your test results. The computer may take few minutes before letting you know that you passed.
I listened to the audio flashcards and they really helped me test myself as they ask you definition questions and give tyou the answers 5 seconds later. (Get ready to be schooled)
Every question on the exam has 4 answer choices, if you only see 2. Make sure to scroll down, I almost marked a question wrong because I only saw the 2 answers at first.
