With three months of review and preparation, I finally passed the PMP exam. Now I will summarize my experience as follows. I hope it will be helpful to you.
1. Time management
I didn’t know the relevant information of the PMP certificate until the end of September. So I only had three months to prepare for the exam. I think it would be more convenient if I could prepare half a month in advance. But as long as I can make good arrangements, I think three months is enough to pass the exam. Relevant experience in time management is as follows:
1) According to the reviewing preparation guide issued by the PMP training class of the SPOTO, the review time of 3 months is further refined into every day. At that time, I made an Excel spreadsheet and printed it out. Also, I subdivided the review time of each day and punched in the summary timely for the convenience of daily progress monitoring.
2) Make a cross by reading the books and finishing the questions. I follow the following order to learn it. I choose to read a book first, then watch a video, then finish the class exercises, then finish the simulation questions, then read the book for the second time and then review the incorrect questions. Before reading the book for the first time, you can read the key summary of each chapter issued by SPOTO, which is easy to comb the key points and logic of the chapter. When reading the book, you will not get confused because the book is too thick.
3) Keep the pace until the end, and don’t give up halfway. The investment is the most at the beginning. There will be an illusion period when you feel that you have finished learning most of the contents in the middle of your learning process. At this time, you must be a beginner to finish and discuss more incorrect questions and overcome the lazy attitude. Persistence means your victory.
2. Sorting out the Incorrect Questions
In the reviewing process, sorting out the incorrect question is a very important key link. Because it is often found that the incorrect questions will be incorrect again. This phenomenon shows that the knowledge of the point is not completely mastered by you, and you just master the reason for the answer. When I reviewed the incorrect questions, I set up a folder in the application, sorted out the incorrect questions, and reviewed them regularly. Doing it regularly means that you need to review it at regular intervals, for example, the time of a week. At this time you may have forgotten most of the original answers. If you do it again, the mistakes will show up if you haven’t mastered them. The application of the SPOTO can also automatically record the incorrect questions. It will be very helpful to check the answers in your spare time.
Another point of sorting out incorrect questions is that you must carefully summarize the knowledge points of the PMP knowledge framework with a specific location. It is best to find the source.
Keeping up with the discussion in the group is very helpful. If you don’t know, you should take the initiative to ask questions in time, which is more efficient than pondering slowly by yourself usually. Of course, you have to think about it. It is also very important to watch other people ask questions. Because everyone has the same basis, and the questions asked are often in common. And you are likely to be not clear with this knowledge but you have ignored this knowledge. Group answer is a very interesting part, which helps you check the gaps and keep awake. Especially when you receive the right answer, it helps you get away from the illusion that you have already known better. The teachers of the SPOTO PMP tutoring class are very enthusiastic. Your questions can be quickly answered. And your experience will be very good.
At that time, I once served as an assistant to finish the task of setting questions for students in the group, which are from my error book. I think the effect is very good, and I suggest that you take the initiative to undertake such work in the process of learning.
3. Simulation Questions Need to Be Practiced Repeatedly and Mastered Completely
Class exercises are too simple. You can finish them once or two times, which is enough. While the difficulty of the simulation questions is more similar to the real exam, they should be practiced repeatedly to master the rules of the question and the knowledge points of these questions. And then summarize their own answer rules and routines.
It is suggested to print out the simulation questions, and then find a quiet environment that is similar to the real examination room to finish the simulation questions. So it is easy to adapt to the tense pace of the exam. In the real examination room, you will find that the exam time is very tight. So you should make the usual simulation practice similar to the environment of the real exam to test your answering speed to ensure that you can complete the questions within the specified time. What’s more, you also need to keep some time to paint the answering card.
In the early stage, the speed can be adjusted to 1.25 or 1.5 times according to the video of the chapter to improve efficiency. The video must be watched after reading the book. Make a combination of the book and the teaching material, and the book must be read. The teaching material is very good, and it prompts the key of each chapter. You can read the original text of the book by checking the key.
Be sure to watch the later broadcast. The teacher will summarize the experience and routine of answering questions, which is very useful for improving the accuracy rate. But the way it works must be based on basic knowledge and logic.
4. Taking the Notes
I think both the electronic notes and the paper notes have their merits. The advantage of electronic notes is that they can be checked at any time and shared among computers, mobile phones, and tablets. While paper notes have more roles to play. You can draw pictures, draw tables, and record the knowledge points casually to deepen memory through the manual record.
My paper notes are made of loose-leaf papers, which are mainly used to record the main points and knowledge framework in the first edition of the textbook. And in the later review, I have summarizes and sorted out the knowledge points encountered in the course of finishing the questions according to the chapters. I can use the little notes flexibly and add them into the loose-leaf notebook to summarize the main points at any time.
In addition to the tips as teachers have talked about, such as checking in advance and bringing the necessary items, in my personal view, I think that the most important thing is to control the pace and keep calm. Before the exam, we have been through a lot of practice. We have been familiar with the finished questions. But the PMP test questions are new. So you will feel that you have spent a lot of time reading the titles and finishing the questions, and then the time will become very tight. At that time you must be calm to read the title to understand the questions accurately once and answer them. According to my experience, we usually don’t have the time to read the title several times. You need to finish the question by reading the title once. So, at this time of reading the tile, you must concentrate on the answer. If not, skip first. You should finish the easy questions first. Do not waste too much time on the difficult questions.
The above is my personal experience of the preparation process. I hope it will be helpful to everyone, and I wish everyone can get good grades!
