PMP Exam Difficulty

[mfarag]

Dear all

i am going to take the PMP exam

i want to know from the PMP , what is the degree of exam difficulty according to study material question such as rita book

are the exam questions harder than the questions in the study material , or the same . or easier

thank you

[ronaldl128]

I just sat for the exam and passed it last Friday 4/3/09.

Here is what I can tell you.

I have over 20 years of PM experience. In order to prepare for the exam, I started last August 2008....I studied for 8 months every night solid and more on the weekends.

I used the following materials as my guides:
- PMBOK
- Rita's materials ...all of them
- Paul Saghera' book
- Crosswind's ( from Tony Johnson) material
- PMP Exam Simulator (datbase of over 8000 questions)

I must also tell you that 10 days before the exam my kid brother passed away... so it was extremely difficult so concentrate

Nevertheless, here is what I can share .The actual test is randomly generated from a huge database. I found that there was a blend of medium and difficult questions. Very few questions were what I would call juvenile in nature.

What I found most difficult was not misunderstanding the questions, but selecting the proper anwers. Unlike the preparatory material, the questions were relatively starightforward.

Also unlike the preparatory material , most of the choices to select from were incredibily close as to being the right answer. Even if you know the material cold....selecting the answer that PMI wants to hear is what counts. In most cases all four choices were so close that I found my self second guessing about 40 % of the answers. It is one thing if you can eliminate one or two answers as Rita suggests, but what do you do when all four answers look absolutely what PMI would want to hear.

In other words the questions were relatively starightf orward and easy to comprehend (not very tricky), however, the selections were too darn close in terms of which one should be selected. It was more a process of selection, rather than weeding out obvious incorrect choices.

That was the most challenging.....not like Rita, Crowsswins, Paul Saghera etc. That is how closely the answers were written.

Hope this helps

[deepfriedbrain]

The exam is generally regarded difficult from the high failure rate on the first attempt.

However, in my experience, the people who fail the exam are generally the ones who don't have sufficient experience in Project Management (though they *claim* it).

If you have good PM Experience, use good study material and resources and go with adequate preparation, you have nothing to fear.

-DFB
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PMP Certification Blog: http://deepfriedbrain.blogspot.com
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