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Thursday, 09 April 2009 12:53 |
Leti's Lesson Learned 1/2 : My Exam Taking Experience
I'm going to put my Lessons Learned in three different messages, based on topic. This message will describe the exam taking experience. The next will describe my study regimen, and the last will give a list of websites where I went to obtain free exam questions. (PMHUB note: this part is omiited due to its many broken links and less relevancy to current aspirants)
This was my first Prometric exam, so the experience was new to me. I brought my own calculator, but was told I had to use theirs. (Now, what am I going to do with this calculator I'll never use???) I was also surprised that I had to take off my digital watch. Apparently analog watches are okay. I wish I'd known that, because I would have liked to know the actual time. I know, the exam clocks down how much time you have left, but it seems so timeless in that exam room, I wish I had my watch. During the exam I took my shoes off, because I like to sit cross-legged and shoes get in the way. The proctor came over and told me I had to keep my shoes on!
When I went into the exam room, during the tutorial time, I wrote down the chart of processes by knowledge area and process group, to use for reference during the exam. I memorized the digits 756-334-466. That's the number of processes in each knowledge area. I wrote those numbers down the left side of the page, and then filled in the processes in a grid. Knowing how many to fill in helped me make sure I didn't leave any off. The chart was useful during the exam to help me focus my thoughts on some of the questions.
I didn't write down any formulas, because after studying so much I know those formulas in my sleep. I didn't need a memory jogger. However, when I has a problem that used a formula, I wrote the formula down at that time and filled the numbers in on paper, before using the calculator.
My strategy was to answer every question on the first pass, even if I wasn't sure of the answer. If I *was* sure, I did not mark the question. If I had a lot of doubts about the answer (there were some questions that used terms I'd never heard of!), then I marked the question and also made a notation on my paper of the question number. If I wasn't positive about the answer, but was fairly sure, I just marked the question and did not write down the question number. There were about 35 questions that I noted on my paper (the ones I had doubts about).
My goal was to answer at least 30 questions per half-hour. That would take 3 hours and 20 minutes, leaving me 40 minutes to check answers. I actually answered the questions a little more quickly than that, making the first pass in 2 hours and 50 minutes. Someone who passed the test at the revised scoring level told me she was done in about 2 hours, but I don't know how she did it. I think I'm pretty quick, and I couldn't do that. At that point I took a bathroom break.
When I came back, I started going through all of the questions that I had marked. I would guess there were around 80. (These included
the 35 that I had no clue about.) I went through each one. There were only two questions where I changed my answer during this review. One was a clear mathematical error. The other was one of those funny worded questions where you don't really know what they want, and I changed my mind on how I wanted to view it. Then I started reviewing the questions that I had not marked. I got through about question 120 when I ran out of time.
It was a little depressing to see the "You have failed" message come up on the computer, but I am happily anticipating the email from PMI telling me that I've actually passed.
One other thing: I took this exam on a Thursday, and the Tuesday before I came down with an awful cold. I think my resistance was
run down from so much studying. On Wednesday, I was so miserable, I could not breath, I was coughing, and just felt generally awful. I went to the drugstore and bought a whole pile of cold medicine. The morning of the exam I happily medicated myself before I left home, and got through the exam okay. Soon after the exam was over, I was all stuffed up again.
Regarding the test questions: I really expected them to be harder than they actually were. I've been taking a lot of practice exams, and actually found the real exam to be better written than many of the sample questions I've tried. I'd heard that the questions on the exam were long, and some of them were, but most were fairly short. None of the questions went beyond one page on the screen (although the tutorial had described the scroll bars that would be displayed if that did happen.) There were a few questions that used terms that I never heard before. When this happens in the list of m answers it's no big deal, those "new" words are likely to be the wrong answer. The problem was, sometimes those new words and phases were in the question! This made it very hard to understand what they were asking. There was one question were I believe there was an error. The late start date was earlier than the early start date in a graphic. But I just assumed the numbers were switched and went from there.
One thing that I liked very much in the exam is that certain key words in the question were capitalized and bolded, such as "what should the project manager do FIRST" and "which of these items is LEAST appropriate", etc. Some sample questions I've seen were written that way, but many were not. In my studying, I would often get a question wrong because I didn't read it correctly. I really had to discipline myself to make sure I understood the question – seeing the keywords highlighted like that made it easier.
Well, this is a longer message than I had planned to write. I hope it is helpful to you. As described above, I'll write two more messages with my study regimen and websites visited.
Leti
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Last Updated on Thursday, 09 April 2009 13:07 |
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