GoldenKnight: CAPM exam passed today, LL

Today I passed the CAPM exam! Here are my Lessons Learned.
Background:

I started taking interest in the CAPM exam about a year ago. Around March I started getting serious and ordered study materials. I studied casually for a few months, but then at the beginning of September I decided to schedule my exam for Oct 24th. Having a planned finish date helped me stay on task and finish studying the material.

Materials used:

PMBOK
PM Prepcast by Cornelius Fichtner (http://nanacast.com/vp/104860/238442/13334/)
pmexampreparation.com – Did the 10 day free Trial, then signed up for 5 day access
PMstudy.com – Free 150 practice exam

Study plan

I listened to the PM Prepcast by Cornelius Fichtner at first because I wasn’t sure which PMI exam I should take (CAPM or PMP). I would have used the Prepcast as the education hours for the PMP, but it turned out to be a valuable CAPM study guide. (http://nanacast.com/vp/104860/238442/13334/)

Doing the practice tests was the most helpful study tool because I was able to see what format the questions would be in. A good number of practice questions appeared on the exam in a similar form.

I didn’t memorize all of the ITTO’s, but I understood how the processes interacted. Having all of the ITTO’s would have been certainly helpful, but it wasn’t necessary. There were about 5 questions on the exam relating directly to ITTO’s. What I do feel was necessary to memorize were all the formulas, and the knowledge groups/processes (page 43).

Day of the exam:

As soon as I sat down I did a brain dump of page 43 and all of the formulas. This helped quite a bit because I didn’t have to think about them again during the exam and could just reference the sheet.

I took two short 5 minute breaks and finished with about 35 minutes to spare.

At the end of the exam the screen went blank for a long time, as my heart thumped with anticipation, and then I was forced to complete an evaluation survey of the testing center before my exam results were displayed. Finally the screen read “Congratulations” and I was extremely relieved.