The jittery feeling, butterflies in the stomach, the feeling to just want the exam to get over with and the feeling to escape. These shall be the overburdening thoughts swimming in your mind on the day of the exam. It’s natural of course to experience them especially after you having weathered through countless hours of study in preparing for your Project Management Professional (PMP)^® exam.

DON’T FEEL JITTERY JUST

KEEP CALM

AND

READ ON!

Here are a few pointers, winning plans and strategies to help you surge ahead on the D-Day to succeed with a certification!

• Have a positive attitude – you need to work-up yourself into believing that you have prepared yourself physically and mentally for the exam and that you are confident to tackle the exam questions. Hearing from others to “be positive” is less influencing than having yourself hear it from yourself! Look into the mirror and talk to yourself…”I can do this and I am positive”. This seems weird, but experience says it works.
• Have good rest – Sleep early and take a day off from your work on the day of the exam. Last minutes studies ARE NOT GOING TO HELP you for this exam except for you scribbling and practising the “dump sheet”. Free your mind of clutter and be calm.
• Be prepared with essential stuff – Double check that you are carrying the mandatory things that enable you to enter the exam. And that happens to be your photo identity only. Passport is the best option (provided of course you have mentioned it as the primary identification document during enrolment with Prometric). Carry two identifications making doubly sure that the details provided in both are exactly identical. All other personal items are non-essential that shall go into the locker. Hence try to minimise them.
• Be early to the venue – It is a good idea that shall give you time to calm down and BREATHE before you start your exam. A worked-up mind having had to keep checking your reporting time or cribbing about the extra traffic on your way to the exam centre will not help!
• Relax – by taking deep breaths before you start. Read the instructions carefully and the moment the clock starts ticking target preparing your dump sheet (within 10 mins) and then start reading each question carefully. The exam is about 200 questions but each question to be dealt one at a time… so don’t dwell on the answer that you selected for a previous question when you are reading a fresh one… mark your answers and race ahead so that you have time to come back to the marked questions.

Don’t want to feel this pressure… Start preparing for your PMP exam well in advance with “Winning Plan for PMP”

– Vidhi Raj, PMP

– Vidyesh Alve, PMP, Prince2