PMTraining Exam Tips

Certification Exam Tips
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Before the Exam

• Visit the exam location before your exam date so that you are familiar with the address and
commute time, especially if you are a nervous test taker.
• Be prepared to fully utilize your blank “scratch” paper in the exam. This means that you have
committed important formulas, concepts, and key facts to memory; and you are able to apply
them to a blank sheet of paper in less than five minutes.
• Alleviate exam stress and anxiety by taking practice exams that attune you to the pace, subject
matter, and difficulty of the real exam.
• On the night before the exam, reduce your study time to one hour or less and get extra sleep.
The reduced study time and extra rest will allow your brain to better process the information it
has absorbed during earlier, more intense, study sessions.
Taking the Exam

• IMPORTANT: Bring your PMI authorization letter, as well as two forms of ID, to the exam
center.
• At the beginning of the exam, use your scratch paper to “download” all of the formulas,
concepts, and key facts you have committed to memory. To save time, perform this activity
immediately after the initial computer tutorial which allots 15 minutes.
• Approach each question from PMI’s perspective, not your own experience, even if the most
correct response seems contrary to your “on-the-job” knowledge.
• Plan your breaks during the exam. A recommended break pattern during the exam is to stand
up and stretch after every 50 questions.
• Smile as you take the exam. It has been proven that smiling alleviates stress and boosts
confidence during exceptionally difficult tasks. Use deep breathing techniques to further relax.
• If you have exam time remaining, review the questions you “marked for review”. Use all the
exam time you have until each question has been reviewed twice.
Exam Taking Tips

The exam is a multiple choice test that asks one to recognize correct answers among a set of four
options. The extra options that are not the correct answer are called the “distracters”; and their
purpose, unsurprisingly, is to distract the test taker from the actual correct answer among the bunch.
Students usually consider multiple choice exams as much easier than other types of exams; this is
not necessarily true with the exam. Among these reasons are:
• Most multiple choice exams ask for simple, factual information; unlike the exam which often
requires the student to apply knowledge and make a best judgment.
• The majority of multiple choice exams involve a large quantity of different questions – so even if
you get a few incorrect, it’s still okay. The exam covers a broad set of material, often times in
greater depth than other certification exams.
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Regardless of whether or not multiple choice testing is more forgiving; in reality, one must study
immensely because of the sheer volume of information that is covered.
Although four hours may seem like more than enough time for a multiple choice exam, when faced
with 200 questions, time management is one of the most crucial factors in succeeding and doing well.
You should always try and answer all of the questions you are confident about first, and then go
back about to those items you are not sure about afterwards. Always read carefully through the entire
test as well, and do your best to not leave any question blank upon submission– even if you do not
readily know the answer.
Many people do very well with reading through each question and not looking at the options before
trying to answer. This way, they can steer clear (usually) of being fooled by one of the “distracter”
options or get into a tug-of-war between two choices that both have a good chance of being the
actual answer.
Never assume that “all of the above” or “none of the above” answers are the actual choice. Many
times they are, but in recent years they have been used much more frequently as distracter options
on standardized tests. Typically this is done in an effort to get people to stop believing the myth that
they are always the correct answer.
You should be careful of negative answers as well. These answers contain words such as “none”,
“not”, “neither”, and the like. Despite often times being very confusing, if you read these types of
questions and answers carefully, then you should be able to piece together which is the correct
answer. Just take your time!
Never try to overanalyze a question, or try and think about how the test givers are trying to lead
astray potential test takers. Keep it simple and stay with what you know.
If you ever narrow down a question to two possible answers, then try and slow down your thinking
and think about how the two different options/answers differ. Look at the question again and try to
apply how this difference between the two potential answers relates to the question. If you are
convinced there is literally no difference between the two potential answers (you’ll more than likely
be wrong in assuming this), then take another look at the answers that you’ve already eliminated.
Perhaps one of them is actually the correct one and you’d made a previously unforeseen mistake.
On occasion, over-generalizations are used within response options to mislead test takers. To help
guard against this, always be wary of responses/answers that use absolute words like “always”, or
“never”. These are less likely to actually be the answer than phrases like “probably” or “usually” are.
Funny or witty responses are also, most of the time, incorrect – so steer clear of those as much as
possible.
Although you should always take each question individually, “none of the above” answers are
usually less likely to be the correct selection than “all of the above” is. Keep this in mind with the
understanding that it is not an absolute rule, and should be analyzed on a case-by-case (or “question-
by-question”) basis.
Looking for grammatical errors can also be a huge clue. If the stem ends with an indefinite article
such as “an” then you’ll probably do well to look for an answer that begins with a vowel instead of a
consonant. Also, the longest response is also oftentimes the correct one, since whoever wrote the
question item may have tended to load the answer with qualifying adjectives or phrases in an effort

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to make it correct. Again though, always deal with these on a question-by-question basis, because
you could very easily be getting a question where this does not apply.
Verbal associations are oftentimes critical because a response may repeat a key word that was in the
question. Always be on the alert for this. Playing the old Sesame Street game “Which of these things
is not like the other” is also a very solid strategy, if a bit preschool. Sometimes many of a question’s
distracters will be very similar to try to trick you into thinking that one choice is related to the other.
The answer very well could be completely unrelated however, so stay alert.
Just because you have finished a practice test, be aware that you are not done working. After you
have graded your test with all of the necessary corrections, review it and try to recognize what
happened in the answers that you got wrong. Did you simply not know the qualifying correct
information? Perhaps you were led astray by a solid distracter answer? Going back through your
corrected test will give you a leg up on your next one by revealing your tendencies as to what you
may be vulnerable with, in terms of multiple choice tests.
It may be a lot of extra work, but in the long run, going through your corrected multiple choice tests
will work wonders for you in preparation for the real exam. See if you perhaps misread the question
or even missed it because you were unprepared. Think of it like instant replays in professional sports.
You are going back and looking at what you did on the big stage in the past so you can help fix and
remedy any errors that could pose problems for you on the real exam.


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Certification Exam Tips

Before the Exam

Taking the Exam

Exam Taking Tips

Copyright © SSI Logic, PMTraining. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © SSI Logic, PMTraining. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © SSI Logic, PMTraining. All Rights Reserved.

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