This article includes a video that provides an overview of The PM Exam Simulator and how to start an exam.
Video
Transcript
Introduction [00:00]
After you have logged in to the website, you will land here on our Welcome Page. With this big blue area at the top where each time you reload the page, a new tip is displayed for you to learn about various things about the exams that we offer.
And the more important box is actually this grayish box here at the bottom left where you can see your active courses and I want to show you right now how to start an exam. And for this, I am going to be using The Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam Simulator™. The functionality is exactly the same in The Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® Simulator™ and also in The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® Simulator™. So if you are interested in those two simulators, keep watching because it’s exactly the same.
PMP Exam List Page [00:52]
So let’s open this up --- PMP® Exam Simulator™ 2021 here. The first thing you’ll notice is I do not have access to the Free Quizzes or the Free Exams. That’s perfectly okay for this demo here. If you would like to register and sign up for those, please feel free to do so. You are not really missing out much because most of the questions in the free quizzes and exams do actually come from the Premium Quizzes and Premium Exams.
Exam Recommendation [01:19]
As you are starting out on your journey towards your exam, I usually recommend: Start with the Premium Quizzes. Take a 10-question quiz. Take a 20-question quiz as you are studying the main topics for your exam. And once you are maybe three, four, five main topics deep into your study cycle then you can consider adding Premium Exams to your learning process.
Number of Exam Questions [01:49]
In the Premium Exams here for the PMP® Exam Simulator™, we currently offer four full exams and one ITTO exam. In the CAPM and ACP Simulator, the numbers are different. Also the numbers of questions on exam exam depends on whether it’s PMP, CAPM, or PMI-ACP.
Starting an Exam [02:10]
So how do you start an exam? Well, really quite simple. You click on one of these links here. So let’s start this here, Exam 1. A first page opens up with another tip right there in the middle. You can now verify, "Did I start the correct exam?' Yes, Exam 1. Well, let’s now assume I wanted to start Exam 2, what do I do? Well, you close the window. That takes you back to the previous page and now I can click here on PMP Exam, and I can start PMP Exam 2 by clicking this button right here. Okay!
Exam Time [02:49]
So for the PMP Exam, we give you 252 minutes to take the full exam at this time with 180 questions. On the real PMP Exam, you have 230 minutes plus two times 10-minute break. So we just add everything together and there’s a bit of a rounding difference that’s why you get 252 in the Exam Simulator.
Answering Questions [03:15]
Your task now is to read the question, select the answer, randomly picking D and clicking on “Next.” That’s really the whole process of answering these 180 questions. There are various question types that we have. And if you are interested in learning about how these question types work, there is a tutorial available for that. Let me move this out of the way. You can see the tutorials by clicking here on the "Help" button. Okay. Let’s go back to the Simulator.
Answering Questions [03:52]
Now, at the top left, you already have noticed, this is where the countdown timer is. It shows you which question you are currently on. The End Exam button is obvious what that does. If you click on that, it ends the exam, but there is always a warning. Do you really want to end the exam? At this point, don’t, go back.
The “Previous” button takes you back to Question 1 where I have selected D. and the “Next” button will take you to the next question. You don’t actually have to answer a question in order to go to the next one. So you can forego forward and backward as you would like.
So let’s answer a few more here. Oh here, I’ll just randomly pick B. Here, I will randomly pick A, and here I will randomly, either B or C could be right. Now what do I do? Well, let me just mark this one here for later review.
Okay, let’s do one more and on this one here, well, I’m thinking either A or B is correct. B is probably correct, right, but I still want to mark this one. Okay! So now, you are seeing a few features of how to go through these questions here.
Show Grid [05:16]
Now, the one button we haven’t looked at yet is the “Show Grid” button. Let’s do that! Let’s click on “Show Grid.” And now, you will notice that all the questions that I have answered are highlighted in blue. And those where I’ve either answered or marked or unanswered and marked are still yellow. But I can clearly see what the status of each question is.
Selecting Answers [05:42]
I now know all of these is ‘marked.’ I have to go back to the Question #4 here by clicking this. And say, “Yeah, okay. I’ll randomly pick C here. I am unmarking this. Let’s go back into the grid here and this one here, Question 5, which one could it be? Let’s see, I’m right-clicking here on C to delete, strikeout this option here. I’m right-clicking on D to strike this out. And yeah, I think A is also a strikeout. Okay, so, I’m sticking with B here. And again, I am randomly selecting these answers here for my demo. Alright!
And in this way, I will continue to simply read the question, select the answer and click “Next.” You may know that there are different question types, and I'm trying to get to another question type but because this is completely random, I do not know when I may first come across another question type. But obviously right now for this demo, ah, here we go, we have a question with a graphic where you have to select A, B, C or D. On the real PMP Exam, you may have to actually click into the area C in order to select C. But here on the Exam Simulator, we make you choose the answer down here. So this is another way of having a question shown to you. There we go! Okay, so we now have that many questions answered or unanswered.
Filter Questions [07:24]
Now what I want to do is I want to say, “Okay, I want to go back, but I want to start from the beginning. All these answered questions, remove them, right. I want to filter out only the unanswered questions,” okay? And now when I say, unanswered and go back, I am now seeing that I’m in the filtered mode and displaying 174 questions, okay. Let’s select B here, B. Next, you will now notice that it says, 173 questions are left. Okay? So and in this way, I can now work my way through it or I can say, “Okay! I want to undo the filter. Show me only the marked.” Okay, ah, look at this! No marked questions, alright, okay. In this way, I can apply a filter to my questions.
End Exam [08:24]
Alright! Let’s go back to this question here. And at this point, I would like to end the exam. So, let’s end the exam. Alright! Again, the system will tell me, “Hey! You have a marked unanswered question. Are you sure you want to end the exam?” “Yes” for this demo here obviously, it’s okay to end the exam. And the next thing that will happen is the system will now tell me my result. Obviously, I failed because I barely answered any type of questions. Oh, out of all of the ones, I had one question correct here, okay.
Exam Results [08:58]
Now, let’s take a look at my results. Very dismal here with my random choice obviously. Let’s take a look here. Why did I have this one wrong, right? I was so sure it was D. Why was it A? Look at the details of the questions by clicking over here on the left, right there.
Answer Details [09:22]
And now, this takes you to the question and just like before, we have the question here at the top. We have the four-answer choices. The correct answer choices highlighted. My choice is also highlighted incorrectly. There is a general explanation given here. And then for each of the answer choices, you will find a per-choice explanation.
Most questions have these. In some cases, we do not have them because you know, if it’s a formula-based question, I mean, one and one is two, and we don’t have to explain why 3, 5, and 8 is incorrect in a mathematical-based question. So you may not find these per-choice explanations everywhere. Alright! And in this way, I can now learn and see what my mistake was. There is also a reference down here that will tell me where I can go to learn more about this.
Live Feedback [10:23]
If I disagree with a question, for example I’m like, “But, I have just read this here and in here it says…” and so on, I can now click on "Live Feedback." Live Feedback gives you the opportunity to let us know that you think something is not quite right with this question. It’s a complimentary service that is included but please do read the disclaimer that we have here that you agreed to. Then you agreed to it. You can say, “Hey! That is a good question.” And here, “Cornelius is testing.” There we go. And I can now submit this and this message is now submitted to our Live Feedback team. You will get a confirmation that the message has been received. And usually the Live Feedback team responds within one to two business days.
Filtering Results [11:17]
Let us go back to the results and show you one more feature here on the results page. Remember the filter that I have shown you previously? You have several filter options here as well. You can say, “I want only to see those that I answered incorrectly." And now, the system will filter out all the questions that you have not answered or answered correctly so you can now focus only on these.
You can now go to Question 1 here. This is Question 1 in the filter mode. You can review why you had it wrong. And when you click on Next, it goes to the next question out of the six that you had answered incorrectly. So it will only show you those questions based on the filter. Let’s go back to the results.
Closing [12:08]
Alright! That’s it! That’s what I wanted to show you here on the report. When I now close the window here, after a moment, the page will reload and my exam report, the one that I just looked at, is now shown down here at the bottom and I can click on this, and the exam report that I have just seen will open up again in a new window. There we go!
Alright! And this is how you start an exam in the Exam Simulator.