How Many Questions To Practice For The PMP Exam? [2023]

Practicing mock question is a must before taking any professional certification exam but it becomes much more important while preparing for the PMP (Project Management Professional) certification exam.

PMP is one of the most difficult professional certification exams. So, it becomes essential to go through a good number of mock tests while doing the PMP exam prep.

So, how many questions should you practice before writing the PMP exam? How many mock questions will ensure that you will succeed in the exam?

A simple answer is that you need practice about 2000 questions in order to pass the PMP certification exam successfully.

Let me a give you a slightly more detailed answer and give you some tips for doing PMP practice exam that will help you in the real exam.

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How Many Questions to Practice for the PMP Exam?

Although I have stated that you should do about 2000 sample question to crack the PMP exam but, frankly speaking, there is no definitive answer for the above question.

Every PMP aspirant is different and each one has his own learning style. What may be easy for on project manager, may not be as easy for the others.

The quantum of questions will vary with the knowledge and proficiency of a PMP candidate. It doesn’t matter how much your project management experience is or what your educational background is. All that matters is how good is your knowledge and understanding of the tasks written in the PMP Exam Content Outline (ECO).

If you have a good understanding of the tasks written in PMP ECO, you might be able to pass the exam by doing as little as 500-600 sample questions. However, someone who has just started the PMP exam preparation and has little understanding of the PMBOK Guide (A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge) will need to do about 2000 questions for passing the actual PMP exam.

Having said that, let me tell you about a strategy for doing PMP exam practice questions.

Strategy for Practicing Mock PMP Questions

1. Start with Chapter Questions

There are thirteen chapters in the PMBOK Guide and seven chapters in the Agile Practice Guide.

You should do about 40-50 questions from each PMBOK Guide chapter (Knowledge Area). Some chapters like Integration Management, Schedule Management, and Risk Management are longer and more complex than the other chapters. For these, you may need to do about 70-80 questions. On average, you would need to do about 50 questions per PMBOK Guide chapter or about 650 questions in total.

Similarly, you should do about 200 Agile questions to feel confident about the concepts written in the Agile Practice Guide.

You should do the chapter questions while studying the PMBOK Guide and Agile Practice Guide. You can download a free copy of the PMBOK Guide from PMI (Project Management Institute) website by becoming a PMI member.

You can do these questions from chosen PMP prep course or from one of the following reference books:

You should consider a chapter as complete only when you have fully understood its concepts and have scored about 75% in the chapter test.

In total, you would need to do about 850 chapter questions before going to the next step.

2. Practice Mixed Questions

After you have completed the chapters and chapter tests, you can start doing some mixed (Process Group) questions. You can do mixed tests of varying length e.g. you can do some tests that have 50-100 questions.

By doing the mixed tests, you will be able to check your knowledge across chapters. Questions in the mixed tests are harder and more confusing as you are not sure about the chapter of the question. You must aim to score about 75% in these tests as well.

In total, you should do about 400-500 mixed questions before proceeding to the next step.

3. Wrap it up with Full-length Mock Tests

After finishing the chapter tests and mixed tests, you should do 3-4 full length tests of 180 questions each. This will make a total of 720 questions.

Questions	Number of Questions
Chapter Questions	850
Mixed Questions	400-500
Full-length Mock Tests	720
Total	1920-2070

The grand total of this three types of tests comes out to be 2070, which is the right quantum of questions for most most PMP aspirants who are just starting their exam preparation.

So, if you do about 2000 questions and start scoring about 75% in PMP practice tests then you will considerably increase your chances of passing the actual exam. However, if you don’t feel confident even after doing 2000 questions then you should practice a few more questions.

Tips and Best Practices for Doing PMP Exam Questions

Practice hard questions from authentic sources.
Start with some free PMP questions from an authentic source.
Practice questions from 2-3 different sources.
Do mock tests from all the chapters of PMBOK Guide and Agile Practice Guide.
Do practice tests from a chapter till you feel confident about that chapter.
Do not do questions before you have studied the chapter.
Do questions from a PMP exam simulator which provides answers and explanations.
Do every type of PMP questions and give special focus to situational questions.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you might have realized that PMP is a tough exam and it needs long hours for preparation.

However, at the same time, there are many benefits of being PMP certified. So, you should not get bogged down by the magnitude of study or quantum of questions.

You can easily pass the exam if you follow a disciplined approach to study for the exam.

Our PMP exam simulator can help you in practicing the different kind of questions that appear in the PMP exam. It has 1000+ very tough PMP exam style questions. After practicing and reviewing our simulator questions, you will feel confident about passing the exam.

Our simulator comes bundled with our PMP training program. However, you can buy it standalone also for as little as $49.