How Many Questions To Practice For The PMP Exam? [2024]
PMP practice questions – Practicing a good number of mock questions before taking any professional certification exam. However, it becomes much more important if you are preparing for the PMP (Project Management Professional) certification exam.
So, how many sample questions should you practice before writing the PMP exam? How many mock questions are enough to succeed in the exam?
A simple answer is that you need practice about 2000 sample questions in order to successfully pass the PMP certification exam.
Let me a give you a slightly more detailed answer and give you some tips for doing PMP practice exams that will help you in the real exam.
How Many Questions to Practice for the PMP Exam?
Although I have stated that you should do about 2000 sample questions 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 one 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 practice exam questions.
Strategy for Practicing Mock PMP Questions
1. Start with Chapter Questions
You should use PMI publications viz. PMBOK Guide, Process Groups Practice Guide and Agile Practice Guide as the basis of your study. PMBOK Guide and Agile Practice Guide have seven chapters each while Process Groups Practice Guide has ten chapters.
You should do about 10-30 questions from each of these chapters depending upon the length and complexity of the chapter. On average, you would need to do about 20 questions per chapter or about 500 questions in total.
These questions should test your knowledge of both predictive and agile project management approaches.
You should do the chapter questions while studying the PMBOK Guide, Process Groups Practice Guide, and Agile Practice Guide. You can download a free copy of these books from PMI (Project Management Institute) website by becoming a PMI member.
The chapter questions can be done from chosen PMP prep course or from one of the following reference books:
- Rita Mulcahy – PMP Exam Prep
- Andy Crowe – PMP Exam Book
- Kim Heldman – PMP Study Guide
- Andrew Ramdayal – PMP Exam Prep Simplified
- Head First PMP
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 500 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 3-5 full length tests of 180 questions each. This will make a total of 720 questions.
| Questions | Number of Questions |
| Chapter Questions | 500 |
| Mixed Questions | 400-500 |
| Full-length Mock Tests | 540-900 |
| Total | 1440-1900 |
The grand total of these three types of practice tests comes out to be 1900, 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 practice questions from an authentic source.
- Practice questions from 2-3 different sources.
- Do mock tests from all the chapters of PMBOK Guide Process Groups Practice 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 500+ chapter questions and 1500+ very tough PMP exam style final 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.
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