Passing the PMP - my experience

Dear all,
this is finally my time for sharing.
I just passed the PMP test at my first try, with MP in the 5 process groups.
Here’s my path:
STUDY

• I followed a master in project management at @sole24ore. I believe it extremely useful to align my knowledge in a PMI way. It helps me a lot breaking into the PMBOK that sometimes could appears boring. I would thank Andrea Vismara for the great preparation and Andrea Nonino for the enlighten PM-game.
• used RiTA’s book to prepare the exam, using as major source and using PMBOK only for reference where something wasn’t clear.
  Anyway, in terms of learning processes, I would advice you the marvelous Andrea Vargas scheme. If you, like me, find visual memory to be useful, this is the way.
  I built up a thin wood-made panel with a paper graphic on the front where the processes are gray depicted, and also printed 47 processes-card to try with, training about what are the predecessors and followers and, obviously, ITTO. You can find it at: https://www.ricardo-vargas.com/pmbok5-processes-flow/
  During the first read maybe PMBOK and RITA could appear confusing, but once you get the processes everything will be putted in place. Don’t focus on memorizing, but try to understand why they’re there.
• I had a top-bottom deadline (for working reason) so it took me 7 weeks to prepare the exam. Really a tough schedule. I planned to read RITA one time, doing end-chapter exercises and try to repeat everything and the end and the beginning of every studying session.
  I studied 5 weeks and kept 2 weeks for try mock exams.

MOCK EXAM
Honestly, I would say only some of the test I tried are “similar” to the real exam. in my experience I found useful:
www.oliverlehmann.com

The last one is the only service I would advice to buy for preparation, if you want to. I did not purchase the service, but only staying upon the free test, I found these the most aligned with the test (together with RITA’s). At the time I took the exam, this was my situation:

Average Score: 80%
Average Time/quest [min]: 0,75
#TOTquestions: 546

THE EXAM
I had the first 150 questions in a row and then I took a stop to refresh my brain and my ideas.
At that point I had 50 question left, 80 minutes left and A LOT of unmarked question.During the tests I had little stops every 35/40 questions but during the exam I changed the strategy because of the different nature of the questions.
I found them really challenging.

I recommend to leave some time at the end to check the questions: once you read “200” you start to relax a bit and I think I repaired a lot of mistakes in the ultimate phase.

I really hope it will be useful for someone, best luck to all!