Is PMP Exam Hard & How To Overcome Its Difficulty? [2024]

The PMP exam is considered to be a hard and difficult exam to pass. However, it is quite easy if you put in focused and concentrated efforts.

I believe PMP certification exam is not really tough. It requires perseverance and discipline – A PMP aspirant need to put in 150 to 200 hours of regular study to pass the exam.

Let us understand how hard is the PMP exam, what makes the PMP exam difficult, and how you can make it easy.

Is PMP Certification Exam Hard?

An exam can be considered as hard only if a lot of candidates fail the exam. The Internet chatter suggests that PMP (Project Management Professional) exam might difficult because many websites claim that the failure rate of PMP certification exam is 20%, 30%, or even 40%.

However, I believe, these numbers are thrown to get eyeballs. There is no scientific or statistical evidence of such a high failure rate. No one really knows how many candidates pass (or fail) the exam. PMI (Project Management Institute) is the only source of authentic information and it does not share any exam related statistics.

On the contrary, many training companies proclaim that their success (passing) rate is as high as 99% or even more.

But, can we believe what training companies say? Could it be their marketing gimmick?

I believe, it is not a marketing gimmick. The passing rate of the PMP examination should be certainly more than 90%. I also believe that 99% is not really an absurd figure if you take PMP training from a good company. There are two reasons for my belief:

1. Only reputed training companies proclaim such a high figure. Everybody does not do it. This figure might be much lower for also-ran training institutes.
2. Only serious candidates take the PMP exam after doing proper study. Approximately, only 1 PMP aspirant out of every 5 who undergo a PMP training program, end up taking the test. The rest 80% do not even apply for the PMI exam because of fear or laziness. Most of the serious candidates pass the exam.

Why is PMP Difficult & What can you do About it?

In this section, I will describe why PMP credential is considered difficult. I will also tell you why these reasons are the fallacious reasons and why you should not worry about them.

1. Stringent Application Criteria

The PMP exam has a very stringent application criteria. Every project manager cannot apply to the exam.

A PMP aspirant needs to have 36 or 6o months of project management experience based on their educational qualifications. In addition, they need to undergo 35 hours of project management training before applying to the PMP exam.

Very few professional exams have such a stringent entry-level eligibility criteria.

Why should you not worry?

You either meet the PMP certification requirements or you do not.

Meeting the application requirements does not increase the difficulty of the exam. The exam is going to remain the same for every PMP candidate whether you qualify for it or not.

On the other hand, if you do not meet the requirements, then there nothing to worry about since you cannot apply for the PMP exam. If that is the case then you can opt for the CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management)) certification.

2. No Fixed PMP Passing Score

There is no fixed PMP passing score. PMI does not disclose the criteria for passing (or failing) the exam. It just says that exam scoring is done using psychometric analysis.

This creates a lot of confusion in the minds of PMP aspirant. They don’t really know how much score in the practice tests is good enough before sitting for the exam.

Some experts suggest that you should score 75-80% in PMP mock tests before considering yourself ready for the real exam.

Now, 70-80% is a very high score to pass a test but, more than anything else, this is just an experienced guess.

Why should you not worry?

On the face of it, 75 to 80% seems to be a steep score. But, there is no statistical basis for proclaiming such a high score.

If you can score so high in a professional test, you will certainly pass the test. How many people can proclaim to score 75% or more in a professional test?

Furthermore, no one says that you will fail the exam if you score less than 75%.

Secondly, no one says which mock tests you should practice. Different tests have varying levels of difficulty. It would be easy to score 75% in one mock test but almost impossible to score even 60% in another.

Lastly, for a moment, let us assume that 75-80% is the correct figure. This would mean that almost everyone is scoring more that 75-80% marks, as almost everyone seems to be passing the exam. If almost everyone is scoring such high marks then exam is certainly not difficult.

This makes me wonder if the exam is as tough as it is made out to be or if it is just fear-mongering.

There is no logical justification for proclaiming 75-80% passing score.

3. Difficult Situational Questions

There are seven different formats of the PMP questions. Out of these, situational questions are considered to be toughest. Plus, it is believed that majority of the PMP exam questions are situational.

In a situational PMP exam question, the query is based on a short real-life case study. These questions are usually long and confusing. It takes time to read and understand them.

These questions are not theoretical and they cannot be answered based on the concepts described in a book. Rather, they test your ability to fathom and manage real-life practical problems in project management.

Why should you not worry?
I do not think that situational questions are unusually tough. These questions can be easily answered if you have sound understanding of the basic project management principles as defined in the PMBOK Guide (A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge).

Here are a few tips to answer these questions:

1. Practice a lot of mock using a good PMP exam simulator questions while doing PMP exam prep so that you understand the basic concepts.
2. Read the question thoroughly without skipping any part in the actual exam.
3. Identify the important keywords in the question.
4. Ignore all the redundant information.
5. Finally, answer the question.

4. Lengthy Exam

The PMP exam is one of the longest-duration professional exams. You have to do 180 questions in 230 minutes. You have to sit for almost 4 hours and concentrate fully during the exam.

Why should you not worry?

There is no doubt that the exam is long. Very few professional exams have such a long duration.

However, the exam duration is the same for everyone and exam length or duration has no bearing on the difficulty of exam.

It is just that you have to remain patient and keep your concentration levels up for about 4 hours. You can easily cultivate this by doing 3 to 5 full-length practice tests.

5. Exam Questions Change Frequently

There are a total of 180 questions in the exam. 5 out of those 180 questions are pre-test questions, which questions are not scored. These questions are randomly distributed in the exam so that candidates do not know which ones are the pre-test questions.

By posing pre-test questions to the regular exam candidates, PMI tries to ascertain the difficulty level of these questions. Once these questions are (unknowingly) certified by the candidates, they become part of the exam.

This way, PMI changes PMP exam question very frequently. So, you will not find any exam-dumps or questions from actual exam.

Why should you not worry?

We already know that PMP is a psychometric test. It does not really matter if the questions keep on changing as the overall difficulty level of questions remains same. And, we have already know that PMP is not really a tough exam.

All candidates get equally difficult or equally easy questions, so you are not at a disadvantage.

6. No Defined Syllabus

The exam is based on the PMP Exam Content Outline (ECO). As the name suggests, it is just an outline of the syllabus and not the real syllabus.

As per the ECO, the syllabus for the new PMP exam is defined by three performance domains. The percentage of questions coming from each domain and the number of tasks for each domain are listed in the table below.

ECO and its task are confusing. It doesn’t really tell you how to do PMP exam preparation.

Why should you not worry?

I agree that ECO is confusing and superficial but it does not increase the difficulty of the exam in any way. All you have to do is enroll in a good training program and consider its study material as the complete syllabus for the exam. You don’t even have to look at the ECO.

7. Too Many Reference Books

PMI has suggested a list of 10 reference books to study for the exam. This is not an exhaustive list because PMI says that “The references listed here are not inclusive of all resources that may be utilized and should not be interpreted as a guaranteed means of passing the exam.”

Why should you not worry?

You do not have to read through all the books suggested by PMI. As suggested in the previous section, you just have to enroll in a good training program and follow it completely.

Conclusion

I think there is a lot of hype created around the PMP exam. Very few aspirants take the exam because of the fear of failure.

You should now worry about the unknown factors in the exam as majority of the test takers pass the exam in their first try.

In order to pass the exam, you should join a good PMP training program and practice quality questions from a PMP simulator.

The PMP certification has a lot of benefits for your career so you should delay in becoming a PMP certified project manager.

What are your thoughts about the difficulty level of PMP exam? Do you consider it a tough exam?

Please share your opinion below.