PMP / PMBOK Guide FAQ 9 – Courses Offering Guarantee to Pass the PMP Exam?

Recently, I received an email from a reader inquiring about online PMP training / exam prep. The reader came across an online PMP course that offers “unlimited reseat of the PMP exam” (including PMP re-exam fees). This offer seems to be too good to be true. I dug into the exact terms about this “PMP Exam Pass Guarantee” and found out that …

The PMP Exam Prep for those who are afraid they would fail the PMP Exam for the first try (second try, third try …)

The email introduced a PMP online training from “The Learning People”, an online training company based in the United Kingdom:

Hi Edward,

I saw your website promoting the PM PrepCast™ as a valuable tool. I have a few months of free time on the weekends to study, and ambitious to acquire this designation.

I’ve found one course offered through “The Learning People”, which is $2500 USD to provide an interactive training module, and unlimited attempts at the actual exam. So essentially, they’re guaranteeing a 100% pass rate.

With the PrepCast it could potentially cost me $700-1000USD (plus purchasing additional PMP practice exams), provided I pass the real PMP Exam the first time. I’ve never excelled in writing tests, so I am nervous that I may be unable to pass.

How is the difficulty, and what additional tests did you use in combination with PrepCast? Did you only use that tool, or read the PMBOK® Guide as well?

Thanks for your help.

Since I have never heard of a pass guarantee that offers “unlimited reseat of the PMP Exam” (other PMP training courses usually provide money-back guarantee in case the candidate fails the PMP Exam), I was intrigued to dig out the real terms for the offer:

Thanks a lot for your email.

The PMP exam is quite difficult indeed as most of the questions are “situational questions”. The questions give a lot of background information and ask you to pick the “best” action to perform. The good news is you will only to pick the answer from multiple choices.

Almost all PMP aspirants would need to read the PMBOK® Guide. It is the recommended reading for the PM PrepCast™ course. I wonder if “The Learning People” would also require you to do the same. I also purchased an additional exam reference book by Andy Crowe. And I made use of mostly free practice exams as detailed in this post.(You may refer to this survey to learn about how others prepare for the PMP exam).

Also, for your information, PMI allows at most 3 attempts in every year for an candidate. From what I have read about the “The Learning People” (only allows up to a year to take the exam/re-exams), that means the total cost for the PMI membership plus the three exams (at most) included in the PMP online training package is: US$139 + US$405 + 2 * US$275 = US$1094. Minus this from the total cost of the PMP course ($2500), it can be found that PMP course alone costs more than US$1400 (this sum will allow you to take many of the PMP bootcamps that are conducted with face-to-face tutorials). You can judge this for yourself whether to take “The Learning People”.

Wish you PMP success!

As it turns out, the PMP Exam 100% Pass Guarantee is not a bargain in itself. By taking in all the costs for the PMP exam and re-exam fees,  every PMP aspirants will be able to provide themselves with the “100% Pass Guarantee”.

The Golden Rule to pass the PMP Exam is still: study hard, study right!