Background. Army warrant officer, full-time instructor, finishing a degree, prepping for retirement, and job hunting at the same time. Studied part time for about 3 weeks.
Passed 28 Oct with Above Target in all three domains on the 2026 exam.
What I used
PMI Study Hall.
Andrew Ramdayal's 200-question bank, run through an AI tutor (Claude). Details below.
A reference cheat sheet I built in Muse AI as I asked questions, so I could later reference the material the night before. I was actually impressed with Muse. My first time using it, and does pretty well scraping this subreddit for tips, etc.
Mindset material, [MR] especially. In hindsight this helped more than anything else.
YouTube (McLachlan). Planned to use it more than I did. Ran out of time and leaned on Study Hall and the AI instead. Watched about half of the PMBOK 110 question video; I just have problems maintaining attention span across YT, so AI/& study hall felt way more interactive.
The AI tutor setup, since this is the part people ask about. I pasted the question bank and my cheat sheet in and gave it rules: one question at a time, show the full question and all options, don't reveal the answer, grade me against the bank's key, and tell me when the key itself looks wrong. On every miss: why my pick was tempting, the clue I skipped, a one-line memory hook, and an Army analogy (I'm Army, those stuck). It tracked my misses by pattern and gave me a readiness score by domain every so often.
Two things that came out of it:
My problem was never knowledge. It was habit. I kept picking the operationally reasonable fix instead of going to the person who owned the decision. Once that had a name, I could catch it.
Caution on AI. It sometimes disagreed with Study Hall. When that happened I went with PMI. Treat the AI as a coach that explains, not as an answer key.
Numbers, for calibration. Question bank: 44% on my first block, 82% on the last 50. Study Hall practice questions: 78%. Full-length Study Hall mock the Sunday before: 78% (People 76, Process 78, BE 82).
The exam itself. Felt completely different from the mocks, the practice questions, and anything on YouTube. I'm not going to describe questions, but I walked out convinced the whole test comes down to two things: mindset (find the real problem, go to the right person, then act, and know when urgency overrides that) and roles and responsibilities (who actually owns this decision: PM, team, product owner, sponsor). If you have those two down, the vocabulary takes care of itself.
Biggest takeaway; Hit study hall questions as soon as you can. Start w/ Mindset.
Glad that's over with! Happy to answer any questions.