Multiple Choice for Project Management
Hello everyone,
I just failed my project management test. BUMMER. I felt prepared for this test, and I feel like I have a firm understanding of the general content. However, these "select the best three/four answers" questions are KILLING ME. I knew they were an issue for me simply from taking the practice exam. Many of them seem subjective, but the ARE obviously doesn't think so.
My question is this: Can anyone offer any advice/tips on how to tackle these questions? I do not think that more intense study time is the answer for me; I need to practice how to avoid getting tripped up by these multiple-choice questions!
Any feedback is greatly appreciated - thank you!
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It's good that you have an understanding of the subjects, and it wouldn't hurt to brush up on the topics again in preparation for your retake. The best way to make sure you don't get tripped up is knowing the material. If you know those questions will give you trouble, flag them and come back to them later.
Knowing the material and what the question is specifically looking for will help in simplifying your choices to pick from. Utilize the markup features that are provided, as they'll help you to keep your process of thought and why you arrive at certain answers vs others. For me, it helped to highlight how many selections I needed so I would not forget one or pick extra over how many the questions were asking for, good luck!
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In my opinion, these exams are very much about reading and comprehension. They require you to be clear-headed and break questions down to their most simple terms. I have always struggled with doing just that.
I would quickly skim the answers first, before even reading the question. Sometimes one or two will stand out as being suspect. Once you jump into the question you are privy to what they are asking and can focus more on the topic.
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Just faied too. Very confusing. I find case studies very long and hard to find information on attacements. I had case study on A195 and design build that I didn't study as well as A201 or B101. Reccomending more practicing on case study but unfortunately not too many availible. Waiting for resaults.
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abruno168 and battjes2006 have some great advice here - one thing that isn't emphasized as much as it should be is that arriving at the best chance of getting these select-all kinds of questions correct is that it's as much about eliminating the answers you know aren't correct as it is about positively identifying the best answers. If it's a select-3 and you can ID two of the 6 options as definitely wrong, then you've just got to pick the best 3 of 4 - much better odds than simply picking 3 from 6.
Second, don't spend more time on these questions than you have to - if you don't know it, make your best consistent guess as quickly as you can and bank that time to use on other questions you might not know how to do the quick way, but can answer correctly. You're going to miss 25-30% of questions on every division, best to allocate the time you have on the exam away from those questions you are going to miss if you can identify which ones they are.
For PjM generally, the contracts are the biggest focus, their language is legalese, so words have specific meaning. I had a question this morning - AIA B101 requires the architect to provide a sustainable option. Why can't "Provide LEED as an option to the client" be a right answer for "AIA B101 obliges the architect to:"
It's an easy answer - obliges means absolutely must do in contract-speak. The correct answer from the 4 available options is "Visit the site one year after substantial completion" - because that's something that the B101 requires of the architect. A sustainable option isn't LEED specifically - you're not obliged to provide any specific structure of sustainable option. All this is to say for the ARE generally, and PjM especially, pay attention to what the question is asking, and understand that ask in context - "obliged to" is a different ask than "meets the requirements of", etc.
As anthonypriest notes, it is worth going into the current ARE 5.0 Guidelines and actually reading the Content Section descriptions along with their Objectives if you haven't already. PjM is pg. 77-84.
Best,
Ralph, the Amber Book Team
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