Hello everyone,
I passed PPP recently and thought I'd share my study strategies. The test was a toss-up, and I felt like none of the questions were even on the same topics that I studied. There are some things here that people said would definitely be on it, so I read books and stuff and then it never showed up. This test is like your friend pulling a box of posicles out of the freezer and having you guess which one the're going to pick. It's a wild guess, but you try to guess based on their personality, eating habits, and most recent popsicle choices. That's the best analogy I can come up with.
Anyway, here's what I did:
Primary source(s):
Ballast. I read it over and over again until I knew everything (SPD section too). It's a good outline, but there's a huge discrepancy between it and Kaplan. I had originally read the first half of Kaplan and thought it was too fluffy and quit. The last week of studying I read through the last half of Kaplan once and was glad I did.
Secretary of Interiors standards: Good to read the major definitions at the start of each chapter and skim the rest. Ballast doesn't go into enough depth. Just know the differences between the four.
Problem Seeking: I read the first part and got the point so I stopped.
Defensible Space: First part and stopped. Arguably I should have read the whole thing because I kept getting those questions wrong on the practice tests, but I passed so whatever.
Practice Tests:
Kaplan and Ballast. Neither is like the test, but going back and looking at both correct and wrong answers and why they are correct and wrong helped solidify what I wasn't strong in, or something that may have just shown up in one sentence but was important. I think I scored a 70% once (30 question increments) but basically hovered around the 50's and built my way up into the 60's.
Vignette is easy but their software is terrible. I accidentally moved one of my guidelines and caught myself. Double checked everything fast at the end but was running low on time. Write it all out word for word on paper so you don't have to flip back and forth or transcribe something in short hand wrong. Really, the biggest hindrance to this thing is the software... literally anyone in business school could do this.
Honestly, I was so mad at this test and was like 90% sure I failed.