Apr 22, 2014 09:44 AM
42791 Views
(Updated May 02, 2014 02:12 PM)
This is for Knowledgewoods Bangalore.
I seriously think these guys are overrated. The reason I went to them is that they were starting the course immediately and I did not want to delay.
Some positives –
Trainer took questions well generally. Discussed them mostly. Not very convincing answers at a lot of places, as I discovered even more with reading but that is fine. Immediate exercises to address after each chapter was a good idea.
Material is ok, not great. You are better off following the PMBOK rather than their equivalent of it. Few things relating to Group Creativity and Group Decision making look mixed up in the slide handouts.
Support for application process is ok, The staff doesn't seem the most experienced or qualified for this kind of a thing. Ideally, people at the level of trainers should see this, but I guess they can't for whatever reasons.
Issues faced -
1.Trainer completed Earned Value Management with only basic stuff. In fact, when I started reading the course later for the exam, I realized some areas were not dealt with well. Exam has lots and lots of questions on EVM.
Did not bring out difference between 8.2 Quality Assurance and 8.3 Control Quality very well. I found it much better explained in the Rita book
Finished too early on the last day. Might have gone through some good questions and discuss reasoning as the real exam questions are so very different. I felt a lot of value was lost there. There was a lot left wanting in dealing with tricky questions. This is where the Rita book is very useful.
Mock tests questions have mostly the same scenarios. Even the numbers in calculations are same almost everywhere so that at places you don't even have to calculate. No real advantage. You could score 85-90 in their mock test and still be doubtful of clearing the real exam.
Reasoning for answers of many questions are just not ok. The real exam questions have much better scenarios and their mock questions helped only a little to face that.
- Since I was busy with work, so could not complete mock tests in 45 days. On asking for extension, I had to really beseech them to extend and the lady there started to bargain on even that and said I should buy the tests again! She did finally extend it, but left a bad taste really.
Not to mention the fact that their application is slow for the test, in fact, even slower when you review the answers. Wonder why they are so proud of their tests.
- Class strength was 50+. Naturally meant some questions would be suppressed to keep things on track.
I cleared the test, did well and in the end you could say that is the only thing that matters. But paying 12500+, you definitely feel their course should have helped more in contributing to that. It helped, but easily left more to be desired.
Having read so well and done much better than just passing, I could write down good questions myself, but looks like they are not even interested in improving their question bank. An institute investing so much to get crowds could at least get their faculty to read through a lot of PMP related books and come up with a good balance of questions, but they are really behind on this aspect.
PS: Also interesting that 6 out of 12 total reviews have come on 26th or 27th of Nov, 2012
