How to draft and submit a PMP Application?
PMP Application submission and approval are mandatory steps in your PMP Certification process. The information we furnish in the application is used by PMI to evaluate whether we are eligible to take the PMP Certification Exam.
There are four steps in the PMP application process.
1. Register on the PMI.org website
2. Be ready with the prerequisites
3. Drafting the Application
4. Application Submission, Audit and Approval
Step 1. Register on the PMI.org website
PMI wants to know who you are and are you eligible to take PMP Exam and you should let PMI to know about you. This is our first step. We need to go to pmi.org and register ourselves.
If you have already done this step, then skip this part of the blog and go to Step 2.
Go to this link https://www.pmi.org/ and Click “Register”.
Fill in the details and Register
You can also Register with your social media accounts.
After Successful Registration, Click Login with the Registered Email ID and Password.
Go to Accounts and fill in your personal details. Without this, you won’t be able to Submit your application.
Next paste this link in the Browser URL tab.
Click on the “Apply Now For Your PMP” Button on the Page.
You will be redirected to this page: https://certification.pmi.org/education
This page is your PMP application form.
Step 2. Be ready with the prerequisites
To fill in your PMP application we need three details.
A. Education – both Academic and Professional.
B. Your Project Management Experience.
C. Exam Details.
A. Education – both Academic and Professional
Academic Education is your college Degree. People with a Diploma, Bachelor's Degree (both 3 years and 4 Years), Master's Degree, and Ph. D. are qualified to take the PMP Exam.
Whereas Professional Education is about formal Project Management Education the PMP aspirants must undergo to qualify themselves for the exam. Formal Project Management Education by definition, learning Project Management concepts, processes, Tools, Techniques, etc. through classroom, and online ( both Live and Self-learning Courses) from one of the following Training service provider.
A. PMI Authorized Training Partners (ATPs)
B. PMI chapters
C. Employer/company-sponsored programs
D. Training companies or consultants (e.g., training schools)
E. Distance-learning companies, including an end-of-course assessment
F. University/college academic and continuing education programs
The course hours may include content on project quality, project scope, project schedule, project budget, project communications, project risk, project procurement, project cost, project resources, project stakeholder, and project integration management.
Instead of doing some random Project Management courses, it is recommended to attend Courses that are exclusively curated for PMP Exam Preparation as such course topics from the PMP Exam Syllabus shall be covered and help the learners to get the Professional Education required as well as help them from the Exam preparation point of view.
PMI recommends a minimum of 35 hours of formal project management education. If you are going to do more than 35 hours, then there's nothing wrong but not required.
You need to fill in the academic education details in the below fields in your application form.
Fill in the professional education details you must have a course completion certificate for a project management course from a valid training institution.
Kindly refer to your course completion certificate to fill in the provider name (this is where you took training), and course title ( probably this would be something like “PMP Exam Prep Course”). You also need to mention the start and end dates of the course according to your training calendar and fill in Qualifying Hours with 35 (you will find this detail in the course completion certificate. Some training companies offer more than 35 hours of training to offer the best learning experience. if so mention the provided training hours in this Qualifying hours field).
Remember, never fake these details. You should have successfully completed the course from a valid training institution and must possess the course completion certificate because after submitting the application, PMI shall select some random applications and do audits. At that time, you will be asked to share the details, and PMI might verify with the training company to confirm the legitimacy of the course completion certificate.
After filling in the details click “Save Education”.
B. Your Project Management Experience. (Step 3. Drafting the Application)
The next tab is Experience.
Freshers or people with no project management experience are not permitted by PMI to take the PMP Exam.
The number of months of project management experience needed to take the exam depends on your academic education. If you have a high school diploma, then you need to have more months of project management experience. If you have a master’s degree, then you can take the exam with fewer months of project management experience.
Academic Education | Project Management Experience |
Secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree or global equivalent) | Minimum five years/60 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience |
Four-year degree (bachelor’s degree or global equivalent) | Minimum three years/36 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience |
Post-graduate degree | Minimum two years/24 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience |
Non-overlapping means that if you manage two projects concurrently for a certain duration, then this overlapping duration shall be considered for only one of the projects.
For example, If you have managed Project 1 and Project 2 simultaneously from July 2023 to February 2024, then this accounts for only 8 months of Experience (Not 16 months). The Application form will automatically compute the Total project Experience as the Start Date and End Date of the Projects you provide in the form under the "Project Dates" Field.
Your required project management experience could be covered by a single project you managed or multiple projects you have done. Both completed and ongoing projects can be used to state your experience.
All project management experience must have been accrued within the last eight consecutive years prior to your application submission.
For each Project, you need to fill in the below details.
Job Title Field – This Field is important. PMI Expects you to have actual project management experience to take the exam so they don't expect job titles like system designer, software developer, structural engineer, research analyst, sales executives and so on. The job title you provide should be aligned with project management. For example, titles like project manager, assistant or co-project manager, Discipline PM, Team leader, Scrum master, Product owner, Business analyst, Sponsor, Functional manager, Operations manager, member of the PMO department, PMO head, etc.
If the title you provide is related to an individual contributor role and not aligned with leading projects directly or indirectly, then most likely your application will be rejected.
Project team size and Project budget Fields - You can select the “classified” option to keep these details confidential if required.
Project dates Field - The form will automatically compute your total non-overlapping project management experience based on the start date and end date you provide here. If the project is in progress, then you can select in progress checkbox and provide only the start date of the project.
Project Description Field – This is the most important component of your application. Most of the applications tend to get rejected because the applicant doesn't provide enough details and relevant information in this field.
The following are the good practice that you must follow to get your application approved on the first review.
a. The project description shall have the following subheadings. Objective, Role, Responsibilities/Deliverables, and Outcome.
b. Objective subheading provides a brief description of the primary targets and goals of your project. Mention metrics and numbers if possible.
c. Under Role, mention what primary role you performed in the project and what you are entitled to do.
d. Under responsibilities/deliverables You need to mention what are the key activities you performed in the project and the major deliverables produced. This part should have 5 small segments, and they are initiation planning execution monitoring & control, and closure. One common mistake people make while writing this part is that they provide a lot of technical details about the project work like product details, design methods, manufacturing process, industry-specific technical details, etc. The application reviewer may not have the experience to understand these details and moreover, the review is done to check whether you have project management experience. So, mention only project management tools processes, techniques, and project documents. Examples could be parametric estimation technique, risk register, critical path, schedule compression techniques, resource leveling and smoothing, Procurement management plan, vendor selection process, multi-criteria decision analysis, Sprint planning, product backlog, velocity, Earned Value Management, Requirements gathering, WBS creation, Cost baseline, are to name a few.
This part of the application is expected to have 200-500 words! Make it concise.
You can click this link to download a sample application: LINK
After completing filling out the details, press "Save Experience". Your total months of experience shall be displayed in the top right corner. If you are short of total experience, you can click "Add Additional Experience" at the bottom to open a new section for another project.
Once you have filled in enough project experience, the experience summary total shall turn green with a tick mark.
You can consider printing and saving this page as a PDF and sharing it with your PMP coach or someone who has already completed the PMP certification for a review before submission.
Now it's time to move on to the next tab, "Exam details".
C. Exam Details (Step 4. Application Submission, Audit and Approval)
Select where (Country) you intend to take the exam and your citizenship. These details are used to compute your PMP exam fee.
The PMP exam fee is based on the country. Providing false information with the intention to pay less exam fee will be treated as malpractice and shall attract severe disciplinary action from PMI's side.
Agree to the checkboxes is the bottom of the form and click “Submit Application”.
The processing time for applications submitted online is 5 calendar days. This processing timeline does not apply if your application has been selected for PMI’s audit process.
PMP Application Audit Process
Only a few random applications shall be selected for Audits.
The submission of an application indicates your agreement to comply with the terms of the audit process. All applications are subject to an audit, although only a percentage of applications are selected for audit. If your application is selected for an audit, you will be notified by email prior to payment of the certification fee.
The electronic audit notification provides detailed information on how to comply with the terms of the audit.
During an audit, you will be asked to submit supporting documentation such as:
Copies of your diploma/global equivalent
Signatures from your supervisor(s) or manager(s) from the project(s) recorded in the experience verification section of the application
Copies of certificates and/or letters from the training institute(s) for each course recorded on the application to meet the required contact hours of professional education
PMI provides you with 90 days to submit the requested documentation. If you are able to provide the necessary documentation to meet the terms and requirements of the audit process, the audit should take about five to seven business days to complete.
You can access your audit package from your mypmi.org dashboard. Once all information has been downloaded and received you will be able to submit your audit package. If selected for audit, you may not continue with the certification process until you have completed the audit requirements.
Once you successfully complete the audit, your one-year examination eligibility period starts. Incomplete submissions will not be processed and will result in failure of the audit. If you choose not to comply with the audit, it will result in an audit failure and a one-year suspension period to apply for any of PMI’s certifications.
What’s Next?
Once your application is approved, you will be eligible to take the exam anytime within the next 365 days from the date of your application approval.
To take the exam, you should pay the applicable exam fee directly to PMI on their portal. If you have already paid the exam fee to the training company (this is only applicable for PMI partners), then you must use the coupon codes provided by them. After successful payment, you can schedule your exam.
To learn more about the PMP certification process, refer to this blog: https://www.ganttscholar.com/post/how-do-you-get-a-pmp-certification
Thanks for reading and we wish you the very best for your PMP exam success.
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