You must meet specific education and experience requirements to qualify for the PMP certification. You need either a four-year degree with at least 36 months of project management experience and 35 hours of project management education or a high school diploma with 60 months of project management experience and 35 hours of project management education to become a project management professional. Completing a PMP certification course can help you fulfill the educational requirement.

The standard method of PMI examinations is center-based testing (CBT). Paper-based testing (PBT) is also available under limited circumstances, detailed in the “Examination Administration” section below.

The PMP certification exam consists of 200 randomly placed multiple-choice questions, 25 of which are pretest questions that do not affect the final score and are used to test the validity of future examination questions. To summarize:

• Total Questions: 200
• No. of Scored Questions: 175
• No. of Pretest Questions (Unscored): 25
• Allotted Examination Time: Four hours

The PMP certification examination is preceded by a tutorial and followed by a survey. Both are optional and can take up to 15 minutes to complete. The time to complete the tutorial and survey is separate from the four-hour examination time for becoming a Project Management Professional.

You must gain 60 professional development units (PDUs) every three years.

Submitting your PMP certification application indicates your agreement to comply with the terms of the audit process. If your application is selected for audit, you will be notified by email before fee payment. Please submit the following documents during the audit:

• A copy of your diploma/global equivalent
• Signatures from your supervisor(s)/manager(s) from the project(s) you worked on
• Verification section of the application
• Copies of certificates/letters from the training institutes for the courses recorded on your application form which meet the criteria of the required contact hours of project management education

You have 90 days to submit the requested documentation. Once submitted, the audit process will be completed in five to seven business days.

PMP certification is valid for three years. To get your PMP certification renewed or maintained, you can follow these easy steps:

• Attain the required number of Professional Development Units (PDUs) to meet the Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) for the PMP certification.
• Insert your PDUs in the online CCR system. 
• Pay the renewal fee and wait for the update of your PMP certification.