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Advice provided by: Rob Freeman Jr, LEED AP, Green-Buildings.com

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I thought I was going to fail this exam. Luckily, I didn't, and after the fact I realized that there were four important factors I had to consider in preparing.

1) Do I Take the Exams Separately or Together?:

The LEED AP exam is actually two exams. Part 1 is the LEED Green Associate. Part 2 is the LEED AP specialty exam.

If you have LEED Project Experience, you are qualified to take them both at the same time.

Save yourself some brain damage and LEED Green Associate exam first, on a separate date, prior to sitting for the specialty portion of LEED AP exam. There are several reasons for this:

- Less material to absorb: Focus all your efforts on studying for one exam at a time. Both exams are odd. The LEED GA asks very strange questions. If you don't believe me, hear it from the master, Alex Spilger.

The LEED AP specialty portion requires memorizing a 400 page book. Save this task for later.

- Earn the Credential: If you conquer the LEED GA exam first, you will be able to use the LEED Green Associate designation professionally. Also, achieving an early "win" can be a helpful confidence booster.

- All or nothing:If you take both at the same time, you have to pass both or you get nada, zip, zilch. No credential.

2) How Much Time to Prepare?: I gave myself a good three and a half months to learn the LEED AP material. I had an 8 month old and a full time job that required a lot of travel.

By the time three months had passed, my confidence level was much higher and I had memorized a lot of material.

There are people who ask advice on taking the LEED exam and mention that they have their exam tomorrow and they just started studying. Do not do this. The LEED AP exam is not an exam you want to cram for.

3) What Type of Study Materials Should I Use?:

There are many different LEED study materials to choose from. I used everything I could get my hands on.

There are free LEED Green Associate exam study materials and free practice exams that you can easily take advantage of:

- Free LEED GA exam
- Free LEED AP BD+C exam
- Free LEED AP O&M exam

As mentioned in the links above, emphasis should be placed on taking advantage of free LEED practice exams.

I took practice tests again and again. Also, I timed myself during each exam to see whether I was able to finish the exams in the two hours available.

If you're preparing for the LEED AP CI (commercial interiors) exam (ID+C) another free LEED AP study option that I would recommend taking advantage of are the free Teknion LEED for Commercial Interiors audio files. The audio files are recordings of online/conference call study sessions administered by Sholem Prasow, an expert in passing the LEED AP exam.

I enjoyed listening to these recordings because the students raise lots of good questions about the exam and, in addition to being humorous to listen to, Sholem was very good at weeding through all the material and helping to identify what is and what is not important to know.

Even though these audio files are focused on the LEED for Commercial Interiors study material, a lot of the information provided may be helpful to you.

4) What to do Right Before the Exam: Finally, once you've finished preparing, you'll have to decide how to spend your time right before the exam.

When you get to the Prometric testing center, before you sit down to take the exam, the test administrator will provide you with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. This is yours to take with you into the exam and, once you are sitting down at your terminal, you may write whatever you want on this paper before the exam.

Once you get started, Prometric gives you a ten minute tutorial on how the test is formatted, how to use the testing software, how to use a mouse, etc... This is stuff you already know.

Presumably, Prometric walks test takers through this information in case someone doesn't know how to use a computer or something.

If you're like most people, you can finish this tutorial in 30 seconds and then you will have about 9.5 minutes to do whatever you want while the clock winds down on your computer monitor. On the morning of the exam, I prepared for this 9.5 minutes ahead of time by creating a short list of items that I was having trouble with and creating acronyms for the words to remember. When my 9.5 minutes began, I jotted this and whatever else I thought was important to remember, down on this sheet of paper.

While I think I only referred to the paper once or twice during the exam, knowing it was there was a big help.

Good luck. If you have any questions at all, please email me.

Related Advice:

• Green-Buildings.com and USGBC Northern California Chapter Partner on LEED® Professional Project Experience Program



• How do I fit into the new LEED system as a current LEED AP?