Tips for the ASWB Social Work Masters exam

I know I haven’t written anything on here in a while, and this is going to be a bit of a departure from my usual nerd stuff.

This morning I took the ASWB Masters exam, the next step in obtaining licensure so I can become a practicing social worker. In my state, the licensure I’m going for is known as CAPSW, or Certified Advanced Practice Social Worker, but in many other states it’s LMSW (Licensed Master Social Worker). Whatever you call it, you have to take the same test, which is administered by the Association of Social Work Boards.

First things first, I passed, and I’m pretty pleased with how I did. But I’m not here to brag, but rather pass on some tips that I found useful, or which occurred to me after the fact (or maybe even during). It should go without saying that I cannot comment on the actual content of the exam, other than in a very, very general manner.

First, I will share ten tips that will be helpful day-of exam, followed by some general study tips. I know that probably seems backwards, but I’d like to get this stuff out while it’s still fresh in my mind.

1. You are going to be nervous. Like, super duper nervous. That’s okay. Practice some of that deep belly breathing we are always telling our clients about and never seem to get in the habit of doing ourselves.
2. The worst of my nervousness was in the waiting room. Once I went through the registration procedure (well, you actually do it a couple of times) which involves giving them two forms of ID, having your photo taken, handing over all your electronics which they place in a sealed plastic bag and is then stored in a locker, and having your palm scanned (because we live in the future) and they led me to the little cubicle that was my testing station, I started to feel a little better. Once I started answering questions, I felt a lot better. If you can keep the anxiety at bay in the waiting room, hopefully you should be okay once you start the exam.
3. Before I get into the exam itself, a couple things about the setting. First, it’s very … sterile. You’re in a gray cubicle along with maybe a dozen other people in their own cubicles, and you can’t really see them or hear them (they actually give you optional sound blocking ear muffs; I chose not to use them and it was fine).
4. There are no scheduled breaks, and if you need to get up for any reason you have to silently raise your hand and wait for the proctor to come collect you. You are not allowed access to your locker except for in emergency cases, and you are not allowed to leave the floor the testing center is on. You can get up and stretch, you can walk to the bathroom, but keep in mind that the timer keeps counting down while you’re doing that.
5. You are given four hours to complete the exam. In my experience, this is more than enough time. That said, I recognize that not everyone is good at standardized tests. I am pretty confident with the format but even so there was a lot of me second-guessing myself and wanting to go back. I actually did end up going back and checking every answer after I finished, but I’m not sure whether it was a good idea or not. I changed two or three answers, and I have no idea whether the changes were for the better or not. I would suggest that if you’re running low on time, do not worry about going back to review. You’ll be fine. Your first response is usually the correct response. More on that later.
6. There are 170 questions, but 20 of those are “pilot questions” designed for a future exam and do not count toward your score. You do not know which 20 those are, so you have to do your best on all 170 questions. (Presumably that’s also helpful for them to know whether they are designing good questions or not.)
7. I highly encourage you not to think about how many correct answers you need to pass. Just focus on doing your best on the questions in front of you rather than the hundred or so you think you need to get right. It’s going to distract you and could lead to poorer results. It’s not a great idea for another reason: the amount of correct answers you need to pass varies.
8. You’re likely thinking, “What!? That’s ridiculous! I’ve never heard of something like that before!” Yeah, so it does seem a little weird but it actually makes sense, and (in my opinion) works out in your favor. So, the amount you need to pass depends on the difficulty of the questions you’re given. (The questions are chosen, presumably at random, from a question bank.) The more difficult your questions on average, the fewer correct answers you need to pass. The easier the questions, the more you’ll need. According to the Social Work ASWB Masters Exam Guide by Dawn Apgar (2015), the amount you need to pass generally varies between 93 and 106. I needed at least 96 correct to pass, meaning my test was somewhat more on the difficult side, I suppose.
9. Be sure to answer every question. It doesn’t pay to leave them blank. Even if you have absolutely no clue, picking an answer at random still gives you a 25% chance of being correct. Not filling it in is a 0% chance, so do yourself a favor and take a guess.
10. Try not to agonize over your answers too much. You can “mark” questions to return to later, but in practice I’m not certain this function was very helpful. When I did return the questions I’d marked, I was pretty much no less clueless than I was the first time I couldn’t answer them, and it probably would have been better to just choose something and move on. The one exception to this was one question which I was better able to answer because a later question got me thinking about it differently.

Alright, so hopefully that is helpful in alleviating some of the anxiety about test day, and will make getting through the exam itself a little less nerve-wracking.

Now some study tips:

1. Start early and give yourself lots of time. I know most MSW students are busy with practicums or jobs or family, so you’ll be doing yourself a favor by spreading out the work over a longer period of time. It’s going to be far more valuable to study every day than to cram the week before the exam.
2. A great way to make sure you study every day is using Pocket Prep’s MSW app (Android | iPhone). You can set it to do a new question every day, as well as quizzing yourself with practice tests that range from 10 to 100 questions (I’d recommend not starting out with long quizzes; those will only make you feel like you don’t know anything). The best part about the app is that it gives you a rationale for each answer, so if you get something wrong you’ll know exactly why, and if you get it right you can reinforce your knowledge. Note that this app does make use of the “freemium” model and some of its features require in-app purchases. Personally, I think upgrading is worth every penny, but even just the core functionality should have you in good shape.
3. That book I mentioned earlier is really helpful too, and a lot of the tips I’m sharing here are right out of it or heavily inspired by it. It gives excellent test-taking strategies and covers each of the four content areas in depth: 1.) Human Development, Diversity, and Behavior; 2.)Assessment and Intervention Planning; 3.) Direct and Indirect Practice; 4.) Professional Relationships, Values, and Ethics. The book notes that areas 1 and 4 are going to be represented slightly more heavily in the exam than 2 and 3. I feel like that jibes with my experience of the exam, but I really can’t say for certain because my memory is kind of skewed by the questions I thought were most difficult, and those didn’t necessarily all come from one practice area.
4. The book also contains a 170 question practice test. I recommend doing it. I also highly, highly recommend paying for the official online practice test from ASWB, because it uses the same interface as the actual exam. I would say that even if money’s tight (and let’s be real, we’re social work grad students so of course it is) it’s really worth getting together the money to spring for it. In addition to acclimating you to the not-at-all-outdated-hasn’t-been-updated-since-the-90s interface, you also get a sense for what the questions are actually like. I was surprised that they weren’t as similar to the Pocket Prep questions as I was expecting.
5. In my experience, the other practice exams I found online were mostly useless. If you can find free ones, sure, go for it, but don’t pay for them. Save your money for the Exam Guide, Pocket Prep (if you choose to upgrade), and the official practice exam. I’d say if you can only afford one of those things, the official practice exam is totally worth it. (I know, it’s also the most expensive…)
6. I wouldn’t focus on memorization of terms or specific steps in interventions or theories as much as trying to attain a more conceptual understanding. That, plus understanding the values that inform social work practice, is going to be far, far more important than understanding the ins and outs of every intervention, or remembering the exact order of Piaget’s theory of development or Freud’s psychosexual stages. Not that it hurts to know that stuff (it doesn’t, of course), but you have a pretty limited amount of time to study, and if you’re going to invest that time wisely it should be by cultivating a general conceptual understanding. If you can tell me the gist of those things, that’s going to be better. In theory, you should be able to answer most of the questions without knowing the specifics of the intervention or theory being discussed as long as you have a general understanding of the concept, the core social work values, and what I would call the “social work order of operations.”
7. This is where a little bit of memorization may come in handy. There are two acronyms that could be useful to memorize, and they are both related to the “social work order of operations.” Unfortunately I didn’t learn of these acronyms until just before the exam, but now that I have taken the exam I can see how useful they would be, especially for questions looking for first or next, best or most appropriate.
8. The first is FAREAFI, and it will help out with questions that are asking what to do first or next. The mnemonic represents a hierarchy of steps (see, order of operations!):
   Feelings of the client to be acknowledged above all; begin building rapport
   Assess (includes informal and formal assessment, biopsychosocial, mental status exams, etc.)
   Refer
   Educate
   Advocate
   Facilitate
   Intervene
9. The next one, AASPIRINS, is helpful for questions asking for the best option:
   Acknowledge client/patient; begin building rapport
   Assess
   Start where the patient is at
   Protect life (safety planning — is the client in danger, or do they represent a danger to others?)
   Intoxicated — do not treat
   Rule out medical issue
   Non-judgmental stance
   Support patient self-determination
10. As you can see, those aren’t necessarily the prettiest mnemonic devices, but I can see how they’d be incredibly helpful. I’m even re-thinking questions after the fact, so that it would have been good to have spent more time on that. On that note — you will be provided with a piece of scrap paper (for me it was a dry erase notebook and dry erase pen), so it could be a good idea to just jot those down right away so you have something you can visually reference. That tip comes from SocialWork.Career, and this page shows you how you can use the acronyms in practice to answer test questions.

I’m sure there are other things but that was probably a lot and I don’t want to overwhelm anyone. Hopefully this is helpful, and I wish everyone the best of luck on their exams!