Preparing for an ASQ Certification Exam - continued
After you have the material and have studied it, the next thing you want to do is test yourself. The Quality Council of Indiana has excellent sample questions and you can purchase an extra CD filled with sample exams. This is a very good tool. There are sample exams online at ASQ. If you are a member, you can take a sample certification exam online with ASQ. The important thing is to test yourself after you have studied the material to assess how well you understand the material. Do not glance over the material and immediately go to the sample exams. When you test yourself, ensure it is a timed exam. This gets you conditioned for the actual ASQ exam, which is timed.
The next step after testing is modification. After testing yourself you will understand what you are strong at and what you need help with. You should modify your studying to compensate for this. If you are studying for the Certified Quality Engineer exam and you find that you are weak in the quantitative methods, you know you have to spend more time in this area or change the way you have been studying. If you are very strong in statistical tools but are weak in the management and leadership area, you may want to study in that area. You must also commit the proper amount of time to an area within the body of knowledge consistent with it's weighting on the exam. For example, on the Certified Quality Engineer exam, Management and Leadership will have 15 questions while Quantitative methods will have 45 questions on the exam. You probably don't want to commit the same amount of time to both sections because they are not equally represented on the exam.
The last step or phase of the preparation is repetition. Your study habits or pattern must have a constant repetitive focus. Do not approach this by studying one day a week for six hours. It is much better to study an hour a day for six days. The goal is to build momentum and confidence leading into the exam. You can't accomplish that by only putting effort in on one or two days a week. You will forget a big part of the information. We recommend trying to do a little everyday. If you miss a day or two, that's alright, but your habit should be to study some everyday. If you commit to that you will see the rewards long term.
However you choose to study for the ASQ Certification exam, we wish you the best of luck. It is a great decision to take the exam and better yet pass it.