Background of My ASWB Exam Experience

I passed the Law & Ethics exam in November of 2016.  It felt great!  

Then I waited to hear from the BBS giving me permission to register for the ASWB Clinical exam.  Holidays passed and went into the New Year. I waited more.  Still nothing.  I tried to just register on the Pearson VUE (test exam site) and couldn’t.  I wasn’t in a big rush – my part-time job didn’t require me to become an LCSW, and I was still spending a lot of time occupied with my two small boys. 

Finally by April 2017 I decided to call the BBS and inquire why I hadn’t yet received permission to register for the Clinical exam.  Even though people say it’s difficult to have the phone picked up by a real live person, somehow it worked out for me on the first try. 

BBS said they didn’t have any specific reason for the holdup, but said that they would now mail me the permission to register and take next steps.

My PO Box is supposed to notify me via email when I get a new piece of mail.  I never got an email, but did get around to visiting the PO Box in June of 2017, and the letter was there.

I had always assumed that I would have to take the LCSW exam by November 2017, since that was a year’s expiration after passing the prior exam.  However, when I opened up the envelope, I saw that the BBS granted me an eligibility that expired in April 2018!

To my best guess, this is because they only officially served me the notification of my exam eligibility in April of 2017.  I reflected – did I want to procrastinate this process all the way out until April 2017?

NO.  I wanted to be done already.

Similar to the year before, the summer and the start of a new year in preschool for my older son was extra busy and chaotic, but in October I began to feel like there was an opportunity to get it done.

Not only was there a natural lull in life in mid-fall, but I began to feel a crunch of running out of time to study during naptime, as my youngest son approached two.  I was planning to study on the few afternoons a week when my older son was in part-time preschool and my younger son napped.  However, I remembered that my older son began to drop his nap shortly after he turned two. If I needed time during the day to study, naptime was when it happened, and naptime possibly was soon going to be gone.  I kicked studying into gear.

Yes, by the way.  The maternity leave’s ending for my second son which rushed me to take the law and ethics exam… that’s the same son who was about to stop napping, so I rushed to take the clinical exam. That is either an indicator of how long and drawn out I made this process for myself or an indicator of how quickly these children grow up.  Maybe both.

Fear is a great motivator.  Fear of losing the chance for naptime studying motivated me hard.  I started studying, and I’ll share more about how I studied in the next post.  While in early stages of studying, I also looked into the logistics of scheduling the exam.

Tip- after you receive your eligibility, log on to Pearson’s site just to begin to gauge the availability of test slots.  I remember there being several different days and times to select for the Law & Ethics (which is at the PSI exam center), so I thought it would be the same for the LCSW at a Pearson center.  Wrong.

Perhaps a complicating factor in my situation was that the ASWB was going to be changing the format of the Clinical exam slightly starting on January 1, 2018, so maybe extra people were rushing to take (or re-take) the exam in the format in which they were most familiar.

Between my local Pearson test center and the one about 20 miles away … there were only three or four testing times, total, open for the next four months!  This was unexpected and unwelcome news.

I ultimately registered for an exam date in January 2018. However, once a day for a week I kept logging back in to see if any other earlier dates opened up.  I began to see other dates becoming available that were earlier but wouldn’t work with my schedule. My best guess is that people register for a certain date, but because there is no fee to change the exam day as long as you do it within a certain time frame ahead of the exam, you can change it.  People postpone their time slots if they’re not feeling ready, and then those exam times become available for anyone else. 

One day while checking I saw an exam time open in late November at my very local and convenient Pearson VUE center.  I booked it.  It was official!  I was going to be taking (and hopefully passing) the ASWB clinical exam!

Did I pass that?  Spoiler alert, yes.  Next post, learn how!

Tips to Make Your Social Working Life Easier

Professional life as a social worker can be hard – we often work with some of the most vulnerable populations and don’t always receive a great deal of appreciation for our efforts.  If you’re in the process of getting your LCSW, make your life a tiny bit easier by reading these tips.

Image credit Kate McHugh Akbar

If you are applying for the LCSW in California, the governing entity is the Board of Behavioral Sciences.  You probably already know to sign up for their email alerts to receive major updates and also to make sure that nothing is missing from your application packet before you mail it in – two of the more obvious and oft-repeated tips.

In California, the BBS is required to publish your address after you are licensed.  This is the same address they use for corresponding with you about your exam eligibility and other important matters.  If you don't want your home address made public, you can use your work address.

However, if you don't have a work address that is convenient, consistent, and reliable, another option is to use a PO Box with the USPS.

The USPS has a program called Real Mail Notification™ where you provide your cell phone number or email address, and they will send you a notification every day that you are scheduled to receive mail.  That way, you don’t miss a piece of mail or spend unnecessary time traveling to the post office to find your box empty.  It’s available in many post offices, but not all, so check with your local office.   

When I sent in my application packet to the BBS in 2014, there was a pretty hefty backlog.  They had a page on their website where they updated their application processing status (e.g., in September it said they were currently reviewing applications received in the week of February 1).  While they don’t have these updates up on their site anymore, I recently tweeted at them and they said their processing timeframe is now 30-60 days.  Much better!  Also, helpful to know that they respond quickly to tweets.

Some final tips regarding testing: If you haven’t already been there, you can look up your specific test center on a community review site like Yelp to see what other test-takers have to say about the center.  I found both my local PSI and Pearson test centers on Yelp, and read helpful tips about the parking situation, nearby food, and pros and cons of morning vs. afternoon test times, to name a few examples.

Specifically, ASWB exams are held at Pearson test centers.  Pearson has some resources on their site to get you familiarized before your test day – you can take a panoramic tour and see pictures of their lobby and testing rooms, as well as watch a somewhat peculiar wordless video on security measures for test-takers.  All that visualization can definitely help you feel even more prepared for your exam.

Please share – what other tips have you found helpful in the licensing process?  Other than study hard and make use of practice questions, of course!