How to Pass the LCSW Exam

How do you pass the LCSW exam? Concrete reply: correctly mark enough answers to satisfy your state licensing board. (Remember "concrete"? It's on the MSE.) Okay, but how do you go about doing that? How do you prepare to pass the social work licensing exam?

There are countless paths to the goal. Some people prepare for a couple of days and trust their nurture-born test-taking skills. That can work out just fine. Others set a test date a couple of years in advance (yes, years!) and study ever last scrap of social work knowledge over the 700-plus days that follow. That can work out just fine too (if you don't mind all the hours lost to studying). For most, the middle road is the one chosen. It's Goldilocks' just-right porridge (if exam prep was breakfast mush). 

Somewhere between the hyper-confident two-day prep and the anxious, overlong mega-prep lies that middle path. Only you (and your initial practice test scores) know how much prep you need. What kind of test taker are you? How long has it been since you were in school? Does your work experience help with getting exam questions answered right? How much time do you have in an average week to set aside for studying? Have you already tried the exam and didn't reach that golden "PASS"?

You get to make your own self-assessment. You get to set your own schedule. You get to choose how to spend your time.

There's a lot of material that could show up on the exam. Try searching ASWB.org for the current clinical content outline--the current list of KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities being tested for on the licensing exam)). Yes, 170 is an awful lot of questions, but it's not enough to cover everything listed there. What's most likely to show up you can probably guess. Meat and potatoes social work. Basic assessment, basic diagnoses, basic interventions. Close call vignettes that test your familiarity with the principles contained in the NASW Code of Ethics. Duty to warn, scope of practice--that sort of thing. What the test basically aims to discern: Are you a competent social worker? Can you be trusted with client care? Will you do you best to respect and help your clients?

For some of the exam, you need specific information (e.g., DSM criteria). But for a lot of the exam, you can go with your gut. You're a social worker. You know how to do the job. Now just apply it to the test. You'll be licensed soon!

Good luck!

REBT and the Social Work Exam

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) was Albert Ellis's precursor to CBT. It too aims to identify and challenge irrational thinking. Or, as they say on albertellis.org:

REBT is an action-oriented psychotherapy that teaches individuals to identify, challenge, and replace their self-defeating thoughts and beliefs with healthier thoughts that promote emotional well-being and goal achievement.

Will REBT show up on the social work licensing exam? Maybe, maybe not. It's not CBT, which, if you don't see it at least once on the exam, let us know. It'd be a big surprise. Still, it's worth brushing up on REBT...and Gestalt Therapy...and lots of different types of therapy. The knowledge may only get you one answer right on the exam. But a PASS on the big test is made up of lots of individual right answers, right?

Here are some places on the web to get up to speed on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy:

• Rational emotive behavior therapy (Wikipedia)
• What is Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT Network)
• Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (About)

Enjoy and good luck on the exam!

Infographics as Social Work Exam Prep

There's more than one way to study for the social work licensing exam. More than one or two or three. Cram info via book and Internet, take practice tests, form study groups, run flash cards, listen to CDs and podcasts, ignore everything and just procrastinate... It's a long list. Here in the future, you can add one more: Infographics. Just about every day, it seems, someone has found a way to condense a bunch of useful (and exam-friendly) information into a pleasant to behold digital poster. It's hard to keep up with them all. PTAE has collected some of them on this Pinterest board.

Could you prep for the social work exam using only infographics? Maybe that's possible. Instead, why not use these handy images as refreshers, as memory aids, and as a potentially fun supplement to the more tried-and-true studying approaches?

Found other infographics that have helped you with exam prep? Please don't hesitate to post links in comments.

Happy studying and good luck with the exam!

Strategies for Passing the Social Work Licensing Exam

To pass the social work licensing exam takes a combination of social work knowledge, marathon focus (4 hours!), and having a handle on some basics of test prep and test taking strategies. If you're here, you already have and/or are developing what it takes!

The knowledge part is pretty straightforward. Know the Code of Ethics, DSM basics, etc. To build your focus, take practice tests (like the ones at SWTP) in four-hour blocks, recreating as best you can the conditions of the real exam. For test-taking strategies, let's look to the web. Here's just the tip of the iceberg of sites that aim to help you be the best test-taker you can be. There are plenty more where these came from. Have a particular question about exam-prep best practices? Search engines will usually cough up an answer. Or write us here. We're rooting for you! Okay, here are some sites to check out:

• Tips for Better Test Taking
• Tips on Taking Multiple Choice Tests
• Test Taking Strategies

Think, how many tests have you already taken and passed? Dozens? Hundreds? Lots. This one may have higher stakes, but the basics are the basics, and you know them. You can do it. Good luck!

Couples Therapy and the Social Work Exam

Continuing our  tour of different modalities of therapy and how they may appear on the social work licensing exam, we come now to couples therapy. Couples therapy presents its own range of issues, some of which echo those in individual therapy, some which cleave closer to group therapy, some all its own. If the exam hits upon couples therapy, it's likely to be in an item or two dealing with the unique ethical legal issues that can come up when working with a couple.

This article from the NASW handles the legal basics. With a little imagination, you'll be able to cook up a bunch of potential exam items based on the content there. How do you handle a subpoena in a divorce proceeding? Where does confidentiality begin and end when you're working with a couple? What do you with secrets in couples therapy--for example, if a member of a couple tells you they're having an affair? Still other questions might try to draw out social worker bias regarding same-sex couples, particularly with regard to adoption. Or rigid attitudes about family planning. Or regarding unconventional approaches to sexuality. Take care to be where the client is!

The internet is a little reticent on couples therapy issues in social work, but here are a few places for additional reading, not all specific to social work (or even to  North America):

• Relationship counseling (Wiki)
• Ethics and practice of couple and family therapy
• Success with couples therapy (Social Work Today)
• Emotionally focused therapy (Social Work Today)

As with any topic area, remember the Code of Ethics; remember the basics; remember to be the best by-the-book social worker you can be--at least for the duration of the exam! Good luck.

Group Therapy and the Social Work Exam

Let's jump into that list of psychotherapies from the previous post and take a look at group therapy. Here's another topic about which there's way more to know than could possibly show up in questions on the social work licensing exam. And here again, to narrow down your exam prep, you might try to approach the topic as an exam item writer. If you had to come up with a few questions about group psychotherapy, what would first come to mind? Maybe personal experience. Maybe a textbook or two from school. Chances are that one of those textbooks would be Irvin Yalom's The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. Read it? Great. If you remember the basics, you're probably good to go for this topic and the exam. Need to learn and/or get refreshed on it? The web is happy to provide a summary, especially about Yalom's key principles of group:

• Group psychotherapy (Wikipedia)
• Group therapy (About) 

How might this material show up on the exam? Maybe as an item about establishing group rules--who's in charge? Maybe as an item about CBT vs. other approaches (e.g., a psychoed or process group)--really an intervention question posing as a group question.  Or you may see a question about the appropriateness of group for a certain type of client (say, those diagnosed with ODD or BPD). Given a passing familiarity with the topic, these don't have to be particularly vexing questions. As ever, just think like an ideal, textbook social worker, and choose the ideal, textbook response. Good luck!

Psychotherapy and the Social Work Exam

Psychotherapy is a big part of social work practice and will show up on the social work licensing exam. But which psychotherapy? There are lots and lots of therapies out there--just take a gander at this giant Wikipedia list, which goes from Abreaction Therapy to Wilderness Therapy (X, Y, and Z are wide open). Will either of those show up on the exam? No, not as correct answers at least. The examiners are looking to see if you're familiar with mainstream, clinically-validated therapy. This shrinks the list down considerably!

Take a look at this Psychotherapies page from NIMH. It includes the very types of psychotherapy likely to show up on the exam: CBT, DBT, Interpersonal Therapy, Family Therapy. Note that Psychodynamic Psychotherapy shows up in the "Other Types of Therapy" section, alongside Light Therapy. The lesson here: know your CBT, know your DBT. Focus less on the other stuff, however much you may be drawn to it personally and professionally.

When a question asks what is the BEST treatment for a particular disorder, say OCD, the answer is very likely to be CBT, or some specific type of CBT (e.g., Exposure Therapy). When a question asks what a therapist should do FIRST with a client who has childhood trauma informing maladaptive coping now, the answer most often is the here-and-now one. Help with resources, social support, etc. For social workers, plumbing psychic depths is supposed to come later.

This doesn't mean you won't benefit--on the exam and in practice--by getting familiar with a wider range of therapies than those included on the NIMH list. Check out the early episodes of the Social Work Podcast for chirpy, concise summaries of Gestalt Therapy and others. Good listening, good to know. Just keep in mind the FIRST and BEST option for you on the exam isn't likely going to stray from the short list.

Good luck on the exam!