* SAS offers three levels of certification for SAS programming: the SAS Certified Associate, the SAS Certified Specialist, and the SAS Certified Professional. This course reviews the concepts covered in Associate and Specialist certifications. There are some significant differences in the format of the two exams. The Associate exam is designed for new programmers with less that 3 months experience. The exam includes only multiple choice questions, you are not required to write SAS code, and you do not have access to SAS software or documentation. You can answer each question based solely on the information that is presented on the screen. The Specialist certification is a performance-based exam that is intended for programmers with 3-6 months experience. The exam also includes multiple choice and short answer questions, but some questions require you to write your own code to determine the answer. Therefore you do have access to SAS and SAS documentation throughout the exam. This course is specifically designed to prepare you for the SAS Certified Specialist: Base Programming Using SAS 9.4 performance-based exam, as it includes examples of both standard and programming questions. But remember if you feel that you do not yet have the experience to challenge the Specialist level exam, we encourage you to pursue the Associate level credential. It is a great option for students new to SAS programming. Let's start by getting familiar with more details about the certification experience. The exam is administered by SAS and Pearson VUE, and it's taken on a computer. You can either take the exam at a sponsored testing location, or you can take it at your own computer through an online exam proctoring system. For the SAS Certified Specialist credential, there are about 45 multiple choice and short answer questions. About half of the questions can be answered just by reading the information provided, and the other questions require you to write or edit SAS code to determine the answer. You will have 135 minutes to complete the exam. A score of 725 on a scale of 200 to 1000 is required to pass. I encourage you to visit the exam web page for details, as these number can change. 52 00:02:22,551 --> 00:02:25,440
During the exam, you will
be able to select your SAS programming interface. You can choose to use SAS Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide versions 7 or 8, or the SAS windowing environment to write and submit code when necessary. Keep in mind there will be no questions on the exam that relate directly to the SAS Studio interface or any of the other SAS programming interfaces. And because SAS software is provided as part of the exam platform, you don't need to use your personal SAS software. You'll also have access to SAS online documentation, but no other online resources will be available. There are three types of questions: multiple choice, short answer, and applied programming. Let's look at an example of each. Multiple choice questions typically have up to four possible answers. There is always only one correct answer. All the information that you need to respond is included in the question, or in other words, you do not need to write any code. You can certainly use SAS software to help determine your response. However, you need to be mindful of time. Short answer questions generally require you to type a number or single word. Again, all of the information that you need is included in the question, but you can use SAS software to help if you are taking the Specialist level exam. Programming questions require you to write or edit a SAS program. Typically, there are several requirements for the program, and there are likely multiple ways you could write a SAS program to complete the requirements. For example, the requirements in this question ask you to create a table, filter rows, compute a new column, and sort the table. You could do this with a DATA step and PROC SORT or in an SQL query. Your programs are not graded, so you can write whatever code you want to fulfill the requirements and determine the correct answers. After you write the program, you answer a few questions based on the results. The questions are either multiple choice or short answer. Please be aware that if you take the Associate exam, there are no programming questions and you don't have access to SAS software during the exam. The first two SAS programming courses, Getting Started with SAS Programming and Doing More with SAS Programming, are designed to cover the topics addressed in both the Associate and Specialist exams. However, it's important to carefully read the official Exam Content Guide to identify potential gaps in your knowledge as well as topics taught in the courses that will not be tested. For example, it's worth noting that the exam does not include specific questions about SQL, but you are welcome to write PROC SQL code for any of the programming questions. Registering for the exam is easy. Visit the SAS Global Certification Program site and look for Foundation Tools. You'll find the SAS Certified Associate and SAS Base Programming Specialist credentials. Included on the site are additional notes about the exam day such as what to bring, what is allowed in the testing facility, how online proctoring works, and so on.
