new performance base certification exam

[shubhamtiwari]

Hi everyone,

This is the first time i am here in the sas community. I have few doubts about the new performance base exam-

1- how many question will be there of coding?

2- how many questions will be MCQ?

3-how many points for the coding questions and MCQ?

4-as we know in sas we can get the same result by different methods so if my method is different from yours will i get the points for that?

Thats it for now.

thank you

[SAS_Cares]

Great questions! Please take time to review some of the content already shared with the SAS Certification community where we have moved your post to. The SAS Certified Specialists: Base Programming Using SAS 9.4 exam will have 40-45 multiple choice and short-answer questions. You will have 125 minutes to complete the exam and a passing score is 725. For more information on exam preparation, please go to https://www.sas.com/en_us/certification/faq.html There is also a great video from SAS' Mark Stevens who will walk you through an example of a performance-based Q/A that may be helpful to you https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Certification/Video-Example-of-a-performance-based-question/m-p/5... Hope you find these resources helpful and wishing you good luck on the exam! 

[Mark2010]

Thanks for the plug - SAS Cares!

Also, I have just released an Article (My first! New Community Badge! Who Hoo!) here in the community that consolidates a lot of information (and bonus tips!) about the exam into 1 page. It is here:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Tips-and-Strategies-for-the-A00-231-SAS-Base-...

Regarding some of the nitty gritty details, I'm hesitant to put that here, as exams are subject to change. The performance-based coding sections are weighted heavily enough that you should focus on these first. On the Base exam, you have a lot of flexibility in your code. We grade answers to questions about your results (Advanced works differently with macros to assess your code, but still a lot of freedom). We do often look at the code after the exam, so be sure to save your programs.

[shubhamtiwari]

where to save the programs?

[Mark2010 · Accepted solution]

The exam provides a lab environment, which is a Windows computer. On that computer, SAS is installed. You have 3 different User Interfaces to SAS (Studio, Enterprise Guide, and Display Manager). From within one of those user interfaces, after you have written your program, then you save the program as you normally would, such as the 'save' icon within the coding tab of SAS Studio. The location to save the file is specified in the exam.

[shubhamtiwari]

 @Mark2010  Please explain your above comment "so be sure to save your programs''.  Where to save the program in the exam.

Thank You

[dgritt]

I took and passed both versions of the advanced exam and found the performance-based one better and easier. I liked seeing my code generate the desired results which seemed like instant, although unofficial, feedback on whether I correctly answered a question or not. Even though the delta exam (for prior certifications) still contained multiple choice, it was much better than a full multiple choice exam. I also liked being able to choose which platform to submit from (Studio vs Enterprise Guide vs Display Manager).

The only negative feedback I'd have is for testing remotely and that's because even though I did all the prep-work to test my environment, it still took 30-60 minutes to gain approval to start the exam. I think a lot of that time could have been reduced had the prerequisite notes included all the requirements so I could have better prepared my testing environment.