How to Prepare for the SAS Base Certification Exam
​Important

The SAS Base Programming Exam Using SAS 9.4 has been replaced by the the SAS Certified Specialist Base Programming Exam.

Please see SAS Certified Specialist Training Program for exam preparation.

Recently, SAS introduced a new format for the SAS base certification exam.

The new exam has three new topics:
  • Proc Transpose
  • SAS Macro
  • Debugging Errors

In addition, the new exam introduces a coding interface where you are expected to write and execute code during the short-answer questions of the exam.

The new format has a total of 40-45 multiple-choice and short-answer questions. You have 125 minutes to complete the test.

For more details about the exam, please visit here. ​

HOW TO PREPARE FOR THE CERTIFIED SPECIALIST BASE PROGRAMMING EXAM

Since this is a new exam format, no one besides SAS knows what kinds of exam questions will appear in the exam.

However, based on the sample practice questions as well as the mock exam provided by SAS, the exam is divided into two parts:


PART 1: Short-answer questions

The short-answer questions require you to write and execute code before answering the questions.

For example, you will be asked to perform certain data manipulations on a given data set, and compute summary statistics, such as mean and standard deviation.

You will also be asked to debug/clean up certain SAS code segments and answer questions based on the cleaned data set.

You can see sample practice questions here.


PART 2: Multiple-choice questions

The multiple-choice questions are relatively simpler. 

You do not have to write code to answer these questions. 

However, some of the questions are fairly tricky, even for experienced programmers. 

You should get familiar with the exam questions when preparing for the exam.​

Exam Topics

Based on the official exam prep guide, there are in total 16 topics:
  • Topic 1 & 2: Setting Up Practice Data and Basic Concepts
  • Topic 3: Accessing Your Data
  • Topic 4: Creating SAS Data Sets
  • Topic 5: Identifying and Correcting SAS Language Errors
  • Topic 6: Creating Reports
  • Topic 7: Understanding DATA Step Processing
  • Topic 8: BY-Group Processing
  • Topic 9: Creating and Managing Variables
  • Topic 10: Combining SAS Data Sets
  • Topic 11: Processing Data with DO Loops
  • Topic 12: SAS Formats and Informats
  • Topic 13: SAS Date, Time and Datetime Values
  • Topic 14: Using Functions to Manipulate Data
  • Topic 15: Producing Descriptive Statistics
  • Topic 16: Creating Output

You can find the details of each topic in this article. 

Our SASCrunch certified specialist exam training program covers each and every topic in detail.

You can also purchase the official prep guide to study for the exam.
Resources
SAS Certified Specialist Exam Training Program
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Training program includes ...

Two Certificate Prep Courses + 300+ Practice Exercises