What are the differences between the LMSW and LCSW exams?

When you're getting licensed, you're not just taking the ASWB exam. You're taking one of several levels of ASWB exam: Bachelors, Masters, Advanced Generalist, and Clinical.

Not all states ask social workers to work their way through all levels. And different states give different designations for passing different exam levels. The most common for the Masters exam is LMSW; for the Clinical exam, it's LCSW.

Regardless of which exam you're preparing for, it's worth asking, how is this exam different from the others. Since there are more people taking the Masters and Clinical exams, for this post, let's answer this question: What's the difference between the LMSW and LCSW exam?

Short answer: really not that much.

Both have 170 questions (with 20 uncounted--they're tester questions which will be used in future editions of the exam, if they pass muster). Both take four hours. Both are comprised primarily of vignette questions including close-call situations that everyday social workers face. Though the Clinical exam comes after the Masters exam in some states, they're both designed to assess for knowledge, skills, and abilities that might be expected in a beginning social worker. 

Digging deeper, let's look at the exam outlines for each and compare.

The Masters exam is broken down this way:

• HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, DIVERSITY, AND BEHAVIOR IN THE ENVIRONMENT (27%)
• ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION PLANNING (24%)
• INTERVENTIONS WITH CLIENTS/CLIENT SYSTEMS (24%)
• PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS, VALUES, AND ETHICS (25%)

The Clinical exam breakdown is this:

• HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, DIVERSITY, AND BEHAVIOR IN THE ENVIRONMENT (24%)
• ASSESSMENT, DIAGNOSIS, AND TREATMENT PLANNING (30%)
• PSYCHOTHERAPY, CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS, AND CASE MANAGEMENT (27%)
• PROFESSIONAL VALUES AND ETHICS (19%)

What do you notice? The Masters exam has 3% more items from the first category. That's about five questions. The Clinical exam adds "Diagnosis" to the second grouping and adds 6% (ten questions). The third group gets a name tweak and a 3% difference. The last category--the one based primarily on the NASW Code of Ethics--is weighted more heavily on the Masters than on the Clinical.

So, out of 170 questions, the biggest swing you'll see one way or another is 10 questions in any given category. Over the course of four hours, that's a difference that will be pretty hard to detect. The Clinical exam will have more questions about diagnosis, but don't count on being spared diagnostic questions on the Masters exam. One of the areas in the Masters content outline is "the use of the DSM."

So, as you're preparing for the Masters, don't shy away from LCSW materials, and vice versa. The vast majority of content is similar or the same. And the test-taking process is exactly the same--narrowing down from four choices to the three best, the two best, the one best answer.

Once you've done that 170 times and gotten around 70-75% of them right, you've passed. You're licensed. And you don't have to worry about this distinction any more (or at least for a while). Congratulations in advance!

Q&A: How many questions on the social work exam? What score do I need to pass?

Some questions pop up from time to time in email and as search terms that show up in site stats. Here are a couple of regulars:

Q: How many questions are there on the social work exam?

A: Two answers: 170 or 200. It's 170 for all ASWB administered exams, 200 for the standard written exam administered by the California BBS. Which is you? If you're in California, 200. Everywhere else, 170. You know who you are.

Note: Not all of the exam questions account toward your score. Some are testers (20 on the ASWB, --their usefulness is being gauged before they're made real questions on some future exam. There's no way to know which questions are testers, so you may as well treat them all as real. That said, keeping in mind that some questions are testers can help you maintain calm and composure if you hit a few questions that makes no sense or seem way too hard or that you just don't know. Just shrug it off--"Must be a tester"--make your best guess and move on.

Q: What score do I need to pass the social work exam?

A: Depends upon the state. States set their own pass rates--check with your state board to get a precise number if you want it.  Passing percentages tend to land in the 70-75% range. So, for a state with a 72% requirement, that's 122 out of 170 or 108 out of 150 (excluding testers). For those preparing with online practice exams (a good idea), a good guideline is to aim for percentages coming in at high 70s/low 80s before going to sit for the real thing.

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Have a social work licensing exam question you don't see answered on the site? Write us and we'll do our best to get it answered (find our gmail on the sidebar).

Pass the Social Work Licensing Exam (Slides)

Pass the Social Work Licensing Exam, a slideshow:

Pass the Social Work Licensing Exam from socialworkexamhelp

More Tips for Passing the LCSW Exam

Trying pass the LCSW exam? Here are more how-tos to get it done. These are from a post on the Licensed Clicnical Social Worker Exam blog, 5 Tips for Passsing the Exam.  Here are the bullets. You can find details on the page:

1. Think about the way you study best and do that more often.
2. The exam doesn't care how you practice social work.
3. The exam measures your ability to remember data.
4. The exam is not always "right."
5. You have already passed.

Don't want to click through?  You can sort of glean the basic message from the bullets:  Study well; think textbook social work, not real-world social work; look for the best answer offered, which not necessarily always the answer you'd come up with; memorize the memorizable stuff (the DSM, the Code of Ethics...); and don't be too hard on yourself, you've got your hours, it's just a matter of time till you're licensed.  All sound wisdom.  Good luck!

Tips for Passing the LCSW Exam

There are just a few posts on the LCSW Exam Prep Blog. One of them includes these handy seven tips for passing the LCSW exam.  The list is below, details here.

1. Know yourself and how you study best.
2. Use study guides.
3. Take several practice exams.
4. Make flash cards.
5. Know what to do FIRST/NEXT.
6. Read the question.
7. Breathe.

These make sense, provided overstudying is studiously avoided.  Study guides may not be as necessary as they were way back in 2008 before the net exploded with exam-friendly information.  Flash cards?  Sure, if  they work for you.  Practice tests?  Absolutely.  Breathing?  A plus.  Figure out what works for you and get to it.  Good luck!

LCSW Exam Help

If you usually just block these things out as you web surf, please take a moment to note the collection of LCSW exam prep-friendly blogs listed on the sidebar.  Not all are active, but in each there's something that'll get your prepared for diving into the LCSW exam (or any of the other ASWB offerings).  Three favorites:

• The Social Work Test Prep Blog
• LCSW Study Buddy
• Us, of course!

Pass the LCSW Exam

Still haven't seen a good explanation of all the different social work titles and how they came to be.  Here are some posts dedicated to those aiming to become Licensed Clinical Social Workers.  Congratulations in advance, future LCSWs!

• From Social Work Test Prep
• From The Licensed Clinical Social Work Exam Blog
• From LCSW Exam Prep
• From Social Babble

Californians, who have a particularly tough set of obstacles to get to their LCSW, read up on the process here:

• From the California BBS

Maybe the ASWB exam is easier than you think

A provocative post--How to Prepare for the LCSW Exam--points to a different, potentially anxiety-reducing approach to the test:  Skip the questions! 

[T]wo sample questions provided in ASWB’s Candidate Handbook...brought to mind some research by Albright and Thyer (2010). Albright and Thyer gave the Clinical practice test (from the $30 Study Guide) to 59 first-year MSW students. More precisely, they gave the answers only, without the questions. In other words, the MSW students were looking at something like this:

(A) Work with the foster parents on a behavior modification plan
(B) Suggest that the child’s teacher refer him for special education placement
(C) Refer the child for assessment for fetal alcohol syndrome
(D) Work with the child’s biological mother toward reunification

and that’s all. There was no question; just the four possible answers to choose from. These 59 MSW students had to guess what the question was about, or just forget that and try to imagine which answer would be most favored by ASWB. Logically, these MSW students should have been right about 25% of the time: they would guess one out of four at random, making them wrong, on average, for three out of every four questions they answered. Ah, but that’s not what happened. According to Albright and Thyer, these 59 MSW students averaged a score of 52%. Not bad, considering that ASWB said that states tend to require correct answers on between 94 and 107 (i.e., between 63% and 71%) of the 150 scored questions on the exam. Mere guessing, without anything other than the wording of the possible answer, could apparently be almost enough to put a person over the line.