The Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) administers social work licensing exams at the Associate, Bachelors, Masters, Advanced Generalist, and Clinical levels across the U.S. and Canada. Here's how the process works, from getting approved to getting your score.
Registration happens in three steps, in this order.
First, apply for a license with the social work board in your state or province and get approval to sit for the exam. The board decides your eligibility and which exam category you'll take. Most boards charge their own application or licensing fees, separate from the ASWB exam fee. Applicants in Colorado, Maine, Texas, and Utah apply for exam preapproval through ASWB instead, then apply for licensure with the state board after passing.
Second, register and pay for the exam with ASWB through ASWBCentral. ASWB will email an Authorization to Test within two business days. It's good for one exam and may be valid for up to a year, though some boards set an earlier expiration date.
Third, schedule your testing appointment with Pearson VUE, also through ASWBCentral. Pearson VUE sends a confirmation email within 24 hours. If it doesn't arrive, the appointment wasn't completed, and it's up to you to follow up.
The ASWB registration fee is $230 for the Associate, Bachelors, and Masters exams and $260 for the Advanced Generalist and Clinical exams. Fees are nonrefundable. Board fees are separate and vary by jurisdiction.
Yes, at least 24 hours before your appointment, through ASWBCentral or by calling Pearson VUE. If your appointment is on a Monday or Tuesday, the deadline is 7 p.m. Eastern on the preceding Friday. Appointments with nonstandard testing arrangements follow the instructions in your Authorization to Test, and arrangements involving a reader, scribe, or ASL interpreter need two business days' notice. Missing these deadlines forfeits the exam fee.
ASWB calls accommodations nonstandard testing arrangements. They're available for disabilities and health conditions, for needs like a monitoring device or additional breaks during pregnancy, for lactation, and for test-takers whose primary language isn't English. All states and provinces allow English as a second language arrangements. California test-takers need preliminary ESL approval from the Board of Behavioral Sciences first.
Timing matters here more than anywhere else in the process. Arrangements must be requested and approved before you register and pay for the exam, and they can't be added to an appointment that's already scheduled. ASWB's Nonstandard Testing Arrangements Handbook has the forms and documentation requirements. SWTP's guide to ASWB exam accommodations walks through the steps.
The exam has 122 questions in two sections of 61, with two hours for each section. Of the 122, 110 are scored. The other 12 are pretest questions ASWB is evaluating for future exams. They're mixed in with the scored questions and can't be identified, so treat every question as if it counts. Questions have either three or four answer options.
The exam used to be 170 questions with 150 scored. That version was retired on August 3, 2026, so older study materials and forum posts describing 170 questions are out of date.
Within each section, you can skip questions, flag them for review, highlight and strike through text, and change answers. Once you submit the first section, or its two hours run out, you can't go back to it.
Between sections, there's an optional scheduled break of up to 10 minutes, and the clock stops while you take it. Time beyond 10 minutes comes out of your second section. Unscheduled breaks are allowed at any point, but the clock keeps running. You can't leave the building during the exam, including on breaks.
The software tutorial before the exam doesn't count against your four hours.
Arrive 30 minutes before your appointment. Late arrivals aren't allowed to test and forfeit the exam fee. Bring identification that matches the first and last name you registered under. The test center doesn't check middle names or initials. Dress in layers, since test center temperatures vary, and plan to leave personal items, including watches, at home or in the locker the center provides.
Report it to Pearson VUE staff at the time it happens, and give them at least 30 minutes to fix it. After 30 minutes of delay, you can choose to stop and reschedule. You also need to report the incident to ASWB through ASWBCentral within two business days. Problems not reported at the time, or not reported to ASWB within that window, can't be remedied later.
ASWB doesn't publish a fixed passing score. Exam forms differ slightly in difficulty, so the number of correct answers needed to pass is adjusted from form to form to keep the standard the same. Your score report shows the number you needed and the number you answered correctly.
Your pass or fail result appears on the testing computer right after a brief exit survey. An unofficial score report is available on your ASWBCentral dashboard about 24 hours later. Official results go to ASWB and to your board, which can take anywhere from two weeks to two months to process them.
If you don't pass, the score report breaks down your performance by content area, which is the most useful starting point for planning what to study next.
A passing score is valid in every state and province for the same exam category.
With board approval, you can retake the exam after 90 days. If your score was within 10 points of passing and your jurisdiction allows it, you can request a waiver of the waiting period, starting 24 hours after your exam. Some boards limit the number of attempts, so check with yours.
A retake covers the whole exam. There's no option to retake only the content areas you missed or to combine scores across attempts. You'll also get a different version of the exam, so the same questions are unlikely to appear again.
Start with the content outline for your exam category, which is published in ASWB's exam guidebook. Then practice with questions written the way the exam writes them, under timed conditions, with explanations you can learn from. Full-length practice tests are the most direct way to build both the reasoning the exam rewards and a sense of the pace.
SWTP's full-length practice tests match the current exam format, with explanations for every answer option.
Updated October 2026
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All tests reflect the new, August 2026 exam format.
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