LEED GA EXAM GUIDE: A Must-Have for the LEED Green Associate Exam: Comprehensive Study Materials, Sample Questions, Mock Exam, Green Building LEED Certification, and Sustainability (LEED v3.0)

Near the end of my master's degree program in 2009 I decided to take the LEED GA exam. Seeing as this was one of the only reference guides available for the new exam I decided to go with it.I went through this entire book carefully over the course of several weeks, making my own lengthy set of notes as I went. I even answered most of the author's (Gang Chen's) "practice test questions" correctly. Then the day of the exam I decided to go through some other practice test questions from USGBC and realized that most of what I had studied did not pertain to the LEED GA exam--AT ALL. I quickly crammed from some other USGBC LEED GA sources and eked out a passing score on the test later that evening. For someone who normally excels at standardized testing, this one was too close for comfort.The author knows LEED but wrote this book without actually taking the LEED GA exam. He gives a TON of detail on every LEED v.3 credit (in fact, dedicates most of the book to this task), but the LEED GA exam questions rarely drill down to this level of detail. The exam focuses more on general information about the LEED program, the LEED design process and timeline, and credit synergies. All of this you can obtain through the USGBC's free resources.He rationalizes including so much detail by saying that knowing the credits in detail will be necessary for those that go on to take the AP exam later. However, obviously not everyone taking the LEED GA plans to take one of the AP exams. How can one possibly justify selling a book for $74 when 80 percent of what is written is not germane to the exam?!Lastly, like some other reviewers have pointed out, the book is very poorly laid out and edited. It is a small-ish paperback (not a large textbook-type book), and the layout is downright awful. Here is my imagined summary of Chen's process:1. Open up new Word document.2. Start typing. Don't bother changing any fonts, sizes, or styles save for some boldface and underline. Forget any notion of graphics. Page breaks are just wasted space.3. Stop typing several hundred pages later when you've run out of stuff you know about LEED credits.4. Invent some questions that, oh I dunno, you think might possibly be on a test you've never taken.4. Print.5. Skip editor. Send to publisher.Seriously, do not throw your money away on Chen's cash cow. Stick with the official resources in the USGBC LEED GA Handbook and you will be fine.PS: Go through some of the other poor ratings and view the Comments sections. You will see the author vehemently defending the book, accusing the reviewers of colluding in some sort of conspiracy against him, and in some cases even threatening to take legal action for loss of book sales.

i bought this book and enrolled in a workshop to prepare for the leed ga exam. i found the book to contain useful and relevant content but very difficult to read and follow. the book doesn't look professionally written or edited. the author makes a good effort to give advice on preparing for the exam and uses mnemonics to enhance recall of the material. unfortunately, there is far too much material to recall. there is a lot of unnecessary info, eg differences between v2 and v3, and details about each credit, even some that are not on the exam. it would have been more useful to emphasize the philosophy and logic behind the leed standards than to try to get students to memorize everything.i have to stress again that the presentation and organization of the material is terrible. i do not recommend buying this edition. if the author cleans up the format, deletes irrelevant information, and adds more practice exams, i would recommend it.i found the 1-day workshop far easier to follow and more beneficial because you can ask the presenter a lot of questions and you really get a good sense for what is important. i also used flash cards, which were very helpful, on my iphone.i studied for about 15 hrs plus the workshop. i passed the exam on my first try yesterday.

First, let me qualify my comments with the fact that I have not yet taken the LEED GA exam. I am scheduled to next Tuesday. However, I have looked at the practice exams from EverBlue and GreenExamPrep and read the USGBC's Core Concepts and their study guide as well as the study guide from GreenExamPrep. This book offers a lot of practical suggestions and point-by-point discussion of the exam material. I have the concepts down fairly well (I can be tripped up by specific numbers once in a while), and I passed his test 20 questions (are you ready to take the practice exam?) easily. But, as the author states, these questions WERE easy. The practice exam in the book was completely different than in any other source I looked at, included the ones from GreenExamPrep, a source he recommends. I was so depressed at my abysmal score I almost changed my mind about taking the exam. However, I feel that it was just that his practice exam was too detailed -- more like what I would expect from the "plus" exams -- and not the reality of the actual GA test. I have discussed this with people who have taken the actual exam and feel fairly confident that this is the case. The rest of the book was a GREAT reference guide and contains excellent advice. The only other issue I have with it is the mneumonics the author suggest are -- well, too many to actually remember for me. I would need a mneumonic to remember the mnemonics! I hope that the grasp of the key concepts in a multiple-select exam will be enough. The GreenExamPrep examples were, according to the author, the most like the actual test, and I am scoring in the upper 90s consistantly. I definetely recommend this a an additional source for study. I think the suggestion for the GreenExamPrep was worth the cost of the book itself!NOTE: I passed the exam with a 197, I figure that I missed 2 questions. One had to do with infiltration facilities (I hadn't remember reading about that anywhere).

I just passed the LEED GA Exam and fortunately used other resources (namely the greenexam prep).This book is just not that well written and it has a lot of extraneous info which in the end made my preparation a lot more confusing and difficult than it should have been. Luckily I did not rely on this book alone and also used the practice tests, study guide and mp3s from greenexam prep. Which was more intelligible, cheaper and more sustainable(all digital downloads).If I had to do it again, I would not have bought this book and used just the greenexam prep.

I just took the LEED GA exam and passed, so I wanted give feedback for those thinking of taking the GA portion of the exam and using this book. Though this book is helpful there is entirely too much information for just the GA exam. Now I realize that the author assumes that most individuals will go on to take the AP+ exam and thus the information covering the prerequisites and credits will be helpful, but over two thirds of the book is devoted to this! Personally I would have settled for just the GA information and a cheaper price. Additionally there is some information on the LEED accreditation process (how it changed in June 2009) that seems extraneous to someone taking the GA exam post-June 2009. Afterall if you are sitting for the GA exam then you don't have accreditation and do not need to know how someone else who already has LEED accreditation pre-June 2009 gets their accreditation changed from AP to AP+.