LEED Green Associate Overview

What is a LEED Green Associate Credential?

The LEED Green Associate is the first tier LEED credential granted by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) to the professionals who have proven their knowledge in green building principles and practices by successfully passing the LEED Green Associate exam. The LEED Green Associate credential is created to demonstrate green building knowledge and expertise in nontechnical fields of practice, to denote basic knowledge of green design, construction, and operations. LEED Green Associates have a proven, up-to-date understanding of green building principles and practices.

Who Should Take the LEED Green Associate Exam?

The LEED Green Associate credential is intended to help a large variety of professionals from diverse backgrounds including the architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, real estate developers, building product manufacturers, environmental experts or even the students.

As an entry level sustainability designation, the LEED Green Associate credential proves your knowledge to your employers or clients by showing you have the “certified knowledge” in the green building industry.

Who Can You Become a LEED Green Associate?

There are no prerequisites or eligibility criteria to acquire a LEED Green Associate credential. LEED Green Associate credential is awarded upon successfully passing the LEED Green Associate exam, which is a computer-based exam that contains 100 multiple choice questions.

Previous experience on green buildings and LEED would definitely be helpful for passing the exam. However, without any previous LEED or green building experience, candidates can confidently pass the exam on the first-try by studying from the right study materials.

With a 99% pass rate, we are so confident in our unique teaching method. With our LEED Green Associate complete exam prep package, if you fail your exam on your first-try, we will provide you a full refund. Click here to take a look at our LEED Green Associate complete exam prep. 

How To Register For The LEED Green Associate Exam

Congratulations on your decision to become a LEED Green Associate! In this section, we will discuss the details on how to register for your exam.

All LEED exams are used to be taken at the Prometric testing centers around the world. However, with the pandemic, you can now take your LEED Green Associate exam from home with online proctoring. If you are curious about how you can take your exam online at home, click here to learn more about that.

If you prefer to take your exam at a testing center, you can find the closest Promoteric testing center from their website (prometric.com). Usually there's at least one Prometric testing center in most major cities in the US and around the world.

To register for your exam, start by visiting USGBC’s website (usgbc.org) and create an account if you don't have one. In your account, under the "Credentials" section, choose LEED Green Associate and follow the instructions on the screen to complete your registration. When registering for the exam, make sure that your name is written exactly as it appears on your ID that you will be presenting on the the exam.

At the last step, you will need to pay the exam fee and schedule the date and place of your exam from the Prometric's website (prometric.com/gbci).

To summarize, following are the steps you need to take to register for your LEED Green Associate exam:

• Sign in to your user account at usgbc.org, then proceed to Credentials.
• Select the exam you want to take (LEED Green Associate exam is the first exam to take for any LEED credential).
• Complete the registration process and pay the exam fee.
• Schedule the date and place of the exam on prometric.com/gbci

What happens if you cannot pass the LEED Green Associate exam on your first attempt?

If you fail the LEED Green Associate exam on your first attempt, you can register for the exam again by following the same steps and paying the exam fee. However, after three failed attempts, you must wait 90 days to register for the exam.

Our LEED exam prep materials are designed to make you truly learn and pass your LEED credentialing exam on your first attempt in order to actively apply green building and LEED principles in real life. With our 99% pass rate, you don't need to worry about failing the exam on your first-try. 

What type of questions should you expect on the exam?

The LEED Green Associate exam questions are categorized under 3 categories:

Recall questions: These are the questions based on the factual information. The exam taker is expected to recall information and respond to the question accordingly.

Percent application questions: These questions represent a scenario to solve while using the familiar principles developed in the exam reference.

Analysis questions: These questions require an in-depth understanding to better identify the components of the question with how they relate to each other in the LEED rating system.

Following is the outline of the LEED Green Associate exam and breakdown of 100 questions according to their category.

• LEED Process - 16 questions
• Integrative Strategies - 8 questions
• Location and Transportation - 7 questions
• Sustainable Sites - 7 questions
• Water Efficiency - 9 questions
• Energy and Atmosphere - 10 questions
• Materials and Resources - 9 questions
• Indoor Environmental Quality - 8 questions
• Project Surroundings and Public Outreach - 11 questions
• Uncategorized - 15 questions

LEED Green Associate Exam Structure

The LEED Green Associate exam is a computer-based exam that contains 100 questions that must be completed in 2 hours. One must achieve a minimum score of 170 out of 200 in order to pass the exam. The minimum exam score is 125.

It is important to note that not all questions in the exam are scored. There are certain questions that are included in the exam purely for experimental purposes aimed to be used in the future exams. For that reason, it is not possible to determine how many correct answers are exactly needed to pass the exam.

How to Study for the LEED Green Associate exam

The most important part of studying for any exam is to study from the right resources. If you're not studying from the right resources, no matter how much you study, you can easily fail the LEED Green Associate exam.

Even though the LEED Green Associate exams are sometimes referred to as conceptual exams, in reality the exam goes well beyond that. Without diving into the LEED prerequisites and credits, a candidate cannot ever guarantee passing the test.

For this reason, our LEED GA complete exam prep course and the LEED GA study guide cover the core concepts of each LEED credit category, and then evaluate the LEED prerequisites and credits to demonstrate how those green building concepts turn into real projects with LEED requirements. As our course is based on the study guide, with our LEED GA complete exam prep package, you will be able to follow from the study guide as you watch the course. Our complete exam prep package contains our LEED GA online course (9 hours), international best-selling LEED GA study guide, online practice exams (400 questions) and downloadable study sheets.

Once you are done studying for the exam, we highly recommend taking practice exams to test and reinforce knowledge. With the practice exams, you will get to know the format of the actual exam in addition to testing and reinforcing your knowledge. Regardless of how well the test taker knows the content, being exposed to the actual exam format should make a significant positive impact on the actual exam score.

Our online LEED GA practice exams provide complete coverage of all the test topics and assess whether the test taker’s knowledge is up to the challenge. Detailed answer explanations support test taker’s progress and help the test taker master every aspect of the test.

It is also important to review the latest edition of the LEED Green Associate Candidate Handbook before taking the exam, which can be found in the USGBC's website.

How Long Does It Take To Study For The LEED Green Associate Exam

Even though the study duration for each test taker can greatly vary and may depend on many different factors, if you are able to study for 3-4 hours a day, we recommend you to study for a duration of 3-weeks.