My Experience with the CMPC Exam

This post is a little different from my usual writing as it is specifically meant to be a resource for CMPC Candidates.

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A little over a month ago I took the CMPC Exam (Certified Mental Performance Consultant). Before I took the exam I tried to search around on the internet to try and find some information on how people went about preparing for the exam, but the personal anecdotes that often exist around experiences like this (i.e. taking the GRE) were really sparse. Therefore, I thought I would share how I went about preparing the exam in case anyone does a similar google search in the future and finds it lacking.

If you are in rush, TLDR: Using the Essential Guide provided by the AASP as a study guide is likely sufficient enough to cover enough questions to pass the test.

Background for timelines:

I finished a Master’s Degree in Sport & Performance Psychology in the spring of 2025 and spent the entirety of 2025 getting my hours towards CMPC certification, finishing all the necessary requirements by late January 2026. I submitted all the course works, hours documentation, etc. by the end of that month and was notified in early February that I had officially been entered into the process of CMPC certification.

It took about a month to see that my coursework had been all been approved and then another month to see that all my mentorship hours had been approved. Then things sort of stalled out and I didn’t hear anything for another month. After the window of suggested processing time had lapsed (12 weeks), I sent a follow up email to see if there was something on my end that needed to be done. After about 10 days, I got word that one of the input lines from the education section had been incorrectly submitted. Turns out that I had made a clerical error and needed to amend that before getting approval to take the test. This set me back about a month or so from when I may have been able to take the test.

Eventually, I got word in mid-to-late May that I could go ahead and schedule the CMPC exam. My work schedule with coaching was fairly hectic through the end of May, so I put down a test date of mid-July and decided I would start studying around June 1.

When you go through the CMPC Handbook, you will see a breakdown of the different domains and the corresponding percentages within the CMPC Exam (see page 18). As you go through it all, you will see it’s covering a pretty broad range of areas and the suggestion topics within each domain themselves are also spread pretty far and wide.

As I mentioned early, I tried to search the internet a bit to see how others went about studying, but really couldn’t find much helpful advice. What I did find seemed to suggest that most people used the essential guide that is sold by the AASP, but they also said that a lot of questions on the exam seemed like things they hadn’t really come across before.

Others said they used Quizlet to find some ready made study material by other students (and some professors). I’ll cover this a little later.

Here is what I did:

I purchased the Essential Guide for Mental Performance Consultants and used that for the main bulk of my studying. I spent some time going through each chapter (of 14) and tried to get a sense of where I felt I was strongest and the weakest in terms of foundational knowledge. Some areas are things I used all the time, some areas I used but lacked technical terminology, and other areas were either only studied in school or were otherwise less familiar.

I used a lot of the randomized practice questions that they provide at the end of the guide to get a sense for where I might need to spend a little more time studying. Given the test had a wide canvas of topics, I assumed it was best to focus on more prominent components of each topic and avoid getting stuck in the minor details.

I did not necessarily study every day as my schedule would not allow it, but I think that ended up being a good thing because having a day or two (or more) away would give me a better sense of what I was retaining when I came back.

Unfortunately, when you use their randomized question bank to assess knowledge, it eventually becomes familiar so it’s hard to know how well you are prepared as opposed to simply recognizing questions and their answers.

At this point, I went to check out Quizlet to see what might be available. While there are some decent sized flashcard type archives of material, I really just found them all to be based on the same Guide I was using. So while others might find it helpful to use this resource, but I personally decided to pass on using it once I had seen what was available.

After a month of going through the material in the Guide, I began to feel that spending a lot more time going through everything was yielding diminishing returns. Therefore, I decided to move up my test date by about a week and was set to take it on July 11.

I chose to take the test at home with an online proctor. You have to go about setting up a few things to have your computer ready for the test so make sure you do as much as you can beforehand. Once you log into the testing platform, the set up takes about 20ish minutes to get everything ready before the actual exam begins.

Once it begins, you have 90 minutes to answer 115 multiple choice questions.

The testing platform allows you to flag any questions you want as you go and you can also enter question numbers directly if you want to jump straight to them throughout the test.

So my general strategy was to flag anything I felt somewhat unsure of as I answered them, but then immediately move on to the next question so that I didn’t get bogged down on any one question.

The questions really varied in their style and wording. I personally found some of it sort of odd at times. Kind of hard to describe exactly, but that was my impression.

As I went through the questions, I ended up flagging 47 of the 115 questions.

There were probably somewhere around 2-3 questions that included content I had absolutely never heard of before and the answers themselves had to be complete random guesses as there was no context to work off of. In those cases, I did not flag them as I felt spending any more time on them was not helpful.

Flagging 47 questions seemed like a lot to me and I was surprised I flagged that many; I’d even say a bit concerned that I did.

After going through the initial 115 questions of the exam, I went back to the start of the questions that I flagged. I would say that maybe 8-10 questions did not actually need to be flagged. Once I reread them I didn’t really see any answer other than one I would have chosen as being plausible.

Of the other 37+ questions that I flagged, I do think they were worthy of flagging. However, I think I only ended up changing the answer of maybe two questions. It has been my experience that when I am somewhat undecided between a couple answers, the first answer is usually the better instinct. The couple answers I did change I felt had overwhelming evidence to do so as I think they came from me initially reading the question incorrectly.

After I went through the 47 flagged questions, I had maybe 3-5 minutes left before time expired (if that) and so I just went back to the start of the exam and toggled through as many question as I could until the exam ended. I don’t know how many questions I got through, but I did not change any answers in those final minutes.

As soon as the test ended I got a notification that I had passed the test, but was not given a score. Based on what I had read beforehand, I was not expecting to know that I had passed as the handbook and other emails had specified that it takes three weeks to get results.

About two weeks later, I got a notification of results stating that I had a scaled score of 616, with 550 being the cut score and 800 being the maximum. So I was clear of the cut line, but also must have gotten quite a few questions wrong to be that far from 800. I have no idea of what sort of percentile of results that is, nor do I have any idea on the areas of questions that I missed. The AASP says they only provide domain breakdown results if you do not pass the exam.

One thing I will mention of the results: while I could have spent even more time studying, I think if I was only using the Essential Guide as the basis, I really would have only improved slightly on the margins. A lot of questions were just outside that scope. But what I do believe is that if you use the Essential Guide to study from, it should be sufficient to cover enough material to pass the test.

Hopefully this post might be helpful for those pursuing their certification. If you have any follow up questions, feel free to reach out via the contact page of this website.

-justin