Frequently Asked Questions

Students and educators can take global certification exams for US$75* after registering for SAS Skill Builder for Students or SAS Educator Portal. Discount vouchers must be requested before exam registration. 

*This discount is not available in China or India. Please email the country office in China or India to inquire about other discounts or promotions that may apply. Students in Japan, please contact your local SAS office to inquire about discounted certification exams.

You should be prepared to take your exam within 90 days of receiving your discount voucher. Requests for a discount voucher must be made prior to registering for your SAS Global Certification exam. Vouchers are valid for one exam attempt, are nontransferable and must be used by the individual who applies. Only one voucher is issued per request. If you wish to take additional exams after utilizing a voucher, you must reapply.

Eligibility and Guidelines

Students, educators, employees and staff directly employed by or enrolled in a degree-granting academic institution or school district are eligible to take certification exams for US$75 per exam.

• Students enrolled at a degree-granting academic institution must register for SAS Skill Builder for Students in order to request the certification exam discount. 
• Educators directly employed by a degree-granting academic institution must register for the SAS Educator Portal in order to request the certification exam discount. 
• Employees and staff directly employed by a degree-granting academic institution must register for SAS Skill Builder for Students in order to request the certification exam discount. 
• Employees, educators and staff employed by a school district should contact customer service to request an exam discount voucher. 

All higher education exam candidates must request a discount voucher via the appropriate online learning portal prior to registering for a SAS certification exam. Registration for these portals requires a SAS profile with an academic email.

A list of all currently available SAS Global Certification exams can be found on the home page under Certification Options.

Each exam challenges candidates to apply specific knowledge they have acquired through SAS software training and/or job experience. Computer-based in format, SAS Global Certification exams comprise multiple-choice and/or short-answer questions, depending on the exam. Exams are generally scheduled through Pearson VUE but are also held at various locations around the world on a pre-scheduled basis. Candidates are allotted varying time limits to complete the exam, depending on which exam is taken. Specific exam content and passing criteria are located within each exam. To encourage your feedback, SAS Global Certification exams include a feature that allows candidates to comment on specific test questions. Your opinions are important to us and are a critical component in test development.

Additionally, SAS Global Certification requires candidates to accept the terms of the SAS Institute Inc. Certification Program Candidate Agreement before taking a certification exam.

Short-answer questions require you type your answer in a text box, rather than select your answer from four options. Typically, you will provide a numeric answer or a short section of SAS programming code. When entering code, case is ignored, and all variations of SAS syntax that correctly complete the program are accepted as correct.

Interactive questions allow you to complete a task. The exam question will provide you with a work area. In this work area, you may be asked to:

• Use drag-and-drop functionality to configure a user interface component.
• Use drop-down lists, check boxes and radio buttons to configure user interface components.
• Build a SAS program from a list of available lines of code.

The exam scoring mechanism will evaluate the settings you have established in the work area to determine if the item is answered correctly.

A scaled score converts the raw score (number of test questions answered correctly) to a consistent and standardized scale and is a common practice in certification programs to ensure that all forms of an exam have the same level of difficulty. With the complexity of practical testing and multiple case studies in the Predictive Modeling Using SAS Enterprise Miner exam, we use scaled scoring for this purpose. Which means that candidates taking the exam will have a consistent level of difficulty regardless of the set of exam questions presented.

To help candidates prepare for exams, SAS offers a broad curriculum of instructor-based training, Live Web classes, e-learning courses and free practice exams. Academic discounts are available on training courses in most countries, so visit your local website for more information.

For exam preparation options, go to the exam preparation tab within each exam.

Sample questions are available for production exams and illustrate the types of multiple choice and short-answer questions that may appear on SAS Global Certification exams.

Yes, practice exams are available for purchase through SAS and Pearson VUE.

For the latest pricing details, please visit the Global Exam Pricing page. All exam prices are in USD with the exception of Japan.

If you were to take the SAS 9.4 Advanced Programming Performance-Based exam without holding a Base Programming credential, you will not earn the Advanced Programming credential. A Base Programming Credential (Either SAS Certified Base Programmer for SAS 9, or SAS Certified Specialist: Base Programming Using SAS 9.4) is required to earn an Advanced Programming credential (Either SAS Certified Advanced Programmer for SAS 9 or SAS Certified Professional: Advanced Programming Using SAS 9.4).

With the move to the new SAS Certification Management platform (CertMetrics 2.0) on November 6, 2023, SAS made the decision to discontinue the SAS Certified Professional Directory. The old directory was built on an older certification management platform, had limited functionality and was underutilized. Because SAS recognizes the business need for a directory where candidates can display their certifications and employers can search for and validate credentials, we have activated the directory feature on the Credly badging platform as a replacement. The new SAS Certification & Skills Directory can be found here.

The SAS Certification and Skills Directory, powered by Credly, is a badge-based system, meaning anyone who has earned and accepted a badge issued by SAS can be listed in the directory. Please note:

• By default, all badge earners who have accepted a badge will automatically be searchable in the SAS Certification and Skills directory. Users who have not accepted a badge will not appear in the directory until they accept their badge.
• If a badge earner wishes to allow for interested parties to contact them through the directory, they will need to adjust the following settings on the Profile Setting Menu.
• Security+Privacy – Badge earners can adjust these settings to enable the ability to be contacted via the Credly Directory platform. They can also elect to remain private and unsearchable should they choose.
• Job Preferences – Badge earners can enable prospective employers to search for them based on job requisitions added to Credly. This feature can be enabled to allow for talent matching.

Badge earners are encouraged to enable the contact setting, allowing customers and other employers to easily make connections to SAS-skilled talent.

You will need to contact the SAS Global Certification Program at certification@sas.com. To ensure the security of your personal account, you will be required to provide legal documentation to validate your name change. Acceptable items of documentation must show the current name and the new name. Acceptable documentation includes a copy of a marriage certificate, divorce decree or court order.

To update your demographic information, access SAS Certification Manager.

Candidates may attempt each certification exam up to five times in a 12-month period, waiting a minimum of 14 days between attempts. Exam charges are incurred for each exam attempt. Exams that do not comply with this retake policy will be considered invalid and will not be eligible for refund and/or a certification credential.

Once a passing score is achieved on a specific exam, no further attempts are allowed on that exam*.

*If you hold a credential that expires, you can retake any associated exam(s) you previously passed any time after one year. If you allow the credential to expire, you must retake the associated exams in order to earn the certification again.

After you earn a SAS Credential, your certificate will be available on the SAS Certification Manager system. Candidates receive an email containing information on accessing this system. If you have not received your email within one week from the date you earned your SAS credential, please contact us at certification@sas.com.

Within SAS Certification Manager, your certificate can be accessed by clicking on "Certifications" and then selecting "PDF Certificate". Your certificate will be downloaded and you can open and print.

After you earn a SAS credential, your logo will be available in SAS Certification Manager. Candidates receive an email containing information on accessing this system. If you have not received your email within one week from the date you earned your SAS credential, please contact us at certification@sas.com.

Within SAS Certification Manager, logos can be accessed by clicking “Certification” then clicking “Download Logos”.

Certain credentials require more than one exam to earn. We encourage you to visit credentials and exams for more information.