Certified Quality Engineer is a challenging certification. I have held this certification for about three years now. I wanted to share some references I used to pass my test.
Videos
Youtube has a bunch of decent talk-throughs, white boards, or question reviews. I have one linked I used a few times here.
Books
My other study companions included the CQE Handbook published by ASQ and the Indiana Quality Council's primer. The primer is especially useful as it has a practice test inside.
Both of the printed references were those I was able to take into the exam.
Amazon carries a CQE study book (ASQ published) if you need help with the math.
Best Practices
I did these activities to help myself study.
- I read and made notes in pen in the handbook
- The notes I made in here were driven by my weakness in the dry-run test I took from the primer
- I tabbed pages with frequently used concepts
- I tabbed the glossary and index
- I used different colors of pen for notes with a key in the front in case I needed it/forgot
- I did a dry-run of the practice test in the primer, I then graded it
- My further study focused on the questions I got wrong
- I would take the test later to see what I improved on
- I finished the study guide linked above
- The study guide has a bunch of the math, if you need help with that part
Test day
The CQE exam is open book, I found these points to be useful for the test
- Do questions you know or can easily look up right away, flag all others
- I like to read through most of the test first, and answer things I know cold right away
- The electronic format of the test is actually really easy to use to flag questions you want to do later, check on, or weren't sure
- I make a note to remove all flags from all questions before I submit the test, this is to ensure I revisit everything I noted as "maybe" and closeout my thought process
- Make all your notes in ink, they give you pencils and paper to take in
- If you have notes in pencil, it may appear you are "taking test questions out of a test" and they (ASQ and the testing place) are very concerned about this
- If you have the primer binder, make sure you have removed all the practice test pages (they are usually a different color, so easy to see)
- not related to the CQE test: the CQE handbook is one of the best quality references ASQ makes, I have taken it into other certification tests and found it very useful
- Six Sigma Green Belt
- Supplier Quality Professional
- Certified Reliability Engineer (found it more useful than the CRE book, to be honest)
Bottom line: study and use good references and remember it is an open book exam, so use this to your advantage.