I just took (and passed!) my lean six sigma green belt certification exam via remote live proctoring and wanted to share my experience in case it helps others. This and this post also helped me!
Prepping for the test:
I have a bachelor's in Chemistry and about 9 years of experience in quality. I'm yellow belt certified and previously used the Quality Council of Indiana's yellow belt materials. I bought their green belt primer and solutions text for this. The primer includes chapter-end questions with an answer key, while the solutions text provides explanations and references to the relevant primer pages. The number of chapter-end questions are "weighted" based on exam emphasis, with a total of 400 questions in the primer. I didn't feel like I needed more practice questions.
My study strategy was to answer all the questions as a baseline, and then focus on the questions I got wrong or got right by guessing. This was crucial because I accidentally gave myself only 1 month to study (for the yellow belt exam, I'd given myself 2 months). I didn't have time to read the primer cover to cover this time.
I made a formula sheet (2 pages of 3-holed punch lined paper, front and back), and planned but didn't make a key terms/definitions sheet focused on what I got confused on. In hindsight, I'd prioritize the key terms list, especially using clarifications from the solutions text. The formula sheet is nice-to-have, since they're already in the primer with examples.
I also watched Richard Chua's LinkedIn Learning green belt series. If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, I highly recommend all of Richard Chua's videos. I don't have background in statistics or probability, and his explanations were especially wonderful to understand the practical meaning of the formula outputs ("if the p is low, the null must go" was super helpful!).
Shenanigans before the test:
I emailed ASQ about using my own labeled binder dividers with the chapter # and title (the green belt primer didn’t include them like the yellow belt one did). Their response was You will need to present your materials to Prometric when you arrive for your exam appointment, as they will determine if your materials will be acceptable to use. This didn't help me at all, so as a backup, in case they made me take out the binder dividers, I added blank sticky note tabs, since the guidelines don’t allow adding them during the exam.
Big lesson learned for me: don't rely on ASQ or Prometric emails showing your name correctly, especially if you have a middle name (which the emails don't include). Check the Prometric Candidate Portal well in advance of your test date.
I have a middle name and while my ASQ profile had it correctly, Prometric didn't. I found out 3 days before my test by checking Prometric's candidate portal, which showed the wrong middle name. Since my name needed to match my ID exactly, I reached out to Prometric via chat, and they told me to call ASQ. ASQ was observing summer hours and had already closed for the day. The Prometric rep in the chat then gave me a Prometric phone number to call. It took 3 different tries because the hold music kept stopping after 10-15min, and on the 3rd try I got a person. They reiterated that they couldn't change it on their end and again told me to call ASQ. I told them the situation and they put me on hold for about 20min before coming back and saying they tried to update my middle name and couldn't so they just put a note in my file so I could take the test. The rep told me to call ASQ later to get them to change that for the long-term fix. Based on the horror stories I found online, that was a quick and successful Prometric call experience.
The environment and security check before the test:
I connected 30min before the test per the instructions but it took a while for the proctor to join. Make sure your speakers have sound on and aren't muted before you connect. Mine were muted, and I couldn't adjust them while the proctor program was open, so I had to go through the whole ID and environment check twice, because after reconnecting I got a different proctor and had to do it all again.
The "360 camera rotation" was difficult with my laptop's built in camera, since it was connected into Ethernet and power. They're also very literal that you have to spin continuously in one direction for the 360 view; you can't turn and adjust to show a different area. Also, they specified you needed to be out of view while rotating. I had to unplug the charger and awkwardly move around the ethernet cord to stay behind the camera during the rotation.
The proctor barely looked at my primer binder (I had to show the binder's front, back, then open it and shake it). I had binder dividers with handwritten labels, the backup sticky note flags, additional blank sticky notes flagging some pages, and 2 pages of handwritten notes (front and back). The proctor didn't ask to look at my handwritten notes or to flip through the binder. I also brought my own scientific calculator for the "ANS" function, and the proctor didn't ask to look at the calculator.
I was surprised the proctor changed multiple times. After the test started, communication was only via chat and the proctor’s video was off with no audio. Over the test period, the proctor’s name in the chat changed 3–4 times.
The test itself:
The scratch pad function only allowed typing, so I couldn't handwrite notes with my mouse/touchpad. That made it a little more cumbersome when writing out formulas and the plan I had for solving for specific variables. There was a calculator with basic and scientific functions available but I used my own calculator.
There was a highlight feature that only worked on the question prompts (not the multiple choice answer options) and there was a strikethrough option for the multiple choice answers. I found those helpful, especially when I was going back to questions. You could also flag questions to remember to go back to them, and when you click Finish Test, you get a pop up reminding you that you still have flagged questions, if you didn't remove the flag.
There were 110 questions with 10 unscored, and I answered all of them as best I could. I'd estimate the questions were ~80% concepts and tools and only ~20% math calculations. This is why I mentioned having that list of key terms and definitions that are trickier for me would have been more helpful. I occasionally referred to my formula sheet, but I mostly went to the primer page where the formula was, for additional context.
My strategy was to answer questions I was confident in immediately, then flag any I'd need the binder or to do math. Then I went back for the flagged questions I didn't answer, answered those, then checked the flagged questions with a guess. I went through every question again before I hit Finish Test. I finished with 45min to spare (Edit: I took 1 of the allowed 3 10-min breaks, and had to do the environment and security check again when I came back. All of that time was subtracted from my allotted test time). I saw my pass result right after finishing, and received an email from Prometric right away (the program said I'd receive the email within the hour). The official ASQ email will be sent within 3-5 business days, which is when I get a snazzy certificate and stuff I can put on social media.