I've been compiling resources as I study for my ACC - Alzheimers Caregiver Certification certification and figured I'd share what I've found. All free unless noted.
Practice Tests:
- PracticeTestGeeks — most comprehensive collection I've found, good question explanations, covers ACC - Alzheimers Caregiver Certification, Caregiver - Certified Caregiver Exam. Free.
- Official practice materials from the certifying body — usually 1 free sample exam, worth doing even though it's short
Study Materials:
- The official ACC exam handbook / candidate guide (PDF, free from the certifying body's website)
- YouTube — search for "ACC exam prep" — there are surprisingly good free video reviews for most senior care certifications
- Reddit r/certifications — people post their exam experiences and tips regularly
Paid (worth it if budget allows):
- Official study guides run $30-80 for most senior care certifications — worth it if your exam has lots of specific factual content
- Some certifying bodies offer prep courses — check if your employer covers it (many do for required certifications)
What resources have others found useful for senior care exams? I'll add them to this list.
The official candidate guide is something a lot of people skip but it literally tells you the topic weighting and domain breakdown. It's the roadmap for your study plan. Never skip it.
For ACC - Alzheimers Caregiver Certification specifically, I found the PracticeTestGeeks explanations were detailed enough that I didn't need to buy a separate study guide. The combination of doing the practice questions + reading every explanation (for both right and wrong answers) covered most of the content I needed.
Great list. I'd add: LinkedIn Learning has some senior care-related courses that overlap with cert content, and if you have a library card many libraries give free access to it. Also check if your local library has access to O'Reilly or similar — tons of technical content there.
Just passed last week so I wanted to come back and update this thread. Honestly the thing that helped me most wasn't any single resource, it was figuring out what the exam actually expects from you before I started studying. I wasted two weeks reviewing stuff that barely showed up. Once I read through the certified caregiver requirements and understood the competency breakdown, everything clicked into place and I could study smarter instead of just more.
PracticeTestGeeks was where I spent most of my time after that. The explanations are what got me — not just "this is correct" but why the other answers are wrong. That distinction matters a lot for this exam because the questions love to give you two answers that both sound right. Good luck to everyone still in it, you've got this.
```Just passed last week so I figured I'd chime in. Honestly the thing that changed everything for me was actually reading the certified caregiver requirements front to back before I started studying — sounds obvious but I kept skipping it and wondering why certain practice questions felt random. Once I understood what the exam was actually testing for, the PTG questions clicked a lot faster.
Don't overthink the resource list. Pick one practice test source and stick with it instead of jumping around. I wasted two weeks doing that. The explanations on PTG are genuinely useful, not just answer keys, so read them even when you get something right. You've already done the hard part by actually studying — trust it.
```Quick update for anyone following this thread — I just hit 78% on my last full practice set on PracticeTestGeeks and honestly didn't expect to get there this fast. It's been about three weeks of consistent studying, maybe an hour a day. I'm planning to sit the real ACC exam in late August.
One thing that helped me early on was understanding what's actually expected before diving into questions. I spent time reading up on the certified caregiver requirements so I knew what the exam was really testing. If you're just starting out, that's worth doing first before you burn time on practice sets you're not ready for.
Failed my first attempt back in March and honestly it was a wake-up call. I'd been reading through the material passively and figured that was enough. It wasn't. What actually turned things around for me was forcing myself to do practice questions first, then going back to review whatever I got wrong. Sounds obvious but I wasn't doing it that way before.
Second time I passed with a decent score and I think the biggest difference was spending way more time on the communication and behavioral intervention sections specifically. Those felt like they showed up everywhere on the actual exam. Don't sleep on the dementia staging content either, I underestimated how much detail they'd test on that.
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