CST EXAM-DAY CHECKLIST & STUDY PLAN
SurveyBible — surveybible.com
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THE CST EXAMS ARE OPEN BOOK — PREPARE YOUR REFERENCES

NSPS recommends that, at minimum, an examinee bring:
 1. A fundamental surveying text (with unit conversion charts)
 2. A first aid & safety manual
 3. A surveying and mapping dictionary (e.g., NSPS "Definitions
    of Surveying and Associated Terms")

Open book does NOT mean you can look everything up in time.
The exams run 200 questions (Level I) in about 4 hours — roughly
72 seconds per question. You must know most answers cold and use
references only for the few you cannot recall.

TAB YOUR REFERENCES BEFORE EXAM DAY
- Unit conversion charts (feet/meters/chains/rods, area units)
- Horizontal and vertical curve formulas
- Leveling procedures and note forms
- Taping corrections (temperature, tension, sag, slope)
- First aid quick-reference (bleeding, shock, heat illness, CPR)
- OSHA basics (trenching, traffic control, PPE)

BRING (confirm current rules with your proctor/NSPS):
- Photo ID and exam confirmation
- Approved calculator you know how to use (plus spare batteries)
- Tabbed references listed above
- Pencils, scratch paper if permitted

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SIX-WEEK STUDY PLAN (Level I example — adapt per level)
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Week 1 — Field Equipment & Operations (largest element: 75 of 200)
  Instrument parts and setup, tripods/tribrachs, levels and rods,
  total stations, prisms, taping equipment, care and cleaning,
  field radios, line clearing, basic field procedures.

Week 2 — Field Equipment & Operations (continued) + Survey Control
  Leveling procedures (BS/FS balance, turning points, rocking the
  rod), taping procedures and errors, compass reading, field note
  types. Control point types: horizontal vs vertical, benchmarks,
  TBMs, NSRS/NGS basics.

Week 3 — Survey Computations (50 of 200)
  Unit conversions, angles (DMS <-> decimal), bearings and azimuths,
  slope/grade/percent, elevations and level math, basic trig
  (right triangles), area of simple figures, map-scale math.

Week 4 — Office Operations, Plan Reading and Preparation (34)
  Map types, map scales, contours, plan/profile sheets, cross
  sections, horizontal and vertical curve elements, basic drafting
  and CAD conventions, reading coordinates from a site plan.

Week 5 — Survey Types & History (15) + First Aid & Safety (20)
  Types of surveys (boundary, topographic, construction, route,
  hydrographic, mining, photo control, GPS), historical units and
  instruments (Gunter's chain, vara, engineer's chain). First aid
  treatment basics; OSHA and traffic-control fundamentals.

Week 6 — Full exam simulations
  Take the free SurveyBible CST exam simulation(s) under time.
  Review every miss: read the explanation AND the cited source.
  Re-tab references for anything you had to look up.

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EXAM-DAY STRATEGY
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1. Pace: at 200 questions / 4 hours, budget ~1 minute per question
   and bank time for computations.
2. Three passes: (1) answer everything you know instantly;
   (2) work computations; (3) use references for the remainder.
3. Never leave blanks — there is no penalty for guessing on a
   multiple-choice exam.
4. Computation questions: estimate first, then compute. Distractors
   are built from common errors (wrong units, dropped conversion,
   transposed digits).
5. Watch for NOT/INCORRECT/EXCEPT stems — underline them.
6. Units: check every answer for feet vs meters, feet vs inches,
   minutes vs seconds.

This guide is an independent study aid published by SurveyBible.
SurveyBible is not affiliated with or endorsed by NSPS. Confirm
current exam rules and allowed materials with NSPS: nsps.us.com.