What is Planning Prep?
Planning Prep is a web-based study resource to help planners prepare for the American Institute of Certified Planners’ certification exam.
Members have access to our growing database of practice questions, practice exams,
planning related links.
Currently, we have
1668 practice questions and
12 practice exams
aimed at refreshing, broadening, and testing their planning knowledge. Each
question contains an explanation for each correct answer, so our members know
why one answer is correct and another is not. Links for further reading are also
provided with our questions, to help our members find additional information
about the topic.
Membership
Membership to Planning Prep is free. Why? Great question - see the FAQ
Brief History
When we were studying to take the exam in 2001, most of the study materials consisted of a photocopied
collection of “legacy” documents passed between coworkers. The Internet
was still relatively young - Yahoo! was directory based, Alta-Vista was a
popular search engine, Google was still tweaking algorithms, and Trevor had hair. In short, there was no
easily searchable online resource to turn to - no Wikipedia, no nothing. We would take mock practice exams with just an answer key that only told you the correct answer –
A,B, C or D. That’s it. No explanation, no rationale, and no guarantee the
answer in the key was even correct.
Then we had an idea to build a site that helped you learn, letting you know the
rationale of an answer and one that could be edited.
At first we thought “this would be huge” – we were going to make millions. We
began writing code and content and started to make plans for the money we were
going to make. It took about 4 months to write the code and about 6 months for
the content – we had day jobs after all.
After our first year we were approached by the AICP who wanted to buy the site
and operate it themselves. Apparently our asking price – reasonable compensation for our time – was too
much, and they passed. The next year we received an award from the Illinois
Chapter of the American Planning Assocaition. To date we have helped more than 6,000
planners through this site and many more with our training courses throughout
the Country.
We wish you the best of luck in studying and taking the exam and we hope you
find the site useful.
Sincerely,
Devin Lavigne & Trevor Dick
Planning Prep Co-Creators