Exam Information

The American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) is the American Planning Association's professional institute, with responsibilities for accreditation, compliance, certification, ethics and continuing education.

•  To become a certified planner and use the AICP designation, one must be a current member of the American Planning Association, submit an application meeting certain education and experience requirements, pass an examination, and be a fully paid member of APA and AICP.
• AICP members must earn a total of 32 credits each two-year reporting period under AICP's Certification Maintenance (CM) program.
• Please review the Chapter CM Sponsorship Policy before contacting the Chapter about sponsoring any activity or event where Certification Maintenance would be requested by the Chapter.
• The Virginia Chapter of the American Planning Association's Professional Development Officer (PDO) is available to help answer APA Virginia member questions about AICP.
• Contact the APA Virginia PDO.

• AICP Exam Information

AICP Exam Scholarships

AICP provides two reduced exam fee scholarships annually through the APA Virginia Chapter to those Virginia Chapter members facing financial hardships who wish to become AICP members. This program offers assistance to those individuals who may defer taking or are unable to take the AICP exam because of the high cost. The scholarship selection criteria established by AICP states:

•  Members of ethnic or racial minorities shall be given preference.
• The applicant(s) selected will be otherwise unlikely to take the exam without the reduced fee.
• The applicant’s employer will not subsidize the exam fee.

 Virginia Chapter members interested in applying for a scholarship should contact the Virginia Chapter AICP Professional Development Officer.

Exam Resources

There are dozens (hundreds?) of websites that provide resources for preparing for the AICP exam. We will not deluge aspiring AICP planners with all of the links but rather we will highlight a few that we feel have been particularly helpful:

• Virginia APA Chapter AICP Exam Overview Recording
• Pennsylvania APA Chapter's AICP page
• Texas APA Chapter's AICP page
• Location Quotient Video
• APA Virginia belongs to a consortium that conducts Planning Webcasts - the exam prep sessions have been uploaded to the Planning Webcast You Tube Channel(If you put AICP Exam Review series in the search box it will link to the list of review sessions without having to sort through the entire list of webinars).
• Some test questions in flash card form can be found here and here.
• APA Policy Guides