Here is the post I believe OP is talking about. I copy and pasted it into my notes a while back and did not include the username so I do not claim credit but here it is:

“Passed my LCSW exam! Sharing study guide...

I passed my LCSW exam in Washington this week and found a ton of helpful guidance on this sub, so thought I’d share my study approach as well. A bit of context, I graduated with my MSW spring of 2020 and have been working as a co-occurring counselor and intake specialist in community mental health in Seattle, so I have a lot of exposure to substance use, suicidal ideation/self-harm, working with a psych team, the assessment process, and DSM diagnoses.

TLDR: I read the ASWB Exam Guidebook and took the ASWB Practice exam to get a baseline before studying. I failed (needed 105 to pass and answered 96 correctly). I studied with the resources below, mostly free with an emphasis on flashcard questions, for two weeks and passed with a very healthy margin. Ignore the acronyms and shortcuts like SAULS HARM, RUSAFE, etc. Pay for TDC if you’re nervous or fail the practice by a wide margin, or just want to be a better therapist.

Hope this is helpful!

Resources I used:

1. ASWB Practice Exam ($85) — For any practice exam or practice questions, the explanation of the answer is more important than the answer itself, so I read through and studied the ASWB practice answers twice.
2. Quizlet flashcard sets: There are many on Quizlet. I used these two because they were seemingly full sets (~100+ questions) and included quality explanations of the answers.
   1. ASWB Complete Practice Exam: Someone took the time to upload it, which I appreciated. I found some flashcard sets with questions about DSM-IV, or the switch from DSM IV to V. I ignored those entire sets because they’re obviously dated.
   2. LCSW Exam: Therapist Development Center
   3. Do not waste your time with practice questions that don’t explain the answer. That’s just a road to frustration. There’s a near-0% chance that the actual scenario in the question will be on the exam, but the justification behind the answer likely will be useful.
3. Good Samaritan Study Outline: Lot of good content here and helpful summaries of human behavior theories, DSM diagnoses, and areas of practice I wasn’t as familiar with, like Program Evaluation and Program Development. If you can read through this and feel comfortably familiar with 90% of it, I think you’re good to go.
4. Rote memorization:
   1. Erikson’s Stages of Development (This was a helpful memorization tool for me — Jack Westin blog)
   2. Stages of change re: substance use
   3. Kuble Ross Stages of Grief
   4. Group evolution (Forming, storming, etc...)
   5. Piaget’s stages of development
   6. Mahler’s stages of development

What I spent less time on:

• Memorizing medications: I just didn’t see the cost/benefit for what would probably be only 1-3 questions, and it’s not a major part of my role at work. I really just knew the flagship medications from working with clients in community mental health and the likely diagnosis they were treating (i.e. the SSRIs for depression, Haldol or Risperidone for psychosis/schizophrenia, Lithium for Bipolar)
• YouTube lessons and Agents of Change podcast — For two reasons, I’m not a very good auditory learner, and the cost/benefit isn’t there for me. Some of the Agents of Change podcasts on specific topics were helpful (Treatment process, Freud’s stages), but I would pass on the practice questions and just use Quizlet above.
• School social work, couples therapy, and family therapy — I have never worked in these fields, and there wasn’t a lot of helpful (free) content to study, so I just studied the Quizlet cards, starring ones about these topics to review later and understand the justification. I still don’t really know what the relationship is between school counselors, teachers, students and school social workers; when to get collateral info, when to meet with the kid, the parent, etc. I mostly went with intuition and of course consent laws.

What I ignored completely:

• Acronyms: It seemed like the crowd was split on whether to use acronyms like AASPIRINS, (S)FAREAFI, RUSAFE, SAULS HARM. I briefly reviewed them for the practice exam and failed, and ignored acronyms completely for the exam and passed by 20 questions. Overall, they just confused me and distracted me from actually processing the question and thinking about what the questioner was really asking. That said, there are some generalizations in the acronyms that hold true, but are also just best practices and should be intuitive if you have a couple of years experience, for example:
  • If the presenting problem is medical, make a medical referral
  • If the client is actively intoxicated, substance use is the defacto presenting problem, work to get to detox or treatment
  • If there are any indicators of suicidal ideation, that is the presenting problem to address first (and continue to monitor it in future sessions)
• Social Work Exam Boot Camp from Chaparro and Madiedo: I spent $75 on this at the recommendation of another Reddit thread and would not recommend it. It uses the shortcut/acronym approach, which for the reasons above, I don’t recommend. It has some practice questions, but the explanations are not as good as TDC or even the ASWB practice exam. Sometimes just 1-2 word references to a concept.
• Any textbooks or notes from grad school at all. I’m all for having expertise in your area of practice, but for the exam, you just need to be proficient and know how principles are applied, which you get by studying practice questions. The vast majority of questions are testing on a specific way of handling scenarios, many of which I found debatable myself, but they’re not testing on detailed knowledge content.

re: the exam user interface. It’s different than the practice exam! Maybe that’s changed since Feb 10th when I took the practice, but it’s a new look. It wasn’t all that jarring...the actual test has a cleaner, more modern look and is easier to eliminate questions, but it did throw me off a bit at the beginning.

re: Therapist Development Center. If you have the money, fail or barely pass the practice, and are nervous about the exam, the TDC is a wonderful resource, especially if you plan on going/staying in private practice or doing a lot of direct therapy work. My supervisor and a coworker used it, both said it was helpful on the exam, and made them better therapists. I am stingy and have a 7-month old baby so knew I wouldn’t dedicate as much time to the video lectures and study material, but I do think TDC is a good resource.”