Pass the ISA Arborist exam — or get every dollar back. Guaranteed.

The full Fast Track Study System — every practice question, every flashcard deck, full-length mock exams, narrated audio, Miles the AI tutor, and the entire study guide, every chapter readable and highlightable. The cheat sheet — the highest-yield facts as a PDF — is in the study portal on every pass, with instant access to download it. Every pass opens all of it; Standard carries the Money-Back Guarantee and SurePass the SurePass Guarantee.

Standard and SurePass carry it. Score 85%+ on one full-length mock, sit the real exam, and if you don't pass we refund what you paid. On SurePass, clear two mocks with your readiness meter at "Getting close" or above and we also pay your full $120 retake fee. A refund also comes with free access to keep preparing — 90 more days on Standard, another year on SurePass. Starter carries no refund — don't pass, upload your score report, and we add 30 more days of access, free. Every free period is counted from the earliest date your exam allows a retake. You file the claim in your study portal with your official score report.

ISA publishes it, which is not true of every exam we sell: the ISA Certified Arborist Program Guide says the current passing score is 76 percent. Two things go with that number. ISA calls it current rather than permanent — the exam is built on a job task analysis and ISA says its makeup is subject to change when a new one is completed — so read the Program Guide yourself before you book; nothing newer is announced as of today, and the outline we build to is ISA's 2022 job task analysis. And the paper is 200 questions of which 20 are unscored pretest items ISA is trying out for future exams, so your result comes off the other 180. The 85% our own mocks are marked against is ours, not ISA's, and it is also the score that qualifies you for the guarantee.

Four scored full-length sittings, each a brand-new 200-question paper built to ISA's ten domains in the shares ISA publishes — Safe Work Practices and Pruning heaviest, Urban Forestry lightest — and timed to the real 3.5 hours. Practice questions and timed practice are unlimited and never use one. Worth knowing what you are comparing that to. ISA sells five practice exams of its own at $34.95 each to a non-member, with no bundle, and each of the five is a fixed paper whose access expires after three years and then has to be bought again.

SurePass, for almost everyone: today it costs the same as Standard, it runs a full year, and it is the only pass that pays your retake fee if you don't pass (and adds another year free). Standard is a month of access with the Money-Back Guarantee — a refund plus 90 more days if you don't pass. Starter is one week of access with no refund — don't pass and you get 30 more days free.

ISA charges two fees to sit it. A non-member pays a $50 application fee plus a $369 exam enrollment fee, so $419 all in. An ISA member — or anyone already holding an ISA credential — gets ISA's standard 20% discount: $40 and $295, so $335. ISA does not provide refunds for exam enrollments, in its own words, and a no-show forfeits what you paid. A retake is $120 for everyone, member or not, paper or computer, and you wait 30 days from your most recent attempt. That flat $120 is exactly what the SurePass Guarantee covers: clear the qualifying mocks, sit it, don't pass, and we pay your full $120 retake fee. You will find other figures for the retake on pages that rank well for this question — one says your first one is free and the next is $75, another says $150 for non-members. ISA's own Program Guide says $120, flat, and it is the document that decides.

No, and for most first-time candidates joining purely to sit the exam loses money. Membership buys ISA's standard 20% discount on the application and enrollment fees, which is $84 back against Professional membership at $135 a year — so it only pays if you are also buying ISA's own books and courses, or if you want the membership for its own sake. If you already hold another ISA credential you get the discounted rate without joining anything. Nothing here changes either way: the bank, the guide, the mocks and the guarantee are the same whichever rate you paid ISA.

Built to the same specification, and here is exactly what that means. Every item has four options and one correct answer, which is ISA's own rule for this exam, and every option carries a reason — why the key is right and why each of the other three is wrong — with each key recomputed from the question itself before the explanation was read. The bank is split across ISA's ten domains in the shares ISA publishes, so Safe Work Practices and Pruning carry the most weight here exactly as they do there, and our mock runs the real 200 items on the real 3.5-hour clock — a clock ISA counts your breaks against, which is worth living through once before the morning it counts. What we do not claim: these are not ISA's questions, and nobody outside ISA has seen ISA's. Ours are written to ISA's published Exam Outline, which is the document ISA puts out for this purpose.

Buy the book. We are an addition to it, not a replacement — by the time most people read this they have already paid ISA $419 to sit and $139.95 for the Arborists' Certification Study Guide, and ISA's chapters and the university extension courses all tell you to have it. Two things are easy to get wrong. First, ISA does sell practice exams: five of them, $24.95 to a member and $34.95 to everyone else, and ISA says each of the five contains different questions. A Credentials FAQ on ISA's own site still answers that there are none, while ISA's Online Learning pages advertise all five — believe the store. Second, the book is not the exam's source, and ISA says so on every store page: any preparatory material, ISA's own included, “should NOT be considered the sole source of information”, and “this publication and the ISA certification program exams are developed through separate processes and entities”. So nobody can honestly tell you their questions come out of that book; ours are written to ISA's published Exam Outline instead. And the part that decides where your money goes: everything ISA sells through its online learning center runs on a three-year subscription and then has to be repurchased, in ISA's own wording, and its digital study guide cannot be printed or downloaded at all. Your printed book does not expire. Neither does a SurePass here.

Your account stays and your work stays with it — notes, highlights and flashcard history are all there if you come back. The paid features stop. You can upgrade at any time and pick up exactly where you left off, and an upgrade always credits what you already paid.

Yes. Change the date and the Game Plan rebuilds around the new one — it works backwards from your date, so a move forward compresses it and a move back spreads it out. Nothing is lost. That matters more on this exam than most: ISA approves your application for a window rather than a single day, and if you do have to sit again there is a 30-day wait before you can, so the plan has to survive being redrawn.

Yes to both. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app. Your due flashcards and a set of practice questions download automatically, and the whole study guide downloads too, narrated audio included — so a job site with no bars is still study time. Scored mocks and the tutor wait for a connection.

Yes, separately from the pass guarantee: 24 hours on Starter, 48 hours on Standard, or 72 hours on SurePass, measured from your purchase (or from your upgrade, if you upgraded) — no questions asked, as long as you haven't sat your exam yet. EEA and UK buyers also keep their 14-day statutory right. The SurePass Guarantee is the other promise — that one is about your exam result, not about changing your mind.

Because we honor them. Every guarantee is a real financial commitment we may genuinely pay out, so a limited number opens for this exam each day. The allocation resets at midnight in your own time zone, and the counter shows how many of today's are still open.