ISA test

B

BostonBull

Location
North of Boston
I am starting to study for my ISA test. So far I have some ID books, the ISA study guide, and Tree Maintenace by P.P. Pirone.

What else might you guys suggest? After I get the ISA I will get my MA Cert.
 
1 Use the ID books to key out trees that you don't know.

2 Consider the Harris book also for general info.

3 Good Luck! Getting certified helped me and my business a LOT!
 
im studying also ,and hear biology is a big part of the test.do you think shigo's biology book is a good book also.is it a seasonal thing with id part,leaves on branchs or no leaves branchs on trees?
 
and may be shown by actual branches, twigs, leaves or in my case for my test, pictures with no close ups. get to know your local list it should be available from your chapter.
 
Visiting an arboretum that has name tags on the trees and shrubs is a great aid when studying I.D.

Dan
 
Boston, I don't know much about the ISA test, but I'm a Certified Massachusetts Arborist, so I know about the MA cert exam.

I agree with Guy about Harris's book, but Pirone's is good too about general tree maintenance. The third part of Pirone's book, Abnormalities of Specific Trees, is good but forget about the "controls" of tree pests as the info is outdated and the MA exam won't cover controls anyway.

Make sure you have all the current ANSI A300 Standards for Tree Care Operations, as well as the ANSI Z133.1 standards, and know them well because much emphasis will be placed on them. For some reason, I guess because there's not a lot of math in arboriculture, certain arbo exam designers seem to revel in torturing innocent arbo examinees with a couple or three math questions, and these questions invariably surface in fertilizer questions. So it's a good idea is to get down your fertilizer math. Know your fertilizer analyses and ratios to a tee, and be able to translate them to rates of application for trees.

For the MA Cert oral part of the exam, there's no way you can prepare for it because you never know what they're going to ask you, so just good, thorough general prep is all you can do.

Tree ID is big in the MA cert exam. You probably are good at this already, but it will entail a slide show by (I think still) Jack Ahern, head of the Landscape Architecture Dept. at UMASS, Amherst, also a tree-climbing arborist. It's a slide show, and since I've taken courses by MadJack Ahern, I know his repetoire of slides, so if you're interested I can send you a list of plant materials that he'll draw upon in his slides.

And of course Treeco's suggestion of going to an arboretum is excellent, but I'm sure you've been already to the top arboretum in the country a few times!

Good luck!
 
I am also preparing for the isa cert arb. test. I am currently taking a short course to prepare for the test. The info I gathered so far in class is that the test is broken down into the categories just like in the book Arborist' certification study guide. The emphasis is on tree biology which makes up 13.5% of the test. The rest is pretty evenly broken down as to the rest of the 14 chapters. Approximately 6% to nutrition, 6% to water, 6% tree id; which I was told will be multiple choice with a picture of the tree and some other identifying part i.e. fruit bark or maybe a leaf. The other categories make up a little less of the test. I was also told you only need a 60% to pass which seems a little low to me; but I am pretty sure that is what the instructor said. Also on the tree id, I received a list of 150 different trees to know as a general guide. That came back with my reciept when I registered to take the test.
 
Well since your in Boston its a little bit of a trip but in Pourtsmouth there is the Urban forestry center It has plantings of the trees in the area, including most ornimentals. They all have plaques at the bottom telling you waht kinda tree they are.
 
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