My hands on test consisted of a kit that was made up ahead of the test. It had plastic weldments that had different indications molded into them. There were questions written asking about the weldments meeting a made up code. You answered the questions according to the code you were given. The kit had weld gauges, undercut gauges, micrometer, dial calipers, and a variety of plastic molds of weldments for you to inspect.(possibly other tools that I may not have mentioned)
Anyway, the kit was numbered, which you entered on the top of your test. I thought it was very straight forward, no tricky questions. Although, I've heard from others that thier kit was tricky. The cut off for rejection may have been a total of 3/8" of porosity and they measured .374", which made them question themselves and they spent time going back over and remeasuring the sample.
My guess is that AWS has several different tests that they hand out so no one is able to get help from a neighbor, but it is a standardized test.
Sorry for the rambling on,
John Wright