The exam format and the references allowed

When the vendor's email arrived with the Candidate Information Bulletin, Keisha printed it and read it twice with a highlighter. The bulletin is the contract between the candidate and the exam. It says how many questions there are, how long she has, what score passes, which books she may bring, how those books may be marked and what calculator she may use. Every one of those details shapes how she should study. This lesson works through the Delaware master exam as the June 2025 bulletin describes it, notes where the bulletin and the Board's rules do not line up exactly, and turns the format into a study plan.

A caution before the details. The vendor revises its bulletin from time to time, and Delaware adopted a new edition of the National Electrical Code in its 2026 fire prevention regulations. The figures below are from the bulletin dated June 24, 2025. Always read the bulletin the vendor sends you, and follow it over anything in this course.

The numbers

The June 2025 bulletin lists five exams for the Division's electrical licenses: journeyperson, residential, limited, master and elevator mechanic. The master exam has 80 questions and a three hour time limit. All exams are computer based, open book and timed. The passing score for the electrician exams is 75, and Rule 4.0 of the Board's rules and the Division's examination page both state the same 75 minimum.

Three hours for 80 questions is 180 minutes, or two and a quarter minutes per question on average. That is tighter than it sounds for an open book exam. A candidate who looks up every answer from scratch will run out of time. The candidates who pass are the ones who know the code well enough to go straight to the right article, and who answer the questions they know without opening the book at all. Lesson 12 builds a pacing plan around this.

What the master exam covers

The bulletin gives a content outline as the number of questions in each subject area. For the master exam it lists the following areas. The largest single block is general electrical knowledge, which covers theory, definitions and calculations. Wiring and protection, covering services, feeders, branch circuits, overcurrent protection and grounding, and wiring methods and materials together make up another large share. Motors and controls, plan reading, equipment for general use, special conditions, special equipment, special occupancies and communication systems fill out the rest.

The outline lines up with the structure of the National Electrical Code. Wiring and protection corresponds to Chapter 2 of the code: branch circuits, feeders, services, overcurrent protection and grounding and bonding, Articles 210 through 250. Wiring methods and materials corresponds to Chapter 3, which includes the general rules in Article 300, conductor ampacity in Article 310, boxes in Article 314 and the raceway and cable articles that follow. Equipment for general use is Chapter 4, which includes Article 430 on motors, broken out separately in the outline as motors and controls. Special occupancies, special equipment and special conditions are Chapters 5, 6 and 7, and communication systems is Chapter 8. General electrical knowledge draws on Chapter 1 and on the theory and calculations that run through the whole code, the kind of material covered in MELU-101 and MELU-102.

The weighting tells Keisha where to spend her hours. Nearly half the master exam, 49 of 80 questions, comes from general knowledge, wiring and protection and wiring methods. Motors and controls, at seven questions, is the largest of the smaller areas and is worth focused practice on motor branch circuit and feeder calculations. The four special areas together are 12 questions; she will review the high-yield articles in each rather than reading them cover to cover.

The references allowed

The bulletin lists the references a master candidate may bring: the American Electrician's Handbook, 17th edition; NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code, 2020 edition; and Ugly's Electrical References, 2020 edition. The journeyperson, residential and limited exams allow the handbook and the code, without Ugly's. Each listing gives an ISBN so candidates bring the right printing.

Two points need care. First, Rule 4.0 of the Board's rules says only the NEC book may be used as a reference, while the vendor's bulletin lists additional books for the master exam. The bulletin is what the test site enforces on exam day, but a rule and a bulletin that differ is a reason to call the Division before buying books. Second, the edition. The June 2025 bulletin names the 2020 NEC. The Division's examination page says the exam is based on the most up to date NEC adopted in Delaware, and the State Fire Prevention Regulations that took effect on January 1, 2026 list the 2023 NEC. A candidate testing in 2027 should check the bulletin the vendor sends for the edition named there, and bring that edition. This course flags the 2020 and 2023 differences that matter in the core courses.

The rules shape how Keisha prepares her code book. Permanent tabs are allowed, so she will tab the articles the outline weights most heavily: 90, 100, 110, 210, 215, 220, 225, 230, 240, 250, 300, 310, 314, 334, 358, 430, 450, 500, 517, 680 and 700, plus the annexes and the index. Highlighting is allowed, so she will highlight the key sentence in the sections she looks up most. Handwritten notes are not, so she must not write formulas or reminders in the margins, which the administrator will find when the books are checked. Underlining must be in pen.

The calculator

The bulletin allows only a simple four-function calculator. That rules out the scientific and construction calculators many electricians carry, and it means square roots and powers must come from memory or simple arithmetic. In practice, the master exam's calculations rarely need more than multiplication, division and the constant 1.732 for three-phase work, which the candidate can type in. Keisha bought the cheapest four-function calculator she could find and used it for every practice question for a month so that it would feel normal on test day.

# Three-phase current on a four-function calculator: multiply by 1.732 by hand
kva = 75
volts = 208
amps = kva * 1000 / (volts * 1.732)
print(round(amps, 1), "amperes")

208.2 amperes

Reading the questions

Master exam questions come in a few common types. Code lookup questions ask what a given section requires: a minimum clearance, a maximum number of conductors, a required rating. Calculation questions ask for a load, a conductor size, an overcurrent device rating or a voltage drop. Theory questions ask about Ohm's law, power, transformers and circuits. Plan reading questions give a drawing or schedule and ask what it shows. On a computer-based exam, the candidate can flag questions and return to them, which supports the three-pass method in Lesson 12.

Every question has one best answer. Many wrong choices are close: the right number from the wrong table, the answer for a dwelling when the question is about a commercial building, or the rule from a different edition. Reading the question twice, and underlining the words that set the conditions in your head, prevents most of these errors.

Preparing the reference books

Because the bulletin allows permanent tabs, highlighting and pen underlining but forbids notes, the work of preparing the books has to be done with those tools alone. Keisha's method takes about three evenings. On the first, she places tabs at the start of each code chapter and at each high-weight article, labeling them with the article number and a one- or two-word name. On the second, she works through twenty practice questions and highlights the exact sentence that answered each one, building a trail of the rules she actually uses. On the third, she tabs the index, the tables she uses most often, such as the conductor ampacity tables in Article 310 and the conduit fill tables in Chapter 9, and the motor tables in Article 430.

She keeps the tab count reasonable. A book with two hundred tabs is as hard to search as a book with none. Her rule is no more than about fifty tabs in the code book and a dozen in each other reference. Tabs go on the edge in a consistent order, so that Chapter 2 tabs sit above Chapter 3 tabs, and so on, and the fingers learn where to go.

The other references deserve the same care if the bulletin you receive allows them. The American Electrician's Handbook is useful for theory, motor and transformer data and practical installation questions, and Ugly's Electrical References gathers formulas, conversion factors and common tables in one small book. Neither replaces the code for a code question. On exam day, a candidate who opens the handbook to answer a question about a code requirement is wasting time; the answer to what the code requires is always in the code.

Reading the bulletin's fine print

Every bulletin contains rules that are easy to overlook until test day. The identification rule is one: the name on the identification must match the registration exactly, and the bulletin lists which documents are acceptable. The arrival rule is another: candidates who arrive late may be turned away and lose the fee. The remote testing rules are a third, covering the room, the desk, the camera angle and what may be within reach. Keisha highlighted each of these in her printed copy and put the bulletin in the folder with her admission details, so she would read it again the night before the test.

The bulletin also explains how a candidate may comment on a question believed to be flawed and how to request a hand score. These are rarely used, but a candidate who scores just below 75 should know they exist and know the deadlines.