Practice exam review and test-day strategy

Six weeks before her exam date, Marisol took a full practice exam on a Saturday morning at the kitchen table, with her tabbed code book, a calculator and a kitchen timer set to the exam's time limit. She scored 68. She was not discouraged; she had expected something like that, and the point of the exercise was not the score but the list of misses. This lesson shows how she turned that list into a study plan, how she reviewed the Idaho-specific material, and how she handled exam day. The method works for either exam Idaho accepts.

Why practice exams come first

Many candidates study for months and take a practice exam only at the end, to see whether they are ready. That wastes the most useful tool they have. A practice exam taken early shows where the time actually goes. In an open book exam, most misses are not about knowledge; they are about finding the right rule fast enough and reading the question carefully enough. Those skills improve only with timed practice.

Marisol's rule was a full timed practice exam every two weeks, with targeted drills in between. She used a mix of commercial question banks and the practice questions at the end of the HSM University core courses, and she checked every surprising answer against the code itself, since some commercial questions are written for other editions or contain errors.

The error log

After each practice exam, Marisol went through every missed or guessed question and recorded the cause in one of five categories: she did not know where to look; she found a rule but the wrong one; she misread the question; she made a calculation error; or she ran out of time. The categories point to different fixes. Not knowing where to look calls for tabbing and index drills. Finding the wrong rule calls for practice with the code's structure, especially how later chapters modify earlier ones. Misreading calls for slowing down on the question stem. Calculation errors call for worked problems and a consistent method. Running out of time calls for the pacing plan below.

Her first log showed more misses from lookups and calculations than from anything else. She spent the next two weeks on tabbing, on index drills in which she gave herself thirty seconds to find a topic, and on calculations: dwelling and commercial load calculations, conductor ampacity with adjustment and correction, voltage drop, motor branch circuits and feeders, and conduit and box fill. Her second practice exam came in at 74, and her lookup misses had halved.

# Marisol's practice exam log (illustrative)
logs = {
    "week 0": {"where to look": 8, "wrong rule": 6, "misread": 4, "calculation": 7, "time": 3},
    "week 2": {"where to look": 4, "wrong rule": 5, "misread": 4, "calculation": 4, "time": 2},
    "week 4": {"where to look": 3, "wrong rule": 3, "misread": 2, "calculation": 3, "time": 1},
}
for week, log in logs.items():
    misses = sum(log.values())
    worst = max(log, key=log.get)
    print(f"{week}: {misses} misses, score about {100 - misses}; biggest cause: {worst}")

week 0: 28 misses, score about 72; biggest cause: where to look
week 2: 19 misses, score about 81; biggest cause: wrong rule
week 4: 12 misses, score about 88; biggest cause: where to look

Reviewing the Idaho material

The Idaho exam developed with PSI is built on the Idaho-adopted code and Idaho practice, and the NASCLA exam includes safety and project management areas. Either way, a master candidate in Idaho should be able to answer questions about the state's licensing, permit, lien and safety rules quickly, both because they may appear on the exam and because they are part of the job. Marisol made a one-page sheet of the Idaho numbers she needed to know cold.

Worked practice questions

The questions below show the kind of reasoning the exam rewards. Each is followed by the thinking that leads to the answer.

Building a study calendar

Marisol had about sixteen weeks from the day she decided to the exam date. She divided them into three blocks. In the first six weeks, she worked through the core course material on the NEC chapters with the heaviest weight, one or two articles per evening, with a timed practice exam at the start and the end of the block. In the next six weeks, she concentrated on calculations and on the Idaho material, with practice exams every two weeks and drills between them. In the last four weeks, she did mixed review driven entirely by her error log, with a final full practice exam six days out.

She protected the calendar. Five evenings a week, an hour and a half each, and a longer session on Saturday mornings. Dale moved her off the two jobs with the longest drives for the last month, and her family knew that Saturday mornings belonged to the code book. The total, a little over 150 hours, is typical of what candidates who pass report. More hours help less than better hours; an hour of timed drills on weak areas is worth several hours of rereading strong ones.

A pacing plan

Open book exams punish perfectionism. A candidate who refuses to move on from a hard question can lose five easy ones at the end. Marisol used a three-pass plan. On the first pass, she answered every question she could answer quickly, from knowledge or a lookup she knew by heart, and flagged the rest. On the second pass, she worked the flagged questions that needed lookups and calculations. On the third pass, with the time she had saved, she checked her calculations and her answers to any question with a word like except or not in it.

She set checkpoints. On the NASCLA format, with 110 items in 270 minutes, she wanted the first pass finished by about the two-hour mark, with every question either answered or flagged. If she reached a quarter of the questions much later than planned, she sped up and flagged more aggressively. On the Idaho exam she used the same plan with the question count and time from its bulletin. She never left a question blank, because there is no penalty for guessing on these exams; a flagged question that she could not reach got her best guess before time ran out.

Reading questions carefully

Many misses are reading errors. Underline, mentally or on the scratch paper provided, the facts that change the answer: dwelling or commercial, continuous or noncontinuous, copper or aluminum, the temperature rating of terminations, indoor or outdoor, minimum or maximum, and words like except, not and unless. Read every option before choosing; the first option that looks right is often a distractor written for the candidate who stops reading. When two options seem right, look for the more specific rule that governs the situation.

The last week

Marisol did not cram in the final week. She took one last timed practice exam six days out, reviewed her error log and her Idaho sheet, and spent the remaining evenings on short lookup drills. She rechecked the bulletin for allowed references and confirmed that her tabs and highlighting met the rules. Two days out, she confirmed her appointment, drove past the test center so she knew where to park, and packed her references, approved calculator with fresh batteries, and photo ID. The night before, she stopped studying at dinner time.

Exam day

She arrived thirty minutes early, as the bulletin advised, checked in with her ID, stored her phone and bag, and took her references to the testing room after the proctor inspected them. She worked the plan: first pass, second pass, checks. When a question about well pump conductors stumped her, she remembered Lesson 5's point about Idaho's Article 682 amendment, flagged it, and came back with a calmer head. She finished the third pass with eleven minutes left and used them to recheck two calculations.

If the result is a pass, the score report goes to DOPL with the application, as Lesson 3 described. If it is a fail, the score report's breakdown by content area becomes the start of a new error log. Either way, the habits built in the months of preparation, finding rules fast, reading carefully and checking the arithmetic, are the habits of a good master.

After the license

Passing the exam is the start of the next stage. Marisol's master license will let her plan and design installations under her own name. When Sawtooth Ridge designates her as supervising electrician, she will answer for every installation the company makes, for the ratios on every crew and for the permits on every job. And as the code and Idaho's rules keep changing, she will keep learning whether or not a rule requires it. That is what the license stands for.