Practice exam review and test-day strategy

Teresa's written exam is booked for a Tuesday in February. This final lesson brings together the New York material from the course into a review, a practice set, and a test-day plan for both the closed-book written exam and the practical. It also reminds candidates for Long Island and upstate licenses how to adapt the plan to their own exams. Use it in the last weeks before your exam, alongside the timed practice sets from the core courses.

A reminder about the facts: the licensing details reviewed here come from the Department of Buildings, its exam administrator, the Workers' Compensation Board and local codes as checked in November 2026. Before exam day, read your current exam notice and the administrator's candidate materials, which control.

What the written exam rewards

The city's written exam rewards three kinds of preparation. First, recall of the code facts and methods that come up again and again: branch circuit and feeder rules, overcurrent protection, grounding and bonding, required outlets, wiring methods, conduit fill and special occupancies, as the city code states them. Second, understanding of the code's structure and purposes, so that an unfamiliar question can be reasoned out. Third, the discipline to work steadily through 80 questions in three hours without references, leaving no question blank.

Because the exam is closed book, many candidates find that the hardest questions are not the ones with the most arithmetic but the ones that test a specific value or rule they half remember. The answer is not to memorize the entire code, which is impossible, but to know the high-frequency material cold and to recognize which answer choices are inconsistent with the code's logic. A choice that would allow a smaller conductor than the overcurrent device protects, for example, is almost never right.

A pacing plan for the written exam

Three hours for 80 questions gives two and a quarter minutes per question on average. Teresa uses a two-pass method. On the first pass, she answers every question she can answer with confidence in about a minute, marks any question that needs more time or that she is unsure of, and moves on. On the second pass, she works the marked questions, starting with those she thinks she can solve. In the last ten minutes she makes sure every question has an answer, because a blank is always wrong and a reasoned guess sometimes is not. The program below turns that plan into checkpoints.

total_minutes = 180
questions = 80
first_pass_share = 0.55   # share of time planned for the first pass (illustrative)
reserve = 10              # final minutes kept for checking every answer is filled in

first_pass = round(total_minutes * first_pass_share)
second_pass = total_minutes - first_pass - reserve
print(f"Average per question: {total_minutes / questions:.2f} minutes")
print(f"First pass: {first_pass} minutes; second pass: {second_pass} minutes; final check: {reserve} minutes")
for done in (20, 40, 60, 80):
    print(f"Checkpoint: question {done} by about minute {round(first_pass * done / questions)} of the first pass")

Average per question: 2.25 minutes
First pass: 99 minutes; second pass: 71 minutes; final check: 10 minutes
Checkpoint: question 20 by about minute 25 of the first pass
Checkpoint: question 40 by about minute 50 of the first pass
Checkpoint: question 60 by about minute 74 of the first pass
Checkpoint: question 80 by about minute 99 of the first pass

A plan for the practical

The practical exam's Part 1 is a 50-minute plan-reading exercise with a minimum of 71 in 100, and Part 2 is five 20-minute hands-on exercises, covering bending, lights, a starter, meters and motors, each with a minimum of 70 and an average of at least 70. Each exercise is short and scored on its own, so a strong performance on one cannot rescue a weak one. The plan, then, is consistency: a routine for each exercise that is fast, safe and accurate.

For plan reading, Teresa reads every question first, then scans the drawing set's legend, general notes and schedules before answering, because the notes and schedules answer many questions. For the hands-on exercises, she starts each one by reading the task sheet twice, laying out her tools and materials, and checking the starting conditions, such as whether a circuit is de-energized. She works methodically, checks her work against the task before calling it done, and keeps an eye on the clock. If something goes wrong, she stops, thinks, and fixes it rather than rushing. Safe practices count; an unsafe act can cost points or the exercise.

Review of the New York facts

The licensing facts in this course are likely to appear in law and rules questions on local exams and are worth knowing in any case. The table gathers the most important ones for the city.

Practice set

Work these questions without looking back at the lessons, then check your answers against the explanations. They review the New York material; use the core courses' practice sets for code calculations.

The last week

In the last week before the written exam, Teresa stops learning new material. She reviews her flash cards, especially the ones she has missed most often, takes one final full-length timed practice set early in the week, and spends the rest of the week on light review. She confirms her test center, her admission information and her identification, plans her route with a margin for transit delays, and gets enough sleep. On the morning of the exam, she eats a normal breakfast and arrives early.

In the exam room, she reads each question completely, including every answer choice, before choosing. She watches for words like not, except and always, which reverse or narrow a question. She marks questions she is unsure of rather than agonizing, and she trusts her preparation on the second pass. When the exam ends, she leaves knowing her result, because the city gives written exam results at the test site.

For Long Island and upstate candidates

Andre's town exam follows a different format, but the same strategy adapts. He reads his exam letter for the format, time limit and allowed references. If references are allowed, he practices with exactly the books he will bring, and if they are not, he uses Teresa's recall methods. He reviews the town's own code and rules, because local exams often ask about local requirements, such as insurance certificates naming the town and permit procedures. And he confirms the board's meeting schedule and the date results will be issued.

Whatever the jurisdiction, the habits that pass exams are the same: study from the code and rules the exam is built on, practice under real time limits, review mistakes systematically, and arrive rested and early.

If you do not pass

Some strong candidates fail a part on the first attempt, and the city's process allows for it. If the written exam result is a near miss, consider whether the administrator's appeal process applies and whether you have specific grounds. Otherwise, use the score report to see which content areas were weakest, rebuild the study plan around them, and apply to retake. For the practical, note which exercise fell short, practice it under the timer until it is reliable, and retake within the 24-month window. A failure costs time and fees, but it also shows exactly what to work on next.

After the exams

Passing the written and practical exams is a milestone, not the finish line. In the city, the background application, the business setup and the license pickup follow, each with its own deadline, as Lesson 3 described. Teresa has her documents organized and her calendar marked, so she files within weeks of her practical notice. Within a few months, Halsey Street Electric has a second licensed master, Sal has a retirement date, and Teresa has a plan for her first renewal.