The exam format and the references allowed

Kari had taken one board exam before, for her journeyman license in 2019, so she knew the room and the routine. But the master exam is harder, the code edition is new, and a few facts about the North Dakota format change how a candidate should study. The most important is that the board supplies the code book. A candidate does not bring a tabbed, highlighted personal copy into the exam. This lesson describes what the board publishes about the format, what it does not publish, and how to prepare for an exam with two parts, one closed book and one open book, using a code book you have never marked.

What the board publishes

The board's exam dates and information page gives the core facts. The examinations are based on fundamental electricity, the laws, rules and wiring standards of North Dakota, and the current edition of the National Electrical Code. Exams from December 2026 are based on the 2026 NEC and the 2026 North Dakota laws, rules, wiring and conveyance standards. The passing grade is 70. The board provides code books, calculators and pencils. And the page lists the time for each part of each exam.

The page does not say how many questions each part has, how the two parts are weighted or combined into a score, or exactly which topics fall in the closed part. It does not say whether the 70 applies to each part or to the whole. Those details can change, and the board can answer them for a particular session. In this lesson, any question counts or paces are illustrative, labeled as such, and meant to show method rather than the real exam.

The closed book part

A closed book part tests what a master is expected to know without looking it up. The board's list of subjects suggests what that is likely to include: fundamental electricity such as Ohm's law, power, series and parallel circuits and power factor; North Dakota law and rules, such as who may contract, the license classes, apprentice supervision and wiring certificates; and the code rules a master uses so often that they should be second nature. Treat this as an informed guess, not a published outline.

Studying for a closed book part means memorizing, and memorizing works best with short, repeated sessions. Kari made a deck of cards: one side a question, the other the answer and its source. Her law cards came from Lessons 1 to 3 and 5 to 11 of this course, and her fundamentals cards came from MELU-101. She went through them for fifteen minutes every morning before work and sorted out the cards she missed for an extra pass at night.

• Statute and rule facts: license classes, who may contract, experience hours, fees and expiration dates, apprentice ratio, insurance amount, renewal and education hours.
• Wiring certificate facts: the 500-dollar threshold, the startup copy, the 15-day completion deadline, the 12-month life of small certificates, and the late and reinspection charges.
• Fundamentals: Ohm's law, power formulas for single-phase and three-phase circuits, voltage drop, series and parallel combinations, and power factor.
• Code basics a master should know cold: the layout of the chapters, common definitions and the main articles for services, feeders, branch circuits, grounding and overcurrent protection.

The open book part

The open book part tests whether a master can find and apply the code under time pressure. Three and a half hours is long, but a master exam fills it with calculations and look-ups. The board's own copy of the code will be on the desk. It will be the correct edition, and it will have no tabs, highlighting or notes. That changes how to practice.

Many candidates in other states rely on permanent tabs and a highlighted personal copy. In North Dakota that habit can backfire. A candidate who has always found Article 250 by grabbing a colored tab may be slow with a clean book. Kari did all her practice in a second, unmarked copy of the 2026 NEC, kept separate from her work copy, and used only the index, the table of contents and the article numbers printed at the top of each page. She found that learning the order of the chapters and the approximate page range of the busiest articles saved more time than tabs ever had.

• Learn the chapter order: general rules in Chapters 1 to 4, special occupancies in 5, special equipment in 6, special conditions in 7, communications in 8 and tables in Chapter 9 and the annexes.
• Learn where the big articles sit: definitions in Article 100, general requirements in 110, branch circuits in 210, feeders in 215, load calculations in 220, services in 230, overcurrent protection in 240 and grounding and bonding in 250.
• Use the index with key words from the question, then check the article's scope before trusting a rule.
• Read exceptions and informational notes around any rule you find, since many exam questions turn on an exception.

The North Dakota wiring standards are a separate document. The board's page says the exam is based on the state's laws, rules and wiring standards as well as the NEC, but it does not say which documents are on the desk for which part. Assume you must know the state amendments well enough to answer without the text, and treat any state material provided at the exam as a bonus. Lesson 5 covers the amendments.

Pacing

The real question count is not published, so Kari built her pacing from a practice set. Her practice exam for the open book part had 70 questions in 210 minutes, which is three minutes per question. She planned three passes. In the first pass she answered every question she could solve in under two minutes and marked the rest. In the second she worked the marked questions that needed a calculation or a longer search. In the last she made her best choice on anything left and checked her answer sheet. Lesson 12 covers this plan in more detail.

# Illustrative pacing for a 3.5-hour open book part (the real question count is not published)
minutes = 3.5 * 60
questions = 70                    # Kari's practice set, not the real exam
per_question = minutes / questions
pass1 = 0.55 * minutes            # quick answers, mark the rest
pass2 = 0.35 * minutes            # calculations and long look-ups
pass3 = minutes - pass1 - pass2   # final choices and answer-sheet check
print(f"Average: {per_question:.1f} minutes per question")
print(f"Pass 1: {pass1:.0f} min, pass 2: {pass2:.0f} min, pass 3: {pass3:.0f} min")

Average: 3.0 minutes per question
Pass 1: 116 min, pass 2: 74 min, pass 3: 21 min

For the closed book part, one hour is short, and closed book questions are usually quick: either you know the answer or you do not. Kari planned to go through once at a steady pace, mark anything she was unsure about, and come back with whatever time was left.

Calculators and other items

The board provides calculators. A candidate should therefore practice with a basic scientific calculator that has square root and memory functions, rather than relying on a programmable model or a phone app that will not be allowed. Kari bought an inexpensive scientific calculator and used only that one for every practice problem, so that she would not be slowed by unfamiliar keys on exam day. Check with the board office about what else you may bring, such as a photo identification, which you will need, and whether a watch is allowed in the room.

How the exam is scored and reported

The board grades the exam and reports the score to the candidate. Because the board no longer provides exam reviews, the score is all the feedback a candidate receives. A pass leads to the license once the fee is paid. A score below 70 leads to the waiting periods in Lesson 3. Because the board does not publish how the closed and open book parts combine, a candidate should aim to do well on both and not count on a strong open book part to carry a weak closed book part.

Building a closed book deck

Kari's deck grew to about 180 cards by exam week. She grouped them by source so she could see what she was weakest on: the Century Code, the board's licensing rules, the wiring certificate and fee rules, the wiring standards, the Secretary of State contractor law, the lien chapter, safety and workers compensation, and fundamentals. Each card gave the source on the back, such as 24.1-05-01-01 or 43-09-20, which helped her recognize the rule when a question was worded differently from her card.

She also made a one-page sheet of numbers, because North Dakota law questions are often about numbers: 500 dollars for a wiring certificate, 15 days to file the final, 12 months for a small certificate, 2,000 hours for a master, 8,000 for a journeyman, 3,000 for class B, three apprentices per licensed electrician, 500,000 dollars of liability insurance, 4,000 dollars for a Secretary of State license, 90 days to record a lien, eight hours of education with four on the code, and the April 30 and March 31 expiration dates. She read the sheet every night for the last two weeks.

Fundamentals still matter

Master candidates who have spent years in the field sometimes neglect the theory. The board lists fundamental electricity as one of the exam's subjects, and fundamentals questions are often the easiest points on the exam for a candidate who has practiced them and the hardest for one who has not. Review Ohm's law and the power formulas, three-phase relationships between line and phase values, the effect of power factor on current, voltage drop calculations, and series and parallel combinations of resistance. MELU-101 and MELU-102 have practice sets on each.

On exam morning Kari planned to spend the first two minutes of the open book part paging once through the board's copy to get a feel for its layout, checking that it was the 2026 edition and finding where Chapter 9 and the index begin. A clean book from the same printing as her study copy would match page for page, but she did not count on it.