Maryland electrician exam format

The two tiers, side by side

Maryland licenses two statewide tiers under the Maryland Electricians Act (SB 762, 2021), both administered by PSI Services. The format differs by tier, but the pass bar and the open-book rule do not.

• Journeyperson: 70 questions in 3 hours 30 minutes, 70% to pass. That works out to 49 correct out of 70.
• Master: 90 questions in 4 hours, 70% to pass, and calculation-heavy. Calculations make up 30 of the 90 questions, so the master step rewards whoever can set up load, conduit fill, and voltage drop fast and clean.

Open book on the 2020 NEC, with limits

Both exams are open book on the 2020 NEC only. You may bring a silent, non-printing, non-programmable calculator. Permanent highlighting, underlining, and printed index tabs are allowed. Study guides, handwritten notes, removable tabs, and writing in the book are not. That last part is where people get tripped up, because the format rewards a book you set up the legal way and can actually flip through under time.

How hard is it, honestly

Maryland is unusual in that the Board publishes the numbers. Its own meeting minutes report about 27 percent passing across both tiers. The Maryland Board's own meeting minutes report roughly a 27 to 28 percent pass rate across both tiers (182 of 684 passed January to September 2025; 2,549 of 8,948 since the exam's inception). Open book does not mean easy.

The difficulty is not trick questions. It is two things the format quietly punishes.

• Speed under the clock: 70 questions in 3 hours 30 minutes sounds generous until you are flipping the codebook for the rule on every other question. Each slow lookup costs you a question you could have answered. The master exam compresses 90 questions, 30 of them calculations, into 4 hours.
• The open-book trap: open book makes guys study less, not more. Then they hit the floor and cannot land on the right article fast enough to finish. The exam is testing whether you know where the rule lives, not whether you memorized it.

So the format itself tells you how to prepare. The points are not won by reading the whole code. They are won by knowing which article to open for grounding and bonding, conduit and box fill, ampacity, and motor and feeder sizing, then getting there in seconds.

What the format means for your prep

Because the test is open book and time-boxed, the highest-value practice is not a giant trivia bank. It is finding your weak article families first, then drilling the flip path on those until the lookup is automatic. Run the diagnostic, see the articles costing you points, and put your nights there.

Ready to see where you stand? Take the free Maryland diagnostic.