TDLR Exam Day: What to Bring, What to Expect, How to Prepare

What to bring

• Government photo ID. Driver license or passport. The name must match exactly what’s on your TDLR application. A hyphen mismatch turns people away.
• PSI confirmation. Print or screenshot. Phones go in the locker, so don’t rely on showing the screen at the desk.
• NEC 2023 codebook. Your own soft-bound copy. No loose-leaf, spiral, or ring-bound books. No loose pages. The exam is referenced to the standard NEC 2023, and the code book is the only reference allowed.
• Battery-powered calculator. Non-programmable, no internet, no formula storage. A standard scientific calculator is fine. Programmable calculators get confiscated.
• Water and a snack. Stay in the locker, eat at break. Glucose for hour 3 matters more than people think.

What NOT to bring

• Phones, smartwatches, fitness trackers, all in the locker.
• Loose paper, formula sheets, sticky notes inside the codebook.
• Programmable calculators, graphing calculators, or anything with internet capability.
• A second codebook. PSI typically allows only one reference.
• Hats, hoodies up, sunglasses indoors, large jackets. The proctor may ask you to remove or check them.

The codebook tabbing question

Mark up your codebook before exam day, not during it. You can highlight, underline, and write notes ahead of time. For tabs, PSI only accepts permanent index tabs, the kind that would tear the page if you pulled them. Homemade tabs, stick-on flags, sticky notes, and loose paper inserts aren’t allowed, and the proctor can make you remove them. The fail-safe rule: if it came pre-printed or permanently bound in the book, it passes. If you taped, stapled, or stuck it in yourself, leave it out.

If a proctor flags anything in your book, you can almost always remove the offending item and continue. Don’t argue. Time spent arguing is time off your exam clock.

The first 30 minutes

How you start decides how you finish. The wave-pass strategy works for almost every candidate.

Wave 1: know-it answers

Read every question. Answer the ones where you know the answer without opening the book. Mark the rest. Goal: 30-40 questions answered in the first 30-40 minutes.

Wave 2: think-it answers

Loop back. Questions where you have a hypothesis but want to verify with the book. Quick lookups only, under 2 minutes per question. If you can’t verify in 2 minutes, mark it and move on.

Wave 3: calculations

All the math at once, when your brain is warm and your time budget is clear. Doing calculations one-at-a-time scattered through the exam is a trap. The cognitive context-switching tax is real.

Wave 4: deeper lookups

The hard questions. Use what time remains. If you have 3 minutes per question, fine. If you have 20 seconds, guess and move.

Wave 5: review and final pass

Save the last 15 minutes. Catch obvious errors. Make sure no question is blank. Unanswered scores zero. A guess scores 25%.

Score reporting

PSI typically gives a pass/fail result on screen at the end of the exam. The detailed score breakdown comes from TDLR by mail or online portal a few days later. If you fail, the score report shows your performance by domain. That’s the document you use to plan the retake.