So what's the big deal, isn't a Houston Master Electrican the same as other Master Electricans
Read on--
We are a dying group of Masters, with only a handful of HMEL's left renewing their license, maybe less than 100 now. With the advent of state wide licensing many have chose not to renew their HMEL and it is not required as long as you have your state issued license. Some of us consider this an honor and privilege to carry this coveted number. But what make this different than other Master license? THE TEST is the difference. Houston was considered the hardest test in the nation and fewer than 10% would generally pass the test. So out of about 50 average taking the test only 5 would pass. Most of the 10% ers would have taken it before. About the only way to pass the test was attend a school that taught specifically for the Houston test. This includes Electrical engineers, Masters from other cities and states.
Normally after a 6 months to a year or two a really sharp person would be ready to sit for the first try at passing. It is a two part test first, the closed book 2 hour test followed by the open book 4 hour test. OK, so why is it so hard? First let me say the skill of taking test is a valuable tool as I had acquired many license by way of test before Houston, as practice makes perfect so goes with taking test under stress. You must be very proficient with a calculator as number crunching is a big part of the open book. You will see this in some of my examples of test later in this document.
The first part which is the closed book is 100 questions, multiple choice, fill in the blank or true false. You will need to know the current adopted NEC code book from the first page to the last. A question can come from any chapter and obscurity is at least 50% of all questions.The one thing you can count on is the questions are legit questions, I mean nothing is taken out of context and it's word for word.
The second part is where most people fail, it's one thing to remember enough questions (I had about 2,000 on my computer) you could manage getting 70% correct but doing complex calculations under a small window of four hours was almost impossible unless you practiced daily. It's not enough to pick the right wire size but many calculation require the exact amperes. Most Master in the US can not connect high voltage transformers, figure fault current, do power factor calculations nor have experience in elevator, escalator, inductance, reactance, impedance and the list goes on and on as you will see. You also had to be able to do your own 1-line drawings as most of us could submit a full set of drawings just as any engineer would have submitted.
We are a dying group of Masters, with only a handful of HMEL's left renewing their license, maybe less than 100 now. With the advent of state wide licensing many have chose not to renew their HMEL and it is not required as long as you have your state issued license. Some of us consider this an honor and privilege to carry this coveted number. But what make this different than other Master license? THE TEST is the difference. Houston was considered the hardest test in the nation and fewer than 10% would generally pass the test. So out of about 50 average taking the test only 5 would pass. Most of the 10% ers would have taken it before. About the only way to pass the test was attend a school that taught specifically for the Houston test. This includes Electrical engineers, Masters from other cities and states.
Normally after a 6 months to a year or two a really sharp person would be ready to sit for the first try at passing. It is a two part test first, the closed book 2 hour test followed by the open book 4 hour test. OK, so why is it so hard? First let me say the skill of taking test is a valuable tool as I had acquired many license by way of test before Houston, as practice makes perfect so goes with taking test under stress. You must be very proficient with a calculator as number crunching is a big part of the open book. You will see this in some of my examples of test later in this document.
The first part which is the closed book is 100 questions, multiple choice, fill in the blank or true false. You will need to know the current adopted NEC code book from the first page to the last. A question can come from any chapter and obscurity is at least 50% of all questions.The one thing you can count on is the questions are legit questions, I mean nothing is taken out of context and it's word for word.
The second part is where most people fail, it's one thing to remember enough questions (I had about 2,000 on my computer) you could manage getting 70% correct but doing complex calculations under a small window of four hours was almost impossible unless you practiced daily. It's not enough to pick the right wire size but many calculation require the exact amperes. Most Master in the US can not connect high voltage transformers, figure fault current, do power factor calculations nor have experience in elevator, escalator, inductance, reactance, impedance and the list goes on and on as you will see. You also had to be able to do your own 1-line drawings as most of us could submit a full set of drawings just as any engineer would have submitted.