The North Carolina Hearing Aid Specialist license, issued by the North Carolina State Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters Board under Chapter 93D of the North Carolina General Statutes, authorises the holder to engage in the activities within the scope of practice of a hearing aid specialist in North Carolina. The PassProfessor North Carolina Hearing Aid Specialist program, described on the companion program page at /north-carolina-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for the Board’s four-part licensing examination that stands behind that license.
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The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | North Carolina Hearing Aid Specialist, the license issued by the North Carolina State Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters Board for the scope of practice of a hearing aid specialist |
| Licensing body | North Carolina State Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters Board, under Chapter 93D of the North Carolina General Statutes; examination rules at 21 NCAC 22F .0105 |
| Examination | Four parts, all of which must be passed: Part A, knowledge of hearing testing through a computer simulation program; Part B, practical knowledge and ability to make an ear impression; Part C, knowledge of relevant laws, rules, and regulations governing hearing aid specialists — 50 multiple-choice questions, per the Board’s exam notice; Part D, the ILE as administered by the International Hearing Society (IHS). The Board offers the examination four times a year, in February, May, August, and November, with an exam registration deadline 45 days before the exam date |
| Passing standard | The Board’s rules publish no fixed numeric passing score — the Board reviews the qualifying examinations and determines the minimum performance criteria required for passing; no pass mark is stated in this guide because the Board does not publish one in that form |
| Examination fees | $500 in Board fees for exam registration — a $425 exam fee and a $75 application fee, per the Board’s published application requirements; the Part D (ILE) examination fee is paid directly to IHS and is additional. Apprentice registration is $100 |
| Eligibility | Education equivalent to a four-year course in an accredited high school, passage of all four parts of the examination, and completion of one full year of apprenticeship under a Registered Sponsor — within 24 consecutive months, working under the sponsor’s supervision a minimum of 27 clock hours per week for 50 weeks and holding a valid apprentice registration certificate for 365 calendar days — subject to the statutory waivers the Board publishes |
| Trainee tier | Registered Apprentice: an apprentice registration certificate, issued on the F1 application once a Registered Sponsor is secured, permitting practice within the scope of a Hearing Aid Specialist only under the sponsor’s supervision |
| License term | Annual: renewal is due on or before March 31 each year, with 10 hours (1.00 CEU) of Board-approved Category 1 continuing education completed in the preceding calendar year and reported by January 10 |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the North Carolina State Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters Board or the International Hearing Society (IHS) |
North Carolina rewards candidates who read the license as the Board built it: a year of supervised practice and a four-part examination, interleaved. The apprentice does not first train and then test; the rules let the apprentice take examination parts during the apprenticeship, move the apprentice from personal to general supervision once Parts A, B, and C are passed, and hold the license until both the 365 days and all four parts are complete. Around that interlock sit the route’s fixed points — a sponsor the Board will not find for you, four sittings a year, a 45-day registration deadline, and results that expire. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to North Carolina primary material — the Board’s own website, Chapter 93D of the General Statutes, and the Board’s rules in 21 NCAC Chapter 22 — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, the passing standard is handled only in the form the Board publishes it: the Board’s former grading rule stands repealed, its current rules require an applicant to pass all parts of the examination and provide that the Board determines the minimum performance criteria for passing, and no numeric pass mark appears anywhere in this guide — any percentage quoted by third-party material for these parts is not the Board’s published standard. Second, figures that belong to one part are never lent to another: the 50-question figure belongs to Part C alone, on the Board’s exam notice, and no item count is stated for Parts A, B, or D, because the Board sources consulted publish none the guide can verify. Third, the October 2025 changes are stated as the Board announced them: HB 926 became law in October 2025, and one change the Board identifies is that dual licensure is no longer required for master’s-level audiologists — stated in those terms, and not expanded into a general account of audiologist licensure.
The route, step by step
Step one — secure the Registered Sponsor. Nothing in this route precedes the sponsor. A Registered Sponsor is a licensee of the Board approved as a sponsor of an apprentice — the Board’s guidance adds that the licensee has held the license for two years — or a permanently licensed audiologist registered as a sponsor with the Board. The Board does not aid anyone in securing a sponsor, so candidates should treat the search as the first examined task: without a sponsor there is no apprenticeship, and without the apprenticeship there is, for the standard applicant, no license. Step two — register as an apprentice. The F1 apprentice application, with its notarised affidavit, audiometer calibration certificate dated within the past 12 months, passport-style photograph, background check, and $100 fee, produces the apprentice registration certificate; the Board posts active apprentice information on its website, and the apprentice may perform duties within the scope of practice only under the sponsor’s supervision once the certificate is issued and posted. Any person age 17 or older may apply to register as an apprentice under G.S. 93D-9, sponsored as above. Step three — work the apprenticeship year as defined. Twenty-seven clock hours a week under supervision, for 50 weeks, holding the certificate for 365 calendar days, all inside 24 consecutive months, with the Report of Apprenticeship Experience filed when the apprenticeship is terminated or completed. Supervision begins as personal supervision and converts to general supervision when Parts A, B, and C are passed. Step four — register for and pass the four parts. The F4 application — form, affidavit, calibration certificate, photograph, background check submitted within its six-month currency, and $500 in Board fees — must reach the Board by the deadline 45 days before the chosen sitting, in February, May, August, or November. An apprentice may take any part of the examination during the apprenticeship; Part D is arranged through the Board’s registration, with IHS contacting the candidate after the deadline about ILE registration and its separate fee. Step five — receive the license and run its year. With all four parts passed and the 365 days complete, the license issues; from then on the licensee works to the Board’s two annual deadlines — continuing education reported by January 10 for the year just ended, renewal completed by March 31 — and keeps calibration current, because a current calibration certificate is part of nearly every transaction the Board processes. Applicants exempt from the apprenticeship — the statutory categories at G.S. 93D-5(c), including the three-year out-of-state licensee — enter at step four: the examination is still taken in full.
The outline in full
The outline is the four parts of 21 NCAC 22F .0105, taken in the Board’s order. In North Carolina the parts interlock with the apprenticeship itself: Parts A, B, and C are the gateway to general supervision, Part D is the national paper that closes the set, and the license waits on all four plus the completed year.
Part A: Hearing testing through computer simulation
Part A assesses the applicant’s knowledge of hearing testing through a computer simulation program. The choice of format is the content signal: hearing testing is a sequenced performance — preparing the patient and the audiometer, presenting tones, determining thresholds, and recording the audiogram — and a simulation examines the sequence and its decisions without a live patient. Preparation for Part A is therefore procedural rather than declarative: the candidate studies the test as a chain of steps, each with its correct next action, its masking decision where one arises, and its accurate record at the end. This is also the part most tightly bound to the apprenticeship’s daily work, because the apprentice performs real hearing tests under supervision from the first weeks; the examined habit is to perform the simulated test exactly as the supervised real one should be performed, including the calibration discipline the Board enforces administratively at every step of the route.
Part B: The ear impression, as a performed practical
Part B assesses the applicant’s practical knowledge and ability to make an ear impression. It is the examination’s unambiguous craft test, and the Board’s published safety standards describe the standard it is performed to: adherence to infection control during testing, fitting, and repairs; proper bracing techniques for the right and left ears while using the otoscope, tympanometry probe, otolight, impression instrument, and real-ear probe; and pre- and post-impression otoscopy on all clients and patients. A candidate can know impression materials and curing behaviour thoroughly and still be unprepared for Part B if the physical sequence — inspect, brace, place, inject, cure, remove, re-inspect — has not been rehearsed as a sequence under the same safety rules the Board publishes for practice. The apprenticeship is the rehearsal room: impressions taken under personal supervision, corrected in the moment, are the preparation this part rewards.
Part C: Laws, rules, and regulations
Part C assesses the applicant’s knowledge of the relevant laws, rules, and regulations governing hearing aid specialists, in 50 multiple-choice questions per the Board’s exam notice. Its syllabus is North Carolina’s law of the profession — Chapter 93D’s licensing, apprenticeship, and scope provisions and the Board’s rules in 21 NCAC Chapter 22 — together with the federal regulation the Board’s definitions incorporate for hearing aid devices. Part C is the part experienced candidates most often underrate, because it cannot be prepared from practice habit: the credited answers live in the statute and the rules, in provisions on registration, supervision levels, examination mechanics, continuing education, and the grounds of discipline that a working apprentice may never have occasion to read. It is also, with Parts A and B, one of the three parts that convert the apprentice to general supervision — the Board’s own signal that law knowledge is part of readiness to work with the sponsor no longer in the room.
Part D: The ILE, and what the rule says it assesses
Part D is the ILE as administered by the IHS, and 21 NCAC 22F .0105 states its five assessed areas: patient assessment; interpretation and application of assessment results; hearing devices; the scope of practice of hearing aid specialists; and ability to provide continuing care. Read as a study outline, the five areas describe the full clinical arc — assess the patient, interpret what the assessment shows, know the devices, know the boundaries of the specialist’s practice, and carry the care forward after the fitting. Part D’s administration is the route’s most mechanical trap, and it is worth stating exactly: the candidate registers for Part D with the Board, on the Board’s F4 cycle and deadline — not directly with IHS. After the registration deadline, IHS emails the candidate instructions for setting up the ILE registration and paying the ILE fee to IHS. The examination is taken at a testing centre that offers the ILE, but on the prescribed date and time in the IHS email and on the exam admission card. A candidate taking Part D alone pays no Board application or exam registration fee — the Board waives both for that registration — but the ILE fee itself is still payable to IHS. And a candidate who has already passed the ILE need not sit it again: the candidate requests that IHS send a score transfer directly to the Board.
How results, review, and expiry work
The mechanics after a sitting deserve the same care as the parts themselves, because North Carolina puts clocks on results that most states do not. The Board mails the Official Notice of Examination Results within 30 days, to the applicant and, where applicable, to the Registered Sponsor. A candidate who fails a part held in the Board’s custody may review that portion in a Board representative’s presence, on written request within 20 days after the date on the Official Notice, at the Board’s office by appointment; Part D is expressly excluded — an applicant has no privilege to review the ILE. Expiry is the sharpest mechanic: for an applicant who completes the apprenticeship year, all results expire 31 months after the apprentice certificate was first issued; for an apprenticeship-exempt applicant, or one who tests more than 31 months after that date, results expire 19 months after the exam date. Part D results, alone, do not expire. The planning consequence is direct: Parts A, B, and C should be banked neither so late that a failure cannot be retaken inside the window nor so early that the 31-month clock binds the finish, and a candidate retaking parts reapplies and pays the Board’s fees each time — except that a Part D-only registration carries no Board fee.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan around the apprenticeship calendar, because the Board does. First, the sponsor and the certificate — secured and issued before any study plan matters, with the 27-hour week and the 365-day count running from the certificate’s issuance date. Second, Parts A and B from live practice — hearing testing and ear impressions studied inside the supervised work itself, against the Board’s published safety standards, so that the simulation and the practical are performances of habits already formed rather than techniques learned for the occasion. Third, Part C as a reading programme — Chapter 93D and 21 NCAC Chapter 22 read in full, in the rules’ own structure, with registration, supervision, examination, continuing education, and discipline provisions learned as the operating law of the apprenticeship the candidate is currently living. Fourth, Part D on its five published areas — patient assessment, interpretation and application of results, hearing devices, scope of practice, and continuing care — studied as the clinical arc they describe, and scheduled with its Board-registration and IHS follow-up steps diarised, because Part D is missed by administration more often than by knowledge. Fifth, the deadlines as a single chart — the 45-day registration deadline, the four sitting months, the results-expiry dates, and the apprenticeship’s completion date on one page, reviewed monthly, so no part of the route fails on a date the candidate could have circled a year earlier.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Preparation fails here most often as a sequencing problem disguised as a knowledge problem — and in a second, characteristic way: apprentices prepare for the national written paper they have heard of and meet the Board’s own three parts unprepared. The working method that answers both has four parts. Use the apprenticeship as the syllabus. Every supervised week produces the raw material of Parts A and B; the apprentice who debriefs each testing and impression session against the Board’s standards studies for the examination while accumulating the year. Keep an error log keyed to the four parts. Every missed item and corrected procedure is filed by part — simulation decisions, impression technique, law provisions, ILE knowledge areas — and the log, not confidence, assigns the next study block. Read the law where you live it. Part C preparation works best provision by provision against the apprentice’s own position: supervision level, hours, reporting duties — each rule read at the moment it governs something real. Rehearse Part D’s administration, not only its content. Board registration, the wait for the IHS email, the prescribed date and time, the testing-centre booking — walked through in advance, because a missed prescribed sitting is a lost quarter.
The errors this examination is built to catch
The North Carolina route catches a recognisable set. Waiting for a sponsor to appear — the Board does not match apprentices to sponsors, and every month without one is a month the 365-day clock is not running. Treating the ILE as the examination understudies three of the four parts, including the only performed practical and the only state-law paper. Letting the 27-hour week slip — the apprenticeship year is defined in hours as well as days, and a shortfall discovered at the Report of Apprenticeship Experience is a year that does not count as defined. Missing the 45-day deadline in a system with four sittings a year costs a full quarter, and late applications are denied, not held. Registering for Part D with IHS directly, or missing the prescribed date and time after registering correctly with the Board, loses the sitting the candidate paid the Board to enter. Banking parts without watching their expiry — 31 months from the certificate for Parts A, B, and C — can strand a nearly complete route. And conflating the two annual deadlines after licensure, reporting continuing education in March or renewing in January, fails a distinction the Board states expressly: reporting by January 10, renewal by March 31.
The credential in one view
The North Carolina Hearing Aid Specialist license in one view is a supervised year converted, by a four-part examination, into independent practice — with the examination woven through the year rather than parked at its end. Read in order, the parts check that the apprentice can run a hearing test, can perform the craft’s defining manual task safely, and knows the law the work is done under — and passing those three changes the apprentice’s supervision status on the spot. Part D then sets the whole performance against the national standard, on the five areas describing the specialist’s arc from assessment to continuing care. The structures around the parts serve the same end: the sponsor system puts a licensee’s accountability behind every apprentice act, the results-expiry rules keep demonstrated competence current, and the annual cycle keeps the finished licensee inside the Board’s oversight. The candidate who studies the route as that single design finds the apprenticeship and the examination reinforcing each other.
After the sittings: the license and its clocks
The license issues when the fourth part and the 365th day are both behind the candidate, and its clocks are annual and unforgiving of drift. Continuing education accrues across the calendar year — 10 hours, 1.00 CEU, in Board-approved Category 1 sessions, with no carryover — and is reported by January 10; a licensee who passes the licensing examination during an accrual period has satisfied that period’s requirement. Renewal follows by March 31, with the form, the $250 fee, and the current calibration report. A license that lapses enters the Board’s reinstatement provisions, under which taking and passing the Board’s qualifying examination is the stated route to satisfying the continuing-education condition for reinstatement — after more than 60 days expired, and again, with a different evidence rule, at five years and beyond. The specialist who treats the January and March dates, and the calibration cycle, as part of practice meets renewal as a formality; the specialist who treats the license as a finished event meets the examination a second time, as a reinstatement condition.
Frequently asked questions
Which rules govern the examination itself?
21 NCAC 22F .0105 defines the four parts; 21 NCAC 22F .0101 requires the Board to publicise each examination’s time and place on its website at least 90 days in advance; and 21 NCAC 22A .0503 governs applications and fees, including the Part D arrangements with IHS. The apprenticeship rules are at 21 NCAC 22F .0301 and the definition of the apprenticeship year at 21 NCAC 22A .0401.
May an apprentice take examination parts before finishing the apprenticeship?
Yes. Under 21 NCAC 22F .0301 an apprentice may elect to take any part of the licensing examination at any time during the apprenticeship, by submitting the application for license and exam registration before the registration deadline. The license still cannot issue until all four parts are passed and the full year is complete.
What changes when Parts A, B, and C are passed?
The supervision level. An apprentice is under personal supervision unless and until the apprentice takes and passes Parts A, B, and C, at which point the apprentice works under general supervision — the sponsor’s overall direction and control, without the sponsor’s required presence, though the sponsor remains accessible and accountable to the apprentice until Part D is also passed.
How are results delivered, and can a failed part be reviewed?
The Board mails an Official Notice of Examination Results within 30 days of the examination, to the applicant and, where applicable, to the Registered Sponsor. A candidate who fails a part in the Board’s custody may review that portion in a Board representative’s presence, on written request within 20 days of the date on the Official Notice, by appointment at the Board’s office. Part D cannot be reviewed — the rules expressly exclude it.
Do examination results expire?
Parts A, B, and C do; Part D does not. For an applicant who completes the apprenticeship year, results expire 31 months after the apprentice certificate was first issued; for an apprenticeship-exempt applicant, or one who tests more than 31 months after that date, results expire 19 months after the exam date. 21 NCAC 22F .0107 provides that Part D results shall not expire.
What fees does the Board charge across the route?
As the Board publishes them: $100 for the initial apprentice registration ($150 on renewal); $500 for exam registration — a $425 exam fee and a $75 application fee — each time the applicant registers for parts of the examination, except that a Part D-only registration carries no Board application or exam fee; the ILE fee itself is paid directly to IHS and was $250 plus applicable taxes effective April 1, 2024, per the Board. License renewal is $250.
Who is exempt from the apprenticeship?
The five categories at G.S. 93D-5(c): persons qualified under G.S. 93D-6; permanent licensed audiologists; temporary licensed audiologists with 250 hours of supervised fitting or selling activity under a Registered Sponsor’s direct supervision; persons continuously licensed to fit or sell hearing aids in another state or jurisdiction for the preceding three years; and persons who have worked full-time for one year under an otolaryngologist’s direct supervision fitting or selling hearing aids. Exemption waives the year, never the examination.
What does Category 1 continuing education cover?
The subjects the Board assigns to Category 1 at 21 NCAC 22F .0203: amplification, hearing rehabilitation, hearing loss, regulations, and consumer-related issues — including hearing aid technology, earmold and shell coupling systems and ear impressions, selection and verification procedures, aural rehabilitation and counselling, the bases of normal and pathological hearing, assessment techniques, implantable devices, assistive listening devices, infection control, and professional conduct and regulatory issues. Only Category 1 sessions satisfy the renewal requirement: 10 hours, recorded as 1.00 CEU, each year, with no carryover.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Board or IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the North Carolina State Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters Board or the International Hearing Society. The Board alone issues the license, and this program registers no apprenticeship and satisfies no examination part.
When does enrollment open for the PassProfessor program?
The program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address on the companion program page and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program.