The Wyoming Hearing Aid Specialist license, issued by the Wyoming Board of Hearing Aid Specialists under the Hearing Aid Specialist Licensure Act, W.S. §§33-35-101–121, authorizes the holder to specialize in the fitting, dealing, or dispensing of hearing aids in Wyoming — “hearing aid specialist” and “hearing aid dealer” are synonymous under §33-35-102. Licensure by examination requires all three examinations under Board Rules Chapter 3, §4 — written, practical, and jurisprudence — each with its own published passing standard. The PassProfessor Wyoming Hearing Aid Specialist program, described on the companion program page at /wyoming-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for that examination set.
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The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Hearing Aid Specialist — “hearing aid specialist” and “hearing aid dealer” are synonymous per W.S. §33-35-102; the governing act is the Hearing Aid Specialist Licensure Act, W.S. §§33-35-101–121 |
| Licensing authority | Wyoming Board of Hearing Aid Specialists (created by the Wyoming Legislature in 1977; staffed through the Professional Licensing Boards Office, Department of Administration and Information) |
| Examination | All three examinations, per Board Rules Chapter 3, §4: written (the IHS written examination; the Board office notifies IHS of eligibility), practical (administered by the Board), and jurisprudence |
| Passing standards (as published, Wyoming only) | Written: “Pass, as determined by IHS” on the IHS written examination. Practical: 65% on each section with an overall average of 70%. Jurisprudence: 70% |
| Eligibility to test | Licensure by examination under Chapter 3, §4 and W.S. §33-35-109, including an education equivalent to a four-year course in an accredited high school, and certification of calibration of all audiometric equipment in use, signed by a qualified person during the previous twelve months |
| Route | Qualify → Temporary Permit (expires within 1 year or on licensure) where training or awaiting examination → written, practical, and jurisprudence examinations → license (effective until January 30 of the year following the year issued). Endorsement applicants must still pass the jurisprudence examination (Chapter 3, §5) |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Wyoming Board of Hearing Aid Specialists or the International Hearing Society |
Wyoming rewards candidates who read the credential as the Board built it: the most arithmetically explicit examination set in this family of programs. Three examinations, three administrators of the standard in effect — IHS for the written pass, the Board for the practical and the jurisprudence — and passing figures published in full, in advance, down to the difference between a section floor and an overall average. A candidate can plan against Wyoming’s standard with unusual precision, and the Board plainly expects exactly that. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Wyoming primary material — the Board’s own site, the Board Rules as filed through the Wyoming Legislature’s rules system, and the Hearing Aid Specialist Licensure Act — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, the passing standards are printed only in the exact form the Board’s rules publish them, and for Wyoming only: “Pass, as determined by IHS” for the written examination; 65% on each section with an overall average of 70% for the practical; 70% for the jurisprudence examination. No standard is paraphrased into a different number, averaged into a single figure, or exported to another state, and no other state’s figures are imported here. Second, the titles are kept synonymous as the Act keeps them — “hearing aid specialist” and “hearing aid dealer” name the same licensee under §33-35-102, not two credentials. Third, the Temporary Permit and the license are never merged: the permit is a training-or-awaiting-examination document expiring within one year or on licensure, and its supervised and unsupervised forms, which the Act distinguishes, are stated distinctly.
The route, step by step
Step one — establish licensure-by-examination eligibility. Under Chapter 3, §4, an applicant may seek licensure by examination if the applicant is not licensed to practice in another jurisdiction, or that jurisdiction’s licensure requirements are not as stringent as Wyoming’s. The application carries the Board’s supporting requirements, including certification of calibration of all audiometric equipment in use, signed by a qualified person during the previous twelve months — a twelve-month freshness window the applicant’s calendar must respect. The statute’s qualifications in §33-35-109 include an education equivalent to a four-year course in an accredited high school. Step two — where the route uses it, obtain the Temporary Permit. The supervised form requires no previous experience or waiting period, runs one year, and places the holder under a licensed hearing aid specialist responsible for the holder’s supervision and training; the permit expires within 1 year or on licensure. The Act’s unsupervised form, for the experienced dealership entrant described in §33-35-110(c), is a separate instrument with its own predicate of two years’ principal engagement in the practice within the prior three years. Step three — the written examination. The Board office notifies IHS that you are eligible to sit; you sit the IHS written examination; the standard is “Pass, as determined by IHS.” Step four — the Board’s practical examination: 65% on each section, with an overall average of 70%. Step five — the jurisprudence examination: 70%. The statute provides that examinations shall be offered by the Board at least twice a year, which makes the Board’s calendar a planning fact, not a detail. Step six — the license. On passing all three examinations and payment, the Board issues the license signed by the Board, effective until January 30 of the year following the year in which it was issued. Endorsement, alongside: Chapter 3, §5 governs applicants credentialed elsewhere — and requires them to pass the jurisprudence examination, the one component Wyoming never waives by credential.
The outline in full
Chapter 3, §4 states the examination requirement in one operative sentence — the applicant shall successfully pass the written, practical, and jurisprudence examinations — and then states each examination’s administrator and passing score. The Act’s scope provision, §33-35-111, designs the qualifying examination to demonstrate the applicant’s technical qualifications, through tests of knowledge in areas as they pertain to the fitting and sale of hearing aids and tests of the proficiency the fitting requires. The three examinations are stated here in the rules’ order, because they divide the credential exactly: shared professional knowledge, performed Wyoming-standard skill, and Wyoming law.
The written examination: the IHS written examination
The written examination is the International Hearing Society’s written examination, reached through the Board: the Board office notifies IHS that the applicant is eligible to sit, and the candidate sits the examination under IHS’s arrangements. Its passing form is the guide’s first reading rule in action — Wyoming does not publish a percentage for this paper, because IHS determines the pass: “Pass, as determined by IHS, on the IHS written examination.” The knowledge it examines is the profession’s base, which §33-35-111 names in its opening areas as they pertain to the fitting and sale of hearing aids: basic physics of sound; the anatomy and physiology of the ear; and the function of hearing aids — the science of the signal, the organ, and the instrument, in that order. Preparation is the standard dispenser syllabus studied to working depth, with one Wyoming-specific discipline: do not invent a written target percentage. The target is IHS’s Pass, and the energy a candidate might spend chasing a rumored number belongs on the two examinations whose numbers Wyoming does publish.
The practical examination: the Board’s, at 65% per section and 70% overall
The practical examination is administered by the Board, and it is the performed half of the credential: the audiometric and fitting proficiencies, exercised under the Board’s own observation, that §33-35-109 describes as the practical tests demonstrating the applicant’s qualification to practice the dispensing, fitting, or sale of hearing aids. Its standard deserves the slowest reading of any figure in this guide. Sixty-five percent (65%) on each section is a floor under every section individually: no section may fall below it, whatever the others do. An overall average of seventy percent (70%) is a second, independent requirement across the whole examination: clearing every floor is not enough if the average falls short. Run the two cases. A candidate at 90%, 90%, and 60% averages 80% — and has not passed, because one section is below its floor. A candidate at 66% on every section has cleared every floor — and has not passed, because the average is 66%, not 70%. The passing candidate is the one with no section below 65% and enough strength distributed across sections to average 70% — which is to say, Wyoming’s practical rewards even competence with a margin, and punishes both the single collapse and the uniform near-miss. Preparation follows directly: diagnose by section, rebuild the weakest section first, and only then raise the average.
The jurisprudence examination: Wyoming law, at 70%
The jurisprudence examination tests the Hearing Aid Specialist Licensure Act and the Board’s rules as the operating law of the Wyoming license — the definitions and synonymous titles of §33-35-102, the license-required and examination provisions, the Temporary Permit structure, the renewal provisions, and the complaints and grounds provisions under which a license can be suspended or revoked. Its published passing standard is 70%, a single clean figure for a single paper. Two features give this examination its weight. First, it is the credential’s memory: the written paper’s knowledge is shared with every IHS state, and the practical’s skills transfer across borders, but the jurisprudence content is Wyoming’s alone, and it is the part of the candidacy that makes the licensee a Wyoming licensee rather than a visiting practitioner. Second, it is the credential’s tollgate for everyone: Chapter 3, §5 requires endorsement applicants — who by definition have already satisfied another jurisdiction — to pass it still. A board that waives nothing else waives nothing here either. The first-time candidate should read that endorsement rule as a revealed preference and study the Act accordingly: closely, in its own text, as the law he or she will be renewed, supervised, and if necessary disciplined under.
How the passing standards work together
A slower pass over the three standards as a system is worthwhile, because Wyoming is the rare state that publishes enough to let a candidate reason about the whole. The written standard is delegated — “Pass, as determined by IHS” — because the paper is a national instrument whose standard IHS maintains. The practical standard is two-part — a 65% floor per section with a 70% overall average — because a performed examination must certify both that no essential skill is missing and that the whole performance is solid; either condition alone would certify candidates the public should not be fitted by. The jurisprudence standard is a flat 70% because the paper is the Board’s own single-subject test of the law every Wyoming licensee, by whatever route, must know. Notice what the system does not contain: no averaging across examinations, no compensation of a failed jurisprudence by a strong practical, no written percentage to negotiate with. Each examination is passed on its own published terms, and “successfully pass the written, practical, and jurisprudence examinations” means all three, separately. That separateness is the plan’s skeleton: three preparations, three standards, three sittings, tracked independently until each one is closed.
The sittings themselves
Each Wyoming examination is sat under a different roof, and the candidate should rehearse each arrangement as an arrangement. The written examination runs through IHS once the Board office has notified IHS of eligibility — the eligibility notification is the candidacy’s first scheduling fact, and a candidate who contacts IHS before the Board has notified it is ahead of the paperwork. The practical and jurisprudence examinations are the Board’s own: the statute provides that examinations shall be offered by the Board at least twice a year, and applicants for license by examination appear at the time, place, and before the persons the Board designates. A twice-a-year floor on offerings makes the calendar unforgiving in a specific way — a missed or failed sitting is measured in months, not weeks — and the Temporary Permit’s one-year life must be planned against that cadence from the day it issues. The application itself carries a dated document: the calibration certification must be signed by a qualified person during the previous twelve months, so an application assembled slowly can age its own certification out of validity before it is filed.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan in the order Wyoming’s arithmetic dictates. First, practical sections, diagnosed separately — a rehearsal baseline for each section, scored honestly, so the candidate knows both distances at once: the distance from 65% in the weakest section, and the distance from a 70% average across all of them; the weakest section is rebuilt before anything else, because it is the only score that can fail an otherwise strong performance outright. Second, the average — once every section clears its floor in rehearsal, raise the distributed strength until full practical runs average above 70% with room to spare, because examination-day nerves spend margin. Third, the written syllabus — the IHS paper’s professional knowledge, grounded in §33-35-111’s named knowledge areas (physics of sound, anatomy and physiology of the ear, function of hearing aids) and studied to IHS’s Pass rather than to an invented percentage. Fourth, Wyoming law as a text — the Licensure Act and Board Rules read directly, section by section, to the jurisprudence examination’s flat 70%: definitions, permits, renewal, grounds. Fifth, the administrative rehearsal — eligibility established, Board notification to IHS confirmed, calibration certification inside its twelve months, permit expiry and the Board’s at-least-twice-a-year examination calendar mapped on one page.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Wyoming preparation fails most often as a tracking problem disguised as a knowledge problem: three examinations progress at three rates, and the candidate’s sense of “nearly ready” averages them in a way the rules do not. The working method that answers it has four parts. A three-line scoreboard. Written (target: IHS Pass), practical (two targets: every section at or above 65%, average at or above 70%), jurisprudence (target: 70%) — rehearsal results recorded against each line separately, never blended into one readiness feeling. Section-level error logs for the practical. Every rehearsal failure filed by section, so the floor risk is always visible by name; an error log that records only the average hides the one number that can fail the whole examination by itself. Law learned as the license’s text. The Act read from the licensee’s chair — what the permit allows, what renewal requires, what the grounds provisions reach — because the jurisprudence paper examines the law of a working practice and the endorsement rule proves the Board treats it as non-negotiable. Calendar discipline. Permit life, certification freshness, and the Board’s examination offerings reviewed monthly; in a twice-a-year system, a month of drift is a meaningful fraction of the available sittings.
The errors this examination is built to catch
The Wyoming set catches a recognizable set. Reading the practical standard as “70% to pass” and ignoring the 65% floor fails the candidate whose strongest sections average beautifully over one collapsed section. Reading it as “65% to pass” fails the uniformly adequate candidate whose average never reaches 70% — the near-miss Wyoming’s second clause exists to catch. Chasing a written percentage that Wyoming does not publish wastes the one preparation resource — time — that the permit year and the twice-a-year calendar make scarce; the written target is IHS’s Pass. Treating jurisprudence as the light paper meets the one examination Wyoming requires even of endorsed practitioners from elsewhere, at a flat 70%. Letting the calibration certification age past its twelve months, or the Temporary Permit expire against a twice-a-year calendar, converts a prepared candidate into a re-applicant. And preparing as if the examination implied medical competence misreads §33-35-109’s own statement: the examination demonstrates qualification to dispense, fit, and sell hearing aids — a defined, performed, lawful trade — and its difficulty lies in accuracy and law, not in borrowed medicine.
The credential in one view
The Wyoming Hearing Aid Specialist license in one view is a chain of verified competence. An applicant whose equipment calibration is certified current trains or awaits examination under a permit with a one-year life; the Board then tests the candidacy three separate ways — the nation’s written paper at its own Pass, the Board’s performed practical at a floor-and-average standard no weak section can hide inside, and Wyoming’s own law at a flat 70% that even endorsed outsiders must still meet; and the license that follows runs to the next January 30 under the same Act the jurisprudence paper examined. The examination set sits at the hinge of that chain, and it is built in the chain’s own image: the written examination certifies the science, the practical certifies the hands section by section, and the jurisprudence certifies that the new specialist knows the legal frame the fitting, dealing, and dispensing will happen inside. The candidate who studies the three as one event at three registers — knowledge, performance, and law — and who tracks each against its own published standard, finds the system demanding but unusually legible: Wyoming tells its candidates, in advance and in numbers, what passing is.
After the sittings: the license and its January clock
Passing all three examinations issues a license effective until January 30 of the year following the year in which it was issued — an annual rhythm, set by §33-35-108, that makes renewal a fixed winter appointment rather than a rolling surprise. Annual renewal follows the Act’s provisions in §33-35-113, on the Board’s terms and fees. The working specialist keeps the habits the route rehearsed: audiometric equipment in calibration, so the certification the application required could be signed again at any time; records and practice inside the Act and rules the jurisprudence examination tested; and an eye on the complaints and grounds provisions of §33-35-115, which are the same law read from the other side. The specialist who treats the three examinations as the license’s entrance standard — and January 30 as its heartbeat — meets renewal as a formality. The specialist who treats them as a finished event meets the same date as a deadline.
Frequently asked questions
Which Board and Act sources govern the Wyoming route?
Board Rules Chapter 3 — §4 for licensure by examination and §5 for endorsement — for the examinations, their administrators, and their passing scores; and the Hearing Aid Specialist Licensure Act, W.S. §§33-35-101–121, for definitions, qualifications, permits, issuance, and renewal. The Board’s official site carries its current forms and notices.
Why does the practical examination have two numbers?
Because the Board’s rule sets two independent conditions: 65% on each section, so no single section’s skill can be missing, and an overall average of 70%, so the performance as a whole must be solid. A candidate must satisfy both; satisfying either one alone does not pass.
Is there a published percentage for the written examination?
No — and that is Wyoming’s published position, not an omission in this guide. The rule states the standard as “Pass, as determined by IHS” on the IHS written examination. Any percentage quoted by third-party material for the Wyoming written component contradicts the form the Board publishes.
What should I do after an unsuccessful practical attempt?
Diagnose which condition failed before restudying. A section below 65% calls for that section rebuilt as supervised performance; an average below 70% with every section at or above 65% calls for strength raised across sections. Then re-enter on the Board’s calendar — examinations are offered at least twice a year — protecting any Temporary Permit’s remaining life while you do.
Why must endorsement applicants take the jurisprudence examination?
Because Chapter 3, §5 requires it. Wyoming accepts an equivalent out-of-state credential as evidence on the components that transfer — but Wyoming law does not transfer, so the Board examines it in every route, at the same 70% standard.
What is the difference between the Temporary Permit and the license?
The permit is issued while the applicant is in training or awaiting examination to become a licensed hearing aid specialist, and it expires within 1 year or on licensure; in its supervised form a licensed specialist is responsible for the holder’s supervision and training. The license is the independent credential issued on passing all three examinations, effective until the following January 30 and renewed annually.
Does the examination require a college degree or medical training?
No. W.S. §33-35-109 states that the examination shall not require college training, and that nothing in the examination shall imply the applicant possesses the degree of medical competence normally expected of physicians. The qualification it certifies is the dispensing, fitting, and sale of hearing aids.
How often are examinations offered?
The statute provides that examinations shall be offered by the Board at least twice a year; applicants appear at the time, place, and before the persons the Board designates. The written examination is sat through IHS after the Board office notifies IHS of the applicant’s eligibility.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Board or with IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The Board alone licenses and administers the practical and jurisprudence examinations; IHS determines the written examination’s pass.
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