How to Pass the Customs Broker Exam: A Free Study Guide

I’m about to give you a blueprint for success to pass the Customs Broker Exam. Before we start, I need you to understand that there is no easy button. Preparing for the Customs Broker Exam takes time and dedication.  

That being said, it also doesn’t have to be some torturous, horrible thing either. It can be a very useful and rewarding experience. You can pass the CBLE. You can do it on your first try. And, no, you don’t have to give up your life for 6 months to do it.

Why do Most People Fail?

The reason most people do not pass the exam is because they underestimate the amount of time they will need to prepare.

I’ve been teaching a Customs Broker Exam Course for 15 years. After working with hundreds of students one thing is very clear:

• Those that start studying 12+ weeks before the exam and put in consistent, daily study time, pass.  
• The students who think a couple of weeks is enough time to prepare do not.

It is a big exam; it takes a lot of time to review and understand the material. The simple fact is that you cannot cram for an exam of this size.  

The key point I want to get across to you here is, it is never too early to start preparing for the exam. 

Understanding the Customs Broker Exam – Know what you are getting into

The Customs Broker Exam is often compared to other professional exams such as the BAR or the Medical Boards. The pass rate for the CBLE is much lower.  I fully believe that the reason the pass rate is so much lower is the lack of focused training and education resources.  

People go to school for many years to become a lawyer or a doctor.  They also spend many, many hours studying and taking classes to help prepare for their exams. There just aren’t as many educational resources available for Customs Brokers.

We are doing our best to fix that!  

Customs Broker Exam Structure and Format

The first stage of any plan of attack is knowing the battleground.  Let’s look at the exam itself:

• Format: Multiple-choice
• Duration: 4.5 hours.
• Number of Questions: 80
• Passing Score: 75% 
• Reference Materials: Open Book

What Does Open Book Mean?

Open book sounds like it will make it easier, but the reality is it makes it harder. The required reference materials are typically:

• The Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS)
• Title 19, Code of Federal Regulations (19 CFR)
• The Right to Make Entry Directive (RTME)
• ACE Entry Summary Instructions
• ACE Summary Business Rules and Process Document (ACE BRPD)

Between the HTSUS and 19 CFR, which are your two primary references, you have 6,500 pages of information.  If you don’t know where to look for information it is like finding a needle in a haystack. On top of that you are racing against the clock. On average you have just over 3 minutes per question to get through them all. Some questions are so long it will take you 3 minutes just to read the question.  You must have a specific plan of attack to find success.

The First Key to Success: Study What Will Be on the Exam

80 questions coming from 6,500 pages of reference materials seems like a pretty impossible task. How do you know what to study? Our first clue is the list that CBP provides in the exam instructions.

CBP lists the following exam categories on their Exam page.

• Entry/Entry Summary
• Partner Governmental Agencies
• Foreign Trade Zones and Bonded Warehouses
• Bonds
• Warehouse Entries
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Marking and Country of Origin
• Classification
• Valuation, Appraisement, and Duty Assessment
• Anti-Dumping/Countervailing Duty
• Enforce and Protect Act
• Trade Agreements
• Quota
• Broker Compliance
• Power of Attorney
• Recordkeeping
• Fines and Penalties
• Modernized Drawback Processes
• Practical Exercises
• Other subjects that are relevant to a broker's duties

That helps, but it is a very broad outline. To dig a little deeper, we need to look at the past exams.

If you go to CBP's website they have their past exams posted from the last 5 years. Look at the answer keys and you will get the citations they referenced for every answer.

This next part is very time-consuming but worth it. Put each citation in a spreadsheet. When you are all finished you can sort and identify specifically where the questions are most likely to come from.

This forms the basis for your study outline. Several years ago I recorded a video showing how to build this spreadsheet of the most used citations. You can find it below. As I said, this is very time-consuming but pays dividends. 

If you don’t want to go through this time and effort, you can take our course. We’ve already done this work, and our course is built around the most heavily tested topics. We update our database of test questions with every exam so we have data for the last 20 years.

We can see what areas are the most heavily tested and we can focus our study time there. For example, classification usually comprises 18-20 questions per exam. It is 25% of the exam so we are going to spend a great deal of time practicing classification.

Some other topics may only have 1-3 questions on an exam so we will spend less time there.

Know Your Reference Materials

You have two options with your reference materials. You can go with paper, or use the electronic references provided as part of the exam interface. There are pros and cons to each.  

Electronic Reference Materials

Advantages:

• Search Functionality: This can be a huge benefit, but it is not a silver bullet. The first thing to realize is that the format of the electronic references will be different than the online versions. If you plan to go the electronic route, be sure to review the practice exam from CBP's website and test it out. It is different than the ECFR and the online HTSUS.  

There is a find feature but the exam uses a proprietary interface that doesn’t allow you to access the internet or other programs. Still, if you get used to the navigation and use the search function effectively it can help you locate hard-to-find information faster than scanning paper documents.

• Space and Portability: If you use the electronic references you do not have to lug 7,000 pages of reference materials with you. They also don’t take up your entire space and require a stand and portable platform to hold everything in the tiny cubicle.
• Cost Savings: This could be an important factor. There is no cost for the electronic reference materials.  For paper versions, you are looking at spending anywhere from $300-$600.  

Disadvantages:

• Reliability: There have been some issues with the electronic versions of the reference materials loading and working properly during the exam. I will say, that I haven’t had reports of problems during the last two exams, but even CBP recommends having paper versions as a backup in case of malfunctions.
• Familiarity: You can’t save highlights or notes.  This can be a huge loss. Tabs and highlighting can help you find information very quickly in paper versions.  
• Difficulty comparing multiple citations:    Often you will be comparing multiple citations, or you may need information from multiple citations together to answer a question. With paper versions, you can flip back and forth and it is easier to compare pages. With electronic versions, you must locate each citation. If you move on and then need to go back to a previous citation to double-check or reread it, you have to find it all over again.
• It also opens in the same window as the exam. You can make it bigger or smaller but there won’t be an option to have windows side by side to compare information. I strongly encourage you to spend some time with the online practice exam to test the interface.
• Test Version Will Be Different than Practice:  Because you must use the exam interface the electronic versions will be a little different than what you practice with. The content will be the same, but the method of delivery and navigation will be different.  This is a minor difference, but it can have an impact.  
• We are big believers in practicing in the same environment as the real thing. The last thing you want is to learn how to navigate something new during the exam. There is enough stress on exam day without introducing something new.  

Paper Reference Materials:

Advantages:

• Familiarity and Ease of Use:  If you go the paper reference route, you will be using the same materials you have spent countless hours with. You will know them inside and out. Highlights will make heavily used passages jump out of the page, you will have tabs, flags, indexes, handwritten notes, rings from glasses of…soda, spilled coffee from those late nights, and maybe even a few tear-stained pages. There will be all sorts of mementos on the pages to help you remember what is there. You will never have the same connection with a virtual version.
• Also, it may seem counterintuitive, but often it is faster to locate a citation in a paper version with tabs and navigation aids that you’ve. When you search, that word, phrase, or number sequence can appear hundreds of times throughout the reference.  
• Annotating and Highlighting: A major tactic we teach in our course is highlighting with a purpose. Using multiple colors of highlighters and only highlighting the words necessary to ascertain the meaning of a passage helps speed things up.  Regulations are written in “legal speak” which means they are very verbose. These highlights can help you get through a long passage much faster and more easily pull out the meaning.

Handwritten notes in the margins can help clarify, point you to another related citation, or just call out answers more quickly.  None of this can be accomplished with the electronic versions.  

It is like the difference between a rental car and your car. With your daily driver, you know how everything works, you have seats in just the right position, your mirrors are adjusted, and you have the radio presets programmed (perhaps your phone synced so you have access to your favorite Spotify playlists). You know where the wiper controls are, cruise control…you don’t have to think about anything. You just know where everything is and how it works. 

Now, think about the last time you drove a rental car. You had to adjust the seats and mirrors, you might have had trouble locating some of the controls. You need to connect your phone connected so you can talk hands-free. You know how to use the rental car in the general sense. You can drive it to accomplish what you need to, but it isn’t comfortable like your car at home.  

This is like the difference between the electronic versions of the reference materials in the exam interface, and paper reference materials that you spend hours with and make your own.

Disadvantages

• Cost:  It is expensive to print 7,000 pages. Plan to spend $300-$600 for the paper reference materials. It is expensive to get the paper versions. We still think the benefit outweighs the cost though.
• Cumbersome to Transport:  I don’t think this should be a deciding factor but 7,000 pages take up a lot of space. They are also heavy and bulky to transport.
• No Search Function:  You can’t search the paper references. Sometimes there is something obscure that may be difficult to find and a search feature is really helpful

So Which is Better? Paper or Electronic…

Honestly, I think a combination.  There is so much learning that happens as you prepare and work with your paper references. The highlighting and note-taking are very beneficial. You will never get that using electronic references alone. I would make the investment to get the paper references if you can.  

If you run into a topic that is unfamiliar or a little obscure, you can always look to the electronic version and try the search function to help you locate it.

The most important thing here is understanding the concepts and being able to interpret the information. You won’t get the same experience with the virtual versions.  It’s just not the same.

Practice with the Real Thing

Now that you understand the exam format, know what reference materials you need, have chosen a version (paper or electronic), and know what topics to focus your attention on, it’s time to start practicing. Luckily there are a large number of past exams online that you can use to study from.  

Don’t just take old exams

CBP publishes their past exams. Currently, their website has exams dating back to 2019. You can find more by searching the internet. When you are first beginning, I do not recommend just working through old exams one at a time. You are going to be bounced around from topic to topic and it will add confusion.

You want to group your questions into categories and focus on one topic at a time.  This is a little easier to do than it first seems. If you download an exam and look at the beginning, they have a list of topics on the exam and the question numbers that fall into those categories. For example, if you are studying entry/entry summary, focus only on those questions. When you feel confident with a topic, move on to the next one and do the same thing.

After you feel reasonably confident with all topics, you can take a full-length, timed exam to hone your timing.

I fell into the trap of just taking timed practice exams too early when I was preparing.  Here’s what happened. After 4+ hours of taking an exam, I would rush to score it to see how I did. After failing it miserably I would be exhausted and dejected and call it quits for the night. Then the next day I would do it all over.

This is a terrible learning cycle. The learning happens when you look up the correct citation, dissect the question, and understand the correct answer. You will be far better off taking a short block of questions, answering them, and then going through each of the ones you missed and understanding how to arrive at the correct answer.

Again, this is how we have designed our course. We group topics into small subsections. We explain them and work through the reference materials with you. Then we practice with questions only from that topic and go back to learn from our mistakes. Once a topic is fully understood you move on to the next.

This is a very important pattern. You don’t want to introduce a new topic on top of one that is not fully understood. It just adds to the confusion. Understand one topic first, then move on to the next.

Time Management: The Key to Success

Time management is the most important factor in passing the exam. It involves more than just answering questions quickly enough to get through the whole timed exam. It begins with your study time.

Start Studying Well in Advance of the Exam

As discussed, the Customs Broker Exam covers an extremely large set of topics. A Licensed Customs Broker needs to be well-versed in many topics and know how to read and interpret regulations involving areas they may have never been exposed to before. To become adept at this it takes time and practice. It isn’t going to happen overnight. It also isn’t possible to do it with a couple of weeks of cramming. There is no shortcut.  You must put the study time in.

I strongly feel 8 weeks is the minimum time to prepare. 12-14 weeks is better.  Following a 12-week schedule you can comfortably work through all of the topics on the exam. You can take time to learn the concepts and work through practice questions.  This will still allow one to two weeks for practice exams to dial in your timing and test-taking strategy.

You can start earlier than this, and many people do. One challenge with beginning more than 14 weeks out is not knowing which version of the reference materials CBP will be using. For the April Exam, the exam notice is usually posted in January. For the October Exam, the exam notice is usually posted in July. We can take a pretty solid guess which versions of the CFR and HTSUS will be used on the exam, but you cannot know for sure until CBP posts the exam notice.

Our course follows a 12-week plan with a cushion to allow time for review and rest before the exam.

Consistency is the Secret

If there is a secret to passing the exam, I would say that it is consistency. You are far better off spending 30 minutes every day studying over several months than 5 hours a day for a few weeks.  

Our brains are amazing things and there is so much learning that happens outside of study sessions.  Have you ever struggled to learn something, and then went to bed and the next day things seemed to click? Or, you’ve had a problem you’ve been trying to solve and your frustration reached a breaking point so you just had to take a break. Then when doing something completely different and not even thinking about the problem the solution magically came to you?

This is all part of the learning process. Our brains process information and keep working through things in our subconscious. Give your brain time to do its thing.  

Cramming is a Fool’s Errand

Having this consistent daily learning also helps reduce stress and anxiety.  Working on something for 30 minutes to an hour a day is not stressful. Feverishly trying to pack in 12 weeks of learning into a few weeks is very stressful.

The other problem with cramming is that you don’t retain the information. I think we’ve all experienced a cramming session where we were getting ready for a big test. After the test was over the things you “learned” just, poof, disappear from your memory.

Why would you want to put all of this effort in and not retain the information you’ve learned? After all, you want to become a Licensed Customs Broker.  This is knowledge you are going to use every day for the rest of your career. You might as well make sure it makes it into your long-term memory banks. Trust me, slow and steady wins the race.

Rest is Vital

I don’t know about you, but if I am stressed by a big upcoming event or I am desperately working to meet a deadline, I am not at my best.  I make mistakes, my decisions are questionable, and I can’t sleep.

It is a scientific fact that we function better, make better decisions, and have better recall when we are well-rested. Again, I implore you.  Study for a little bit every day and your stress levels will be lower, you will sleep better, and you will perform better on the exam.

Have a Test Day Strategy

Okay, we are finally ready to talk about time management on the exam. So many people that fail simply run out of time. Four and a half hours is a long time, but it goes so fast when you are trying to answer 80 difficult questions.

You must have a test day strategy to ensure you can get through all of the questions in the allotted time. Some questions are easy, some are incredibly difficult.

The key is to answer all of the questions you know you can get right efficiently. Then go back and work through the longer, harder questions.

I recommend shooting for a 3-minute average per question. If a question is going to take longer than 5 minutes, or you hit the 5-minute mark, make your best guess, and mark that question to come back to at the end.

Some questions will take less than 3 minutes. Some will take far more than 3 minutes.  The key is to conserve your time and answer as many correctly as you can, quickly. If you average 3 minutes per question you will complete the exam in 4 hours and have 30 minutes to go back and tackle the more time-consuming ones.

In the end, you need 60 correct answers to pass. Getting one difficult question correct at the cost of the time that you could answer 3 other questions will doom you.  

Always Record your Answer and Citation

Get in the habit of recording your answer and citation while you practice. It will help you while you are studying so that you can compare your citation to the one CBP gave. After the actual exam, if you are within a couple of questions of passing, this information is vital in preparing a well-thought-out argument to protest incorrect answers. We have had many students achieve a passing score with the help of a protest.

You can Do This!

If you follow the steps in this guide you will be well on your way to passing the Customs Broker Exam.  I’ve coached hundreds of people to achieve success in getting their licenses. If they can do it, so can you.

I will leave you with some advice from the famed life coach Tony Robbins. He said, “If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.”

I really believe this. If you are looking for a shortcut, this is it.  Sign up for our course and we will guide you through every step of preparing for the exam. Our process has been tested. It works.  If you put in the time, study consistently, and follow our method, you will pass the exam.  

You can sign up for a free preview of our Customs Broker Exam Course here. In it you will gain some useful information on how to setup your reference materials and how to structure your study time.