SIE Test Day: What to Expect at Prometric
On SIE® test day, arrive at your Prometric center 30 minutes early with a valid, unexpired government-issued photo ID. Everything else goes in a locker. The center provides a dry-erase board and a basic calculator; you get 1 hour 45 minutes for 85 questions, and your result appears on screen the moment you finish.
Want the questions to feel as familiar as the room? Try 10 questions, no signup.
Before you go
Three things to have sorted the night before:
- Your ID. Government-issued, with photo and signature, and not expired. The first and last name must match your exam enrollment exactly: if they don’t, fix it with FINRA before your appointment, because a mismatch can end your test day before it starts.
- Your appointment details. Prometric’s confirmation email has your center address and the reschedule rules. If you need to move the appointment, do it as early as you can: late changes carry fees, and a no-show can forfeit the $100 exam fee (verified July 2026).
- Nothing else. No calculator, no scratch paper, no notes, no lucky pen. Everything you’re allowed to use is provided at the workstation.
If you haven’t booked at all yet, start with how to register for the SIE exam.
One thing we’d add from our own test days: book the hour you’ve actually been practicing at. If every study session has been at 8 p.m., a 9 a.m. slot means sitting the exam at a time your brain has never seen this material. In the final week, run the timed 105-minute exam simulator at your appointment hour at least once.
Check-in at Prometric
When we sat for ours, check-in took about ten minutes: sign in, show ID, get photographed, turn out your pockets, and lock everything (phone, watch, wallet, jacket) in a small locker. Some centers add a metal-detector wand or a palm scan; the details vary by location, the strictness doesn’t. Think of it as airport security run by people who genuinely care whether you’re carrying notes.
Prometric asks you to arrive 30 minutes before your appointment, and the buffer is real. If check-in runs long, that half hour is your cushion: the exam clock won’t wait on a slow line.
Inside the testing room
A proctor walks you to a workstation. Per FINRA’s exam-day rules (verified July 2026), the center provides:
- A dry-erase board and marker (scratch paper at some locations), collected before you leave
- A basic four-function calculator, provided by the center
- A short tutorial before the clock starts, so the interface isn’t a surprise
The room is proctored and recorded. It’s quiet but not silent. Other candidates type and shift in their seats. If noise bothers you, ask about earplugs at check-in.
The exam itself
You’ll see 85 questions: 75 scored plus 10 unscored pretest questions you can’t identify, in 105 minutes. That works out to a bit over 70 seconds per question, which is roomier than it sounds; most SIE questions are two sentences, not case studies.
Two rules worth knowing cold:
- There is no penalty for guessing. A blank question and a wrong answer score exactly the same, so answer everything.
- There is no scheduled break. You can take an unscheduled restroom break, but the clock keeps running while you’re gone.
The Rules of Conduct
Before the exam starts, you’ll agree to FINRA’s Rules of Conduct. The short version: everything you see on the exam is confidential under FINRA Rule 1210.05. Don’t try to memorize questions to share later, and don’t reconstruct them in forums afterward: FINRA can sanction candidates for it, registered or not.
That rule is also our standing promise in reverse: every practice question we publish is an original work based on the public FINRA SIE Content Outline, and we will never ask you what was on your exam.
Taking the SIE online instead
FINRA also offers online delivery of the SIE through Prometric’s remote-proctoring service (available as of July 2026). Same exam, same clock, same fee. But you need a private, quiet room, a webcam, a system check completed in advance, and patience for stricter rules about what’s on your desk (nothing) and where your eyes go (the screen). If home can’t reliably give you 105 undisturbed minutes, the test center is the simpler day.
When you finish
You’ll submit the exam, and your result, pass or fail, appears on screen right away. The center prints your score report before you leave. Here’s when and how your SIE results arrive, and if your report has numbers on it, how to read your section scores.
For the exam’s format, cost, and where it fits in the licensing ladder, start with what the SIE exam is.