Rhode Island Real Estate Cheat Sheet.
The night-before summary, built like the exam.

The numbers to remember

• Two parts, both required, scheduled and paid for separately: National (80 scored + 5 pretest items, 2.5 hours, $53) and State (50 scored + 10 pretest items, 1.5 hours, $50).
• Passing score is a scaled 70 on each part — this is the standard for all exam levels, not just the salesperson exam.
• Exam vendor: Pearson VUE, contracted by the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation.
• Minimum 45 classroom hours of pre-licensing education, completed within 2 years of your application, is required before you're eligible to sit.
• Minimum age 18 to apply for a salesperson license.
• After a passed part, you have 1 year to retake a failed section before a full re-exam is required; passing results themselves are valid for 1 year from the passing date.
• After one failed online attempt per part, you must retest in person for that part going forward.
• Oral exams or time extensions may be granted, but only at the Department's discretion, not by default.

Content domains and weights (state part, salesperson)

• Statutory Requirements Governing the Activities of Licensees — 24 questions, 48%
• Additional Topics — 18 questions, 36%
• Licensing Requirements — 6 questions, 12%
• Duties and Obligations Under Licensing Law — 2 questions, 4%

(The Broker Only domain, 20% of the broker exam, does not apply here — skip it in your review.)

High-yield review areas

• Statutory duties and licensee conduct rules — the single largest domain, worth studying first and hardest.
• Additional Topics — practical transaction-level rules that show up constantly in real practice.
• General national concepts — ownership, contracts, financing, appraisal, and agency — for the National part, which is not broken into Rhode Island-specific weighted domains.
• Licensing steps after passing: filing your application within 1 year, and the fee stack ($10 application, $25 recovery fund, up to $25 certificate, $65/year license).

Top traps

• Confusing the National fee ($53) with the State fee ($50) — they're separate, scheduled independently, so paying one doesn't cover the other.
• Assuming a passed part stays valid indefinitely — it's only good for 1 year, and the retake window for a failed section is also 1 year.
• Testing online without a backup plan — a single online fail forces in-person retesting for that part on every attempt after.
• Skipping the licensing paperwork deadline — you must file your application within 1 year of passing, or the passing result may lapse.
• Studying broker-only content that never appears on the salesperson exam, wasting review time better spent on the four salesperson domains.
• Forgetting the fee stack after passing: application, recovery fund, and certificate fees are each separate line items, not bundled together.