How to Pass the California RDH Law and Ethics Exam in 2026

This guide covers one exam: the Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH) Laws and Ethics Written Examination, required by Business and Professions Code section 1917(d) and run by the Dental Hygiene Board of California (DHBC) through its testing vendor, PSI Services LLC. It is a computer-based, closed-book, multiple-choice exam on California dental hygiene law and professional ethics, defined in regulation at 16 CCR §1121.

California runs several exams that all get called "the law and ethics exam," under two different boards, and search results and AI answers mix them together constantly. The confusion runs both ways: the numbers that are true for this exam — 60 questions, 90 minutes, 75% to pass — are flatly false for the dentist exam, and dentist-exam facts (no published question count, no fixed percentage) are false here.

Note the board names carefully. Dentists are licensed by the Dental Board of California (DBC). Hygienists are licensed by the Dental Hygiene Board of California (DHBC) — a separate board within the Department of Consumer Affairs, with its own statutes (the Dental Hygiene Practice Act — Article 9, BPC §§1900–1966.6, plus Article 9.1), its own regulations (16 CCR Division 11), and its own exam contract with PSI.

Quick check before you spend a dollar on prep: if a study resource for this exam tells you there is no fixed passing score, or quotes dentist-exam fees ($125 + $27.23), it was written for the wrong exam. If a resource for the dentist exam tells you "60 questions, 75%," same problem in the other direction.

Everyone entering California dental hygiene licensure passes this exam. There is no exam-exempt pathway — a point worth stressing because the dentist licensing scheme does have one (licensure by credential), and that fact bleeds into hygiene search results where it is wrong.

The row that surprises people is licensure by credential: an RDH licensed elsewhere skips the clinical exam entirely, but still sits this written exam. California law and ethics is the one thing the board tests everyone on, no matter where you trained or how long you have practiced.

The other statutory requirements ride alongside the exam, not instead of it: the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination is always required (BPC §1917(c)), plus board-approved courses in soft-tissue curettage, local anesthesia, and nitrous oxide (§1917(f)) and — since AB 1257 — a current basic life support (BLS) certification (§1917(g)).

A first sitting costs $232.07: $200 to the Dental Hygiene Board plus $32.07 to PSI for the exam itself. (Ignore the "$125 application fee" that circulates in AI-generated answers — that figure appears nowhere in the DHBC's own application checklists, which state $200 for both the clinical-exam and credential pathways.)

What the $200 actually is. It is not a single application fee. The current DHBC application itemizes the $200 you submit as a $100 application fee plus a $100 initial license fee — you are paying for the application and pre-paying the first license in one transaction. That itemization is worth carrying, because it is what reconciles the $200 figure with the statute: BPC §1944(a)(1) caps the application fee at $100, and §1944(a)(2) caps the initial licensure fee at $150. A candidate who reads "$200 application fee" against a $100 statutory cap concludes, reasonably but wrongly, that one of the two numbers must be stale.

The sequence, per the DHBC's "How To Qualify for a RDH License" flowchart and the PSI Candidate Information Bulletin:

The clock that matters: one year. The CIB's words: "Your examination eligibility expires and your application is deemed abandoned if you fail to take the RDH written examination within one year after being deemed eligible." Miss the window and you start over — new application, new $200 ($100 + $100).

Two housekeeping rules from the CIB worth knowing before you pay: cancellations must reach PSI at least 2 days before your appointment, and a no-show or late cancellation forfeits the $32.07 fee.

One fee footnote for 2026: SB 861 (eff. 1/1/2026) restructured the statutory fee caps in BPC §1944 — application not to exceed $100, initial licensure not to exceed $150. The DHBC's checklists still state a $200 total as of July 2026, and the application's own $100 + $100 split sits inside both caps. If the board opens a fee rulemaking the numbers could change — confirm the current fee on the DHBC applicant page before applying.

The exam is 60 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes, computer-based at a PSI test center, one question on screen at a time, and closed book. Unlike the dentist exam — where the Dental Board publishes neither a question count nor a time limit — both numbers here are official and printed in the Candidate Information Bulletin.

Pace math: 90 minutes for 60 items is 1.5 minutes per question — generous for one-line recall items, tight for the longer scenario stems in the ethics blocks. Flag what you are unsure of and come back. The untimed tutorial of up to 15 minutes runs before the clock starts, so it does not eat into the 90 (more on the day itself).

Three further facts the bulletin and the board commit to:

• In person only. PSI administers this exam at roughly 22 California sites plus about 25 out-of-state sites (Albuquerque, Atlanta, the Bronx, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, the Philadelphia area, and more). No remote or online proctoring is offered — a relocating or out-of-state candidate books the nearest center, not a webcam session.
• English only. The exam is not offered in other languages (2023 sunset review, p. 12). If English is not your first language, that 1.5-minutes-per-question budget is the number to plan against.
• Results on the spot. Your result is delivered at the test center when you finish and is also transmitted to the DHBC. A pass does not issue your license — see after you pass.

How many of the 60 items actually count, and against what standard, is the next section — and it is the single most misreported thing about this exam.

The passing standard is 75%, and on this exam that number is genuine. The regulation says it in as many words: an applicant "shall be deemed to have passed the examination with a minimum score of seventy-five percent (75%)" — 16 CCR §1121(c), reprinted in the DHBC's own 2025 Laws and Regulations book.

That is a published regulatory minimum, and it is the part of this exam's scoring that is actually knowable. What the Board has not published is the method behind it. Nothing in §1121(c), and nothing in the current Candidate Information Bulletin, states whether the reported percentage is a raw score or a scaled one, whether test forms are equated to each other, or how the standard was set. Prep that tells you the score is "not scaled, not curved, not Angoff" is asserting something no official source says. So is prep that tells you the opposite. Study to clear 75% on the material; do not build a strategy on an unpublished scoring model.

Why this trips up so many hygienists. The Dental Board of California — a different board, running the dentist exam — repealed its fixed 75% rule effective July 1, 2022 and replaced it with a criterion-referenced passing score set per test form by the modified Angoff method (16 CCR §1031). Ever since, the most-repeated correction in California law-and-ethics discussion has been "there is no 75% rule." For the dentist exam, that correction is right. For your exam it is flatly wrong — and a candidate who believes it studies without a target.

What the 75% is measured against. The bulletin's sample-questions page states that of the 60 items, 50 are scored and 10 are unscored pretest items — questions PSI is trialing for future forms. Elsewhere the same bulletin describes the unscored items as "five to ten," and we are not going to resolve the board's own document against itself. We are also not going to convert the 75% into a target number of correct answers: that arithmetic only holds if the reported percentage is a raw count over the scored items, and the Board does not say that it is. What matters practically is unaffected — pretest items are not flagged on screen, so answer every one of the 60 as though it counts, because you cannot tell which ones do not.

One more wording conflict worth naming rather than hiding: the Legislature's 2023 sunset review describes the standard as "75% in each examination," which reads as though law and ethics were scored as two separate halves. The current regulation sets a single minimum for the examination. Where the two differ, follow the regulation.

Getting your result — and what you cannot do with it. The result is delivered at the PSI test center when you finish and also transmits to the DHBC. A failed sitting comes with a score report and an application to retake (retake mechanics). Note what does not exist: 16 CCR §1127's 60-day examination appeal covers the clinical examination, and no parallel appeal regulation exists for this written exam. A disappointing result here is retaken, not appealed.

The current outline is dated 2025, developed with the Department of Consumer Affairs' Office of Professional Examination Services (OPES) from an occupational analysis of practicing California hygienists. It spans 29 tasks and 61 knowledge statements across three areas (PSI CIB, outline pages):

Study-strategy read: 1A + 2A + 3A alone are 60% of the exam — consent, scope-and-supervision, and duty to the patient. If your time is short, master those three 20% blocks before anything else. The study plans below are built on exactly this table.

One warning about older materials: the outline changed in 2025. Prep keyed to the previous outline's framing and weights describes an exam that no longer exists — treat any resource that does not reference the 2025 areas above as stale.

The CIB lists three publications that, in its own words, may help you prepare. It also says the list does not include all dental hygiene textbooks and endorses none of them — so treat these as the Board's recommended preparation references, not as the corpus the exam is written from. The main one is free:

1. The 2025 DHBC Laws and Regulations book — the first publication on the CIB's list, and the Board's own free compilation of the Dental Hygiene Practice Act and 16 CCR Division 11. The Board does not report which materials candidates actually use, so nobody can tell you how many pass on this book alone.
2. The CDHA Code of Ethics (California Dental Hygienists' Association).
3. The ADHA Code of Ethics (American Dental Hygienists' Association).

One disclosure about entries 2 and 3. The bulletin's printed organization names read "California Dental Association" and "American Dental Association," while the URLs printed beside them point to cdha.org and adha.org — the hygienists' associations. This guide follows the linked hygiene-association sources, and treats that resolution as an inference from the bulletin's own URLs and from the fact that this is a hygiene exam, not as a corrected Board label.

That is the Board's whole recommended list, and no board-affiliated prep course exists. What it is not is a closed syllabus: the CIB neither claims the items are exhaustive nor endorses them, and the document that actually defines what is testable is the 2025 content outline in the same bulletin. Study the outline; use these three as the primary text for it. What the free stack costs you, what the paid options add, and which third-party materials to avoid are compared honestly in the resources section below.

How the law maps to the outline. Area 2's 35% lives mostly in one run of statutes — the RDH scope block, BPC §§1907–1915. Learn it as a supervision ladder:

Do not compress §1910.5 into a settings column. Both of its duties are hedged with conditions the exam can test directly, and a table row that only names the setting drops every one of them:

• The shared training gate comes first. §1910.5(b) is a separate subdivision, and it bars either duty until the RDH has completed a program that included training in that function, or has given the DHBC evidence of a DHBC-approved course in it. It applies to the radiograph duty exactly as it applies to the ITR, and an untrained hygienist may not perform either one no matter how perfect the setting and protocols are.
• Radiograph determination applies to a patient the supervising dentist has not yet examined, is performed for that dentist's diagnosis and treatment plan, and runs under protocols established by the dentist. It is not a general authority to decide films for any patient.
• Interim therapeutic restorations may be placed only after the dentist's diagnosis, treatment plan, and instruction to perform the procedure — using hand instrumentation only, with no rotary instrumentation.
• Neither duty is direct supervision. §1910.5 imposes no physical-presence requirement, so BPC §1912's default puts both at general supervision — which is why the table row above says general supervision plus §1910.5's conditions, rather than treating §1910.5 as a supervision level of its own.
• The settings piece (a dental office, or a public health setting such as a school, Head Start or preschool program, or community clinic, using §2290.5 telehealth for communication with the supervising dentist) is a further limit stacked on top of those conditions, not a substitute for them.

Add the practice definition and its exclusions (§1908 — including that an RDH cannot prescribe), and you have the skeleton the scope questions hang on. Area 1 and Area 3 draw on the consent, privacy, mandated-reporting, and unprofessional-conduct material in the same laws book, plus the two ethics codes.

California has rewritten a meaningful amount of testable hygiene law since 2022. If your study source predates these changes, it will teach answers that are now wrong:

One cross-contamination trap deserves its own paragraph: SB 607's expanded opioid-counseling duty is dentist-exam material, not RDH-exam material. It applies to prescribers, and an RDH cannot prescribe (BPC §1908(b)(4)). Prep that imports dentist prescribing duties — CURES, opioid counseling, controlled-substance rules — into RDH study materials is teaching you the wrong exam.

Dentovio tracks these on a running what-changed hub, updated whenever a California dental or hygiene law change affects an exam.

The latest complete fiscal year the DHBC has reported is FY2024–25: 809 of 1,163 candidates passed — 70%. That figure, and the FY2023–24 result of 544 of 668 — 81%, come from the Board's November 8, 2025 meeting materials, Attachment 2, p. 100, which also reported a partial July 1–September 30, 2025 snapshot of 315 of 452 — 70%.

There is a newer, messier observation, and it is worth stating with its defect attached. The Board's March 27–28, 2026 meeting materials carry a statistical report covering July 1, 2025 through February 28, 2026 whose exam attachment reports 694 tested, 512 passed — 74%. The Board printed that row under the label "FY 2024/25" — which cannot be right, because the November packet reports FY2024/25 as 1,163 tested and 809 passed. Reading the 694/512/74% row as FY2025–26 year-to-date follows from the report's own date range, but it is our inference from a conflicting Board label, not a verified Board label. We are not going to launder that into a clean headline number.

We are not going to tell you why the rate moved between FY2023–24 and FY2024–25. The Board publishes the counts, not an analysis, and any explanation on offer — cohort mix, a new outline, changed study habits — would be a guess dressed up as a finding.

The older numbers still circulating in prep material come from the Legislature's 2023 sunset review of the DHBC (pp. 12–13): RDH rates of 82% (FY2018–19), 80% (FY2019–20), 89% (FY2020–21), and 85% (FY2021–22), alongside RDHAP rates ranging from 66% to 82% on much smaller cohorts. That paper remains a real source for its own years. It is simply no longer the most recent data, and a resource that presents its range as the current picture is out of date.

What the numbers do not change is where candidates lose points, and the failure modes are predictable: studying the dentist exam's rules (a different board, different scope statutes, different scoring), studying pre-2024 materials that miss the recent law changes, or underestimating the scenario items in the ethics blocks.

The exam is offered in English only, which the 2023 sunset paper notes explicitly — if English is not your first language, budget the 90 minutes accordingly.

After a fail, $32.07 is the known repeat PSI registration fee; whether the DHBC charges a retake application fee is unpublished — confirm with the board. The mechanics are in the retake section. The rational prep play is not maximum spend; it is making sure what you study is current and written for this exam — which is what the study plan and resource comparison below are for.

Two things make a defensible plan for this exam: the published outline weights, and the specific ways candidates get it wrong. Everything below is anchored to one or the other. If a study tip cannot be tied to a weight or a trap, it is filler.

Start from the weights. Area 1 is 35%, Area 2 is 35%, Area 3 is 30% — but the number that actually drives a plan is one level down. The three 20% blocks — informed consent (1A), scope of practice, conduct, and license requirements (2A), and obligation to the patient (3A) — are 60% of the exam between them. Everything else divides the remaining 40%.

Read the bottom of that table honestly: mandated reporting is about 6% of the exam. It is the most morally serious material a hygienist studies, and candidates routinely spend a third of their prep on it. Learn the three reporting lanes and their clocks, confirm you can pick the right one from a stem, and move on. The exam is not organized around what feels weightiest.

Plan A — new California graduate (about a week)

You studied this material recently, in a program built to California standards. Your gap is statutory precision, not concepts.

Plan B — out-of-state hygienist licensing by credential (two to three weeks)

You may have practiced for a decade. That is the problem: licensure by credential waives your clinical exam but not this one, and the answers that feel automatic are exactly the ones most likely to be wrong in California.

The traps that actually cause failures

Every one of these is a documented cross-contamination from a different exam or a repealed rule:

1. Wrong-exam logistics. A $125 application fee, a $27.23 PSI fee, or a two-year eligibility window are the dentist exam's numbers. Yours are $200 to the DHBC ($100 application + $100 initial license) plus $32.07 to PSI, on a one-year eligibility window.
2. The Angoff trap. Importing "there is no fixed passing score" from dentist-exam advice. Your exam publishes one: 75%. The mirror-image error is claiming to know how that percentage is computed — the Board does not publish the method.
3. The ADA-code trap. Answering Area 3 in ADA dentist vocabulary. The CIB's recommended preparation list points to the CDHA and ADHA codes (see the naming disclosure about the bulletin's printed organization names).
4. The prescribing trap. CURES checks, opioid-counseling duties, and sedation permits are dentist material. An RDH cannot prescribe (BPC §1908), so none of it is an RDH duty.
5. The auxiliary-table trap. Reaching for the Dental Board's Table of Permitted Dental Auxiliary Duties. Hygiene scope comes from BPC §§1907–1915, under a different board.
6. The stale-outline trap. Any material that does not reference the 2025 outline blocks is describing an exam that no longer exists.

Two study habits worth the time

The learning-science evidence for dense regulatory material plus applied judgment is consistent, and short: retrieval practice beats re-reading (one of only two techniques rated high-utility in Dunlosky et al. 2013), and spacing beats massing (Cepeda et al. 2008) — so re-hit each block every three to five days rather than finishing it once. Highlighting and re-reading rank lowest, and on statutory text they produce a particularly convincing illusion of competence.

Disclosure first: Dentovio — the publisher of this guide — sells a paid RDH prep product. This section covers the whole landscape anyway, starting with the free path that competes directly with us. Judge for yourself.

The Board-listed free stack. The Candidate Information Bulletin lists three publications that "may help you prepare," while stating that the list does not include all dental hygiene textbooks and endorsing none of them:

1. The 2025 DHBC Laws and Regulations book — the board's compilation of the Dental Hygiene Practice Act and 16 CCR Division 11. It heads the recommended list, it is the primary text for the law this exam covers, and it costs $0.
2. The CDHA Code of Ethics (California Dental Hygienists' Association).
3. The ADHA Code of Ethics (American Dental Hygienists' Association).

Add the bulletin itself — it carries the full 2025 outline, two sample questions, and that recommended-reference list — and you have the Board's own preparation material for nothing. Note what that is and is not: the outline defines the testable content, and these three publications are what the Board suggests you read against it.

Can the free stack alone be called sufficient? No primary source answers that question. The Board publishes aggregate pass rates, not outcomes by study resource, so a 70% pass rate tells you nothing about what the people who passed studied from. What is verifiable is narrower and still useful: the free stack is the no-cost, Board-listed starting point — the laws book, the outline, and the two linked ethics resources — and there is no board-affiliated prep course to buy. What the free stack does not do is the part that fails people: the laws book is organized as statute and regulation, not around the 2025 outline, so reading it end to end never tells you which of the seven blocks you would fail today — and it carries no signal about which rules changed in 2024–2026.

Where to start with us, in order: the free 15-question practice test gives you a weak-block map against the 2025 outline in about fifteen minutes with no signup, the RDH exam-facts page holds the format, fees, and outline in one screen, and the paid study system is there only if the map says you need it.

The real risk in this market is staleness, not price. The clinical-exam waiver arrived in 2024, the outline changed in 2025, the renewal fee changed in 2022, and the RDHAP shortage-area rule changed in 2025. Whatever you choose, run two checks: Is it written for the RDH exam specifically — not the dentist exam, not the RDHAP version? And does it show you when each fact was last verified? Anything that fails either check costs more than it saves, whatever its price.

Everything about this exam happens at a PSI test center. There is no remote or online proctoring option in the bulletin — no webcam sitting, no at-home version. PSI runs it at roughly 22 California sites plus about 25 out-of-state sites, so a candidate who has already relocated books the nearest center instead of flying back to California.

Before the day. Your appointment is only protected if PSI receives a cancellation at least 2 days ahead. A no-show, a late arrival, or arriving without the identification the bulletin requires forfeits the $32.07, and you pay it again to rebook.

Arrive at least 30 minutes early. That is the DHBC Candidate Information Bulletin's own instruction (pp. 6–7), not a general test-taking tip, and the same pages carry the rest of the check-in rules for this exam:

• Identification. The bulletin publishes the accepted forms of identification. Bring one current form of identification from that accepted-ID list, and confirm before you leave the house that the name on it exactly matches the name on your Notice of Eligibility — that is the document the bulletin's identification warning tells candidates to match, and a mismatch can cost the sitting.
• A thumbprint at check-in. The bulletin's check-in procedure includes a thumbprint. Expect it; it is not an irregularity.
• Clothing. Scrubs are not permitted, and neither is clothing with pockets. Plan the outfit the night before rather than at the door.
• Prohibited items. This is a closed-book examination, and the bulletin carries its own prohibited-items list governing what may come into the room.

One standing caveat, and it is a currency caveat rather than a sourcing one: bulletins are revised. Re-read your own bulletin's exam-day pages in the week before your appointment, and treat that document — not this page, and not a list written for the Dental Board's dentist exam — as the authority on the day.

The tutorial. Up to 15 minutes of tutorial runs before the exam, untimed; your 90 minutes start after it. Use it. Learning an unfamiliar interface on the clock is a self-inflicted wound.

One warning the bulletin prints in full. Business and Professions Code §123 — conduct constituting subversion of a licensing examination — is reproduced in the PSI bulletin. Removing exam content, reconstructing questions afterward, or using material obtained from someone who did is misdemeanor conduct, and the section also exposes you to civil liability of up to $10,000 plus the agency's litigation costs. That is the practical reason to avoid PDFs sold as "actual exam questions," before any argument about whether they are even accurate.

Then it is over quickly. You finish, the center gives you your result, and the DHBC receives it too. Passing does not issue a license — what happens next.

Applying in Alternative Practice? The RDHAP Laws and Ethics Written Examination (required by BPC §1922) is a separate exam with its own PSI Candidate Information Bulletin — same 60 items, 90 minutes, 75% minimum, and $32.07 PSI fee, but a different 2025 content outline:

The 2B block is the RDHAP-specific material: written prescriptions, mobile and portable clinics, nontraditional practice settings, and hiring. Behind it sits the RDHAP statute block, BPC §§1922, 1925–1931: authorized settings including residences of the homebound, schools, residential facilities, shortage areas, and dental offices (§1926); the documented-dentist-consultation requirement for curettage and local anesthesia (§1926.01); the 18-month rule and the prescription valid no more than 2 years (§1931); and the required relationship with a dentist (§1930).

On pass rates, newer RDHAP figures do exist — the same November 8, 2025 DHBC materials that carry the RDH numbers publish them: FY2023–24, 77 tested / 57 passed (printed 74%); FY2024–25, 92 / 78 (printed 86%, although 78 of 92 is 84.8%, which would ordinarily round to 85% — we report the Board's counts and its printed percentage together rather than silently correcting it); and July 1–September 30, 2025, 36 / 24 (printed 67%), a partial period. The March 27–28, 2026 materials add a 61 / 57 (93%) row for the July 1, 2025–February 28, 2026 report, printed under a conflicting "FY 2024/25" label — the same labeling defect as the RDH table. Every one of these cohorts is small, so read them as noisy. The 2023 sunset review's 66–82% FY2018–22 range is historical, not current. What is not in doubt is the content gap: the 40% alternative-practice area is exactly the material a standard RDH study pass never touches. Study the RDHAP CIB's own outline, not the RDH one.

A failed sitting is recoverable and cheap by licensing-exam standards. What the primary sources establish:

1. You get a failed score report at the test center, along with an application to retake the examination (CIB, p. 8).
2. PSI charges $32.07 for every registration — the CIB's words: "whether you are taking the examination for the first time or repeating."
3. No waiting period exists in regulation. We read 16 CCR Division 11, Article 6 in full: no section imposes a wait between attempts on the written exam (§1127's appeal rules cover the clinical exam only). Any "90-day wait" you see in search results belongs to the Board of Behavioral Sciences exam.
4. Your 1-year eligibility window keeps running. The CIB's verified wording covers the initial window — the application is deemed abandoned if you fail to take the exam within one year of being deemed eligible. How that window applies across retake attempts is part of the unpublished mechanics below, so confirm your own dates with the DHBC before planning around them.

One honest gap: the DHBC does not publish the mechanics of the retake application itself — whether a board fee attaches or how long processing takes between attempts. Before you plan a quick turnaround, confirm the retake steps with the DHBC directly (dhbc.ca.gov); the only fee the bulletin itself guarantees you will pay again is PSI's $32.07.

Use the gap between attempts on the outline math: the failed score report shows your weaker areas, and the 2025 outline weights tell you what each is worth. A candidate who failed on Area 2 material needs the scope ladder, not another full read of everything.

Passing the exam does not issue your license. The result transmits to the DHBC, and the license issues only after your DOJ and FBI criminal-history clearance comes back. The board's own guidance: if you have passed and have no license after about 30 days, contact the DHBC. (Ignore blog claims that the license goes active "within 24–72 hours of passing" — no primary source supports that.)

Once the number issues, the obligations that keep it alive — all testable Area 2A material, so you may as well retain them:

• Renewal is biennial and costs $300 (raised from $160 on July 1, 2022 — a favorite stale-prep number). The delinquency fee is $150.
• Continuing education: 25 units every 2 years (BPC §1936.1; 16 CCR §§1016–1017), including the mandatory courses in the Dental Practice Act, infection control, and basic life support.
• No CE is required for your first renewal period. The DHBC states it plainly: "NO continuing education (CE) units are required for the first renewal period." Under 16 CCR §1017(c), a licensee issued a license for less than two years begins accumulating CE in the next biennial renewal period. This is also testable Area 2A material, and it is the fact that turns a "which licensee is noncompliant" item — check whether the stem is describing a second or later renewal before you call anyone short of units.

Both live in the same 2025 laws book you studied from, which is the last honest study tip on this page: the book that gets you through the exam is the same one that governs your first renewal cycle. Keep it.

If you are a DDS/DMD licensure candidate, almost nothing on this page applies to you. Your exam is the California Dental Law and Ethics Examination run by the Dental Board of California — a different board, with no published question count, no fixed 75% rule (its passing score is criterion-referenced, set per test form), different fees, and a two-year eligibility window instead of one.

Read the dedicated guide instead: How to Pass the California Dental Law and Ethics Exam in 2026. And if you arrived here from a study resource that mixed the two exams' numbers, treat that as a signal about the rest of its content.