Illinois lets a school deliver the 15-hour Applied Real Estate Principles course in only three ways: in a classroom, through a live interactive webinar, or by online distance education. The other 60 of the 75 pre-license hours may be provided in any format, including correspondence or home study, and that single difference drives the rules that follow. Once you have your hours, the next question is where to hang your license, and our guide on how to choose your first brokerage picks up from there.

What The Act And The Curriculum Say About Format

The requirement starts in Section 5-27 of the Real Estate License Act of 2000. A broker applicant has to provide satisfactory evidence of 75 hours of instruction in real estate courses approved by the Department. Fifteen of those hours must consist of situational and case studies presented in the classroom, by live interactive webinar, or by online distance education. The same section also requires the applicant to personally take and pass a written examination authorized by the Department. The course hours and the exam are two separate gates, and this article is about the first one.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, known as IDFPR, publishes the Broker 75-Hour Pre-License Curriculum that fills those hours. It splits them into two courses. One is 60 hours of Real Estate Topics. The other is 15 hours of Applied Real Estate Principles. The curriculum document says the 60-hour course may be provided in any format. It says the 15-hour course must be provided only in the classroom, through a live interactive webinar, or in an online distance education format.

The administrative rule for pre-license courses says the same thing from the school's side. Under 68 Illinois Administrative Code 1450.1105, a school that offers pre-license courses has to offer a 60 credit hour course and a 15 credit hour Applied Real Estate Principles course, and the second one is described as presented in the classroom, by interactive webinar, or by online distance education. So the three-format limit on the 15 hours shows up in the Act, in the rule and in the state's own curriculum.

The other half of the format question is the exam rule for credit. Section 30-15 of the Act says credit for a course completed in a classroom, through a live interactive webinar, or in an online distance education format does not require an examination. Credit for a course provided through correspondence or by home study requires passing an in-person, proctored examination. That is the line that separates the formats. Three of them are treated one way, and the fourth is treated another.

One honest note on the wording. Section 30-15 lists the three delivery formats for core curriculum courses and, in a separate paragraph, sets the exam rule for correspondence and home study. The IDFPR curriculum document is the place that says in plain words that the 60-hour course may be provided in any format. We rely on the curriculum document for that point, and we rely on the statute and the rule for everything else in this guide. If a school tells you something that sounds different, ask it to show you which provision it is relying on.

The Four Formats Side By Side

The rules do not rank the formats. They describe what each one has to prove, and the differences are all about how the state knows you actually took the course. Here is each format with only what the Act, the rules and the curriculum say about it.

Classroom.

• Allowed for both the 60-hour course and the 15-hour course.
• No exam is required for credit.
• The school must verify attendance.
• You receive credit only for time you actually spent attending the course.

Live interactive webinar.

• Allowed for both courses.
• No exam is required for credit.
• Every participant has to demonstrate attendance and attention by answering or responding to at least one polling question per 50 minutes of instruction.
• The school must verify attendance.

Online distance education.

• Allowed for both courses.
• No exam is required for credit.
• Participants have to demonstrate proficiency with the subject matter through verifiable responses to questions included in the course content.
• The school must verify attendance.

Correspondence or home study.

• Allowed for the 60-hour course only. The 15-hour course may not be provided this way.
• A mandatory proctored final exam is required for credit.
• The exam must have at least 25 questions for every 15 credit hours, and the minimum passing score is no less than 75 percent.
• The school gives the exam at the completion of every 15 credit hours or at the conclusion of the course.

Read those four lists together and the pattern is plain. A live webinar proves you were present with a poll every 50 minutes. An online distance course proves you engaged with the material through questions built into the course. A classroom proves it by attendance the school must verify. A home study course has none of those checkpoints along the way, so the rules put the whole proof into a proctored exam at the end.

A short example shows how the pieces combine. Picture a person who wants to study from home and wants no in-person exam anywhere in the course. The 60-hour course may be taken online in a distance format, and the 15-hour course may only be a webinar, a classroom or an online distance course. So the full 75 hours can be done without a single in-person visit, as long as the school delivers both courses in one of the three formats that carry no exam. That outcome follows directly from the rules above. Whether a particular school offers it is a question for the school, and the state's approved course list shows the delivery method for each course.

Now picture the person who sees a home study course advertised for the 60 hours. That course is allowed. It also comes with the proctored final exam, with at least 25 questions for every 15 credit hours, and the school's registration material has to tell the student in writing whether the exam is given in electronic format, paper format, or both. The time spent taking the exam does not count toward the credit hours. A 60-hour home study course therefore has a built-in exam of at least 100 questions, since 60 divided by 15 is four blocks of 25. That number is arithmetic from the rule, and the rule itself only sets the floor.

Rules That Apply In Every Format, And What The Sources Leave Out

Some rules do not care how the course is delivered. They apply to the school, and they shape what you should ask before you pay.

Attendance is the first. The rules say a licensed education provider must verify attendance for courses presented in a classroom, by interactive webinar, or by online distance education. They also say a student may receive credit only for time actually spent attending the course or, if applicable, for achieving a passing score of at least 75 percent on the final examination. So an online course is not a way to skip the hours. The state counts time, and the school has to be able to show it.

Make-up time is the second. A school must provide time and facilities for make-up classes for students absent from the regularly scheduled class. No more than 10 percent of the total credit hours may be make-up hours, and the rule adds that a student missing any make-up credit hours shall fail the course. If you are choosing a live format with set meeting times, that last sentence is worth reading twice. Ask how the school schedules make-up sessions before you enroll, because the rule leaves the student with no room to simply skip them.

The third is what the school owes you before you enroll. The rule says that prior to enrollment, the school has to give a prospective student information that specifies the course of study and the delivery method, the tuition, the refund policy for unearned tuition, any additional fee for supplies, materials or books, and other matters that are material to the relationship between the school and the student. The delivery method is on that list by name. You can ask any school which of the four formats you are buying, and the rule says it has to tell you.

The fourth is advertising. A school must state in its advertising the number of pre-license credit hours that may be earned toward Illinois requirements. It may not advertise that it is endorsed, recommended or accredited by the Division, and it may say that it is licensed by the Division. For the longer version of how to confirm a school and a course are approved, see our guide on how to check an Illinois pre-license school is approved.

The fifth is who stands in front of you. A school's education program may only use instructors with a valid Illinois instructor license.

The sixth is what you get at the end. The school issues a transcript or certificate of completion in a format provided by the Division, and the document has to be authenticated and capable of being verified by the school. The school must also keep each student's record, including the course of instruction undertaken and the dates of attendance, for at least 5 years, and it must give you customer service email or telephone contact information. The certificate matters for the next step. To become eligible for the broker exam, you create an account with the exam vendor, PSI, and upload the course certificate. PSI approves it and sends an email confirmation. Your pre-license education is valid for 2 years after you satisfactorily complete all of it, and broker candidates get up to four attempts at the exam within the 2-year eligibility period.

Proctoring has its own standard. If you take a home study course, the rule says the proctor must authenticate your identity, monitor you and the exam process so that the exam is completed without the aid of additional persons or resources unless the Division approves otherwise, and protect the confidentiality of the educational materials. Proctors must be impartial third parties. A proctor may not be an applicant's or licensee's sponsoring broker, managing broker, relative or colleague. The rule also says any remote proctoring must be conducted in accordance with state and federal law, while Section 30-15 of the Act describes the exam for home study credit as in person. The sources read for this guide do not say more about how those two phrases fit together, so ask the school how its exam is administered and get the answer in writing before you pay.

Here is what the sources do not tell you. They give no tuition for any format and no comparison of what each format costs. They give no pass rates, no completion times and no schedule for any course. They do not say that one format prepares you better for the exam than another, and nothing here should be read that way. They also do not name schools. The Act lets the Department temporarily suspend a provider's approved courses without a hearing and refuse credit for them, so check that page and the approved course list on the day you enroll.

If you want the wider picture of studying from home, including the exam and the application, read our guide to getting your Illinois real estate license online. For what the exam itself covers, see what is on the Illinois real estate exam.

The Bottom Line

The format question has a short answer. The 15-hour Applied Real Estate Principles course can only be a classroom, a live interactive webinar or an online distance education course. The 60-hour course can be any format, and home study or correspondence is the one that brings a proctored final exam with it. Classroom, webinar and online distance credit needs no exam. Whichever you pick, the school has to verify attendance, the make-up cap is 10 percent of the hours, and the state counts the time you actually spend.

Before you pay, ask the school three things in writing. Which delivery method is each of the two courses. Whether either one ends in a proctored exam, and how that exam is given. And what the refund policy says if you withdraw. Then match what you hear to the state's approved list. Once the hours are done and the exam is passed, you need a sponsoring brokerage, and our guide on how to choose your first brokerage explains what to ask. Gambino Realtors has been in business in Rockford since 1923, and a new agent gets a personal business coach, weekly classes, sales meetings twice a month, a mentor on first appointments and leads from the brokerage.

The format rules raise the same practical questions again and again, so here are the short answers.

Frequently Asked Questions