If a site tells you the UA retake wait is three months, or six, or a year, it is guessing. GAN does not set this rule; your local training committee does, and it is required to have it in writing. Here is what the published policies actually say, how they differ, and the four questions that get you your own answer in one phone call.
Start here, because it explains every contradiction you will find online. GAN Human Resources administers and scores the battery. It does not decide who passes, who is ranked, or when you may sit it again. Its own page for the aptitude battery publishes no qualifying score and no retest policy at all — it says the battery was built to assess basic math, reading and spatial skills, and that it has been given to more than 200,000 applicants. That is the whole of it.
The rule you actually need belongs to the joint apprenticeship and training committee you applied to. And it is not informal: under the federal apprenticeship regulations, a sponsor’s procedure for selecting apprentices has to be part of the written Standards of Apprenticeship approved by its Registration Agency, and it has to be applied uniformly and consistently to every applicant. Two useful consequences:
Rather than average a number out of policies that disagree, here is how they differ in kind. Any of the three could be yours, and they call for completely different planning.
Many locals accept applications only in a defined window, once or twice a year. Where that is the case, a retake means the next cycle whatever the nominal wait is, and you normally reapply from the start rather than reschedule a test. Local 447 in Sacramento, for instance, publishes fixed testing sessions with applications opening about a month before each one and appointments capped and first-come. Under this pattern the question “how long must I wait?” has a calendar answer, not a policy answer — which is why knowing your local’s window matters more than knowing its waiting period. We track windows for all 220 UA locals for exactly this reason.
The pattern applicants least expect, and the one that changes your plan the most. UA Local 447 requires a 65% score to qualify, and an applicant who falls short cannot simply book another sitting: the published path is to complete a mathematics course at a junior college or adult-education program with a C or better and furnish verification, or to obtain a math tutor who will verify that you are prepared — and then to retake the test “for a second and final time.”
Read that carefully if it is your local. The attempt is capped, so the second sitting is not a free roll, and the gate is documented preparation rather than elapsed time — waiting six months without taking a course gets you exactly nowhere. It also means the test that local gives is not the six-section GAN battery at all: it publishes a three-hour exam covering mathematics through first-year algebra. Which brings us to the third pattern.
Not every UA local tests with GAN, and where it does not, the cutoff you have read about is meaningless. Two locals whose criteria are published through the New York State Department of Labor:
| Local | Test used | Published minimum |
|---|---|---|
| Local 7 — Latham, NY | Wonderlic Basic Skills | 50 or higher to be interviewed |
| Local 773 — Queensbury, NY | WorkKeys assessments | Average of at least 4.334 out of 7 |
| Local 447 — Sacramento, CA | Own exam, ~3 hrs, math through 1st-year algebra | 65% to qualify |
Three locals, three instruments, three cutoffs on three different scales — and none of them is “70% on the GAN battery.” The retake rules attach to whatever your committee uses. Your invitation letter, not this page and not a forum, tells you which test you are sitting.
One call or email to the training center, and ask for the selection procedures or Standards of Apprenticeship if they are not already published. Then get these four specifics:
Ask the same call how long the eligibility list stays active. One to two years is commonly cited, and if your list is about to expire, the honest answer may be that you are reapplying rather than retaking.
Assume the format is identical and the specific questions are not. Beyond that we are not going to tell you how GAN rotates items, because GAN does not publish it and a confident guess here could waste your preparation. What is worth knowing is that the format is the part you can train, and it does not move: six separately timed sections, about 140 questions, roughly two hours, no calculator on any section.
The single biggest predictor of a better second score is whether you diagnosed the first one. Most applicants do not — they “study harder,” which usually means restudying what they were already good at.
There is no national UA waiting period, and any single number you see quoted for one is wrong somewhere. The policy is set by each local training committee and the published ones differ in kind: some tie a retake to the next application window, some require documented math remediation before you may test again, and some cap total attempts. Your local's rule is in its written selection procedures — ask the training office for it.
No. GAN Human Resources administers and scores the battery; the training committee that contracted GAN decides the qualifying score, the retake rule and the ranking. GAN's own page for the aptitude battery publishes neither a passing score nor a retest policy, which is consistent with that split. Asking GAN when you can retest gets you pointed back at the local.
At some locals, yes — a score can be a ranking input rather than a pass/fail gate, and improving it can move you up the list. But a new score usually has to be attached to a new or updated application to be re-ranked, and some committees will only consider your most recent attempt rather than your best. Both of those details are local and both are worth confirming before you sit it again.
Sometimes, and it is more common than applicants expect. UA Local 447 in Sacramento, for example, publishes a retake path that allows a second and final attempt, and only after you either complete a junior-college or adult-education math course with a C or better or produce a tutor's verification that you are prepared. A cap like that changes the whole calculation — you do not spend a capped attempt on an unprepared sitting.
We will not give you a general yes or no, because that answer depends on whether your committee ranks on your best attempt or your latest one, and neither is universal. What is safe to say: retaking after documented preparation is a normal path into the trade, not a black mark, and committees that require remediation before a retake are by definition expecting people to come back. Ask which attempt gets counted before you sit the second one.
Then the retake rules attach to whatever instrument it does use, and the rest of this page still applies because the committee — not the test vendor — still owns the policy. Two New York locals publish non-GAN criteria: Local 7 in Latham requires the Wonderlic Basic Skills test with a score of 50 or higher to be interviewed, and Local 773 in Queensbury requires WorkKeys assessments averaging at least 4.334 out of 7. Your invitation letter names your test.
Diagnose before you drill. A score report or an honest post-mortem will tell you which sections cost you points, and the fix differs by section — fraction fluency is a daily-reps problem, while running out of time on reading is a pacing problem. Then sit full-length timed batteries, because the thing that beats most second attempts is the same thing that beat the first: six timed sections in one sitting with no calculator.
Every policy named above is linked so you can read it yourself rather than take our word for it. Local policies change without notice, and the three below are examples of what published UA criteria look like — not a claim about your local.
Ten full-length timed batteries across all six sections, 1,500+ questions, and Piper to explain every one you miss — so the second attempt is the one you were ready for.
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