Navy Bibs 2027: Find Your E-7 Reading List (HM & MA), Make a Study Plan

Your E-7 reading list for the 21 January 2027 exam (active duty and TAR, Cycle 274; SELRES have their own February 2027 cycle and bib) is already published, and you can open it without a CAC. The Navy Advancement Center posts a bibliography (“bib”) for every rating on Navy COOL, the Navy’s Credentialing Opportunities On-Line site, together with a list of the topics and subtopics the exam can test. For January 2027 the Hospital Corpsman (HM) bib lists 37 references and the Master-at-Arms (MA) bib lists 41. This guide shows where to find them, what each page tells you (and what it does not), how every HM and MA reference lines up with a topic, and how to turn the list into six weeks of study that ends the day before the exam.

Independent: not affiliated with the US Navy, the Navy Advancement Center or Navy COOL. ProSyllabus is an independent study site and nothing here is official. Every date, rule and figure below is quoted or summarized from Navy documents (NAVADMINs, fact sheets, Navy Advancement Center pages and Navy COOL), read on 28 October 2026; where we could not confirm something, the page says so.

Navy COOL January 2027 E-7 Bibliographies, read 27–28 October 2026; NAVADMIN 241/26.

Go to the Navy Advancement Bibliographies page on Navy COOL. It is a public page: we opened it, and the E-7 bib and topics pages behind it, with no login and no CAC. Under E7 it lists “January 2027 - Active Duty/TAR” with two links, Bibliographies and Topics and Subtopics, and “February 2027 - SELRES” with the same two links for reservists. Open the one for your component, then pick your rating from the “Select A Rating” dropdown at the top of the file. The index page itself explains that you can print a rating’s page or save it as a PDF from your browser.

The notes at the top of the January 2027 E-7 bib page are short and worth reading word for word, because they settle most arguments about what is fair game:

Two practical points follow. First, start from the edition and the parts the bib lists, then check whether that reference has been updated since: the scoring note means an outdated rule does not protect you. If an edition or its chapter numbers differ from the bib, ask your ESO or leading chief. Second, because the links were removed, finding each document is your job. The tables below say, for every HM and MA reference, whether we could find an official public copy.

Read the regular list unless your command tells you that you are sitting a substitute exam. The two are different documents. For HM the substitute list has 38 references and shares 27 reference identifiers with the 37 on the regular list (some with different chapters). For MA the substitute list has 47 and shares 19 identifiers with the regular 41. Some differences are only edition changes (the regular MA list cites the 2024 Navigation Rules handbook, the substitute list the 2020 one), but others are different documents altogether. NAVADMIN 241/26 sets 31 January 2027 as the deadline for ordering substitute exams, and NETPDC N321 is the approval authority for them.

The January 2027 HM E-7 topics page lists five topics and twenty subtopics. Navy COOL does not say which reference feeds which topic, so the table below is our reading of each reference’s title, placed under the topic it most obviously serves. Use it as a filing system for your notes, not as an official map.

What the HM list tells you at a glance: Preventive Medicine Programs Admin carries the most references by our filing, and much of it is public (BUMED instructions, the NAVMED P-5010 chapters, the food code, the malaria guide). Four references had no official public copy we could find: NAVEDTRA 14295B, the Hospital Corpsman rate training manual; the Field Management of Chemical and Biological Casualties Handbook (5th edition); NAVMED P-5132, the Equipment Management Manual; and OPNAV M-5100.23 with Change 3. The only public JP 4-02 we found was the December 2017 edition, not the 2023 one the bib lists. No HM reference is titled for NAVSUP or for laboratory work, so the Medical Supply and Logistics subtopics and Laboratory Services most likely lean on the rate training manual and the equipment manual: ask your leading chief or the command training office for both early.

The MA E-7 topics page lists eight topics and twenty-nine subtopics, from Afloat Operations to Weapons Handling. As with HM, the filing below is ours.

The MA list is harder to collect than the HM list. Of its 41 references we found an official public copy of 21. Nine are controlled-distribution doctrine or “O-series” DoD issuances (the six NTTPs, NWP 3-26 and both volumes of DoDI O-2000.16), and eleven more had no public copy we could find, including all five CNIC titles, the DoD Antiterrorism Officer Guide, the SORM with Change 1, the military working dog instruction and NAVEDTRA 14137C, the MA rate training manual. Expeditionary Skills, by our filing, rests entirely on the two NTTP 3-10.1 editions, both controlled. If you are an MA1 ashore, your security department or the command’s antiterrorism officer is the realistic source for the CNIC manuals and NTTPs; start asking now, not in January.

The exam is on Thursday 21 January 2027. The plan below runs six Thursday-to-Wednesday weeks, from Thursday 10 December 2026 to Wednesday 20 January 2027, the day before the exam. Two eligibility deadlines sit around the plan, and missing either means you cannot sit: the PMK-EE must be passed by 30 November 2026 (before week 1), and the Enlisted Leader Development ALDC must be completed by 31 December 2026, which falls in week 4, so book it now (our PMK-EE guide covers the first). Use the weeks between now and 10 December to collect every reference on your list and to read the topics page twice.

A rule of thumb for reading a reference against the exam: the bib often names chapters, and when it does, read those chapters closely and skim the rest. Where no chapters are listed (most BUMED instructions on the HM list, for example), the bib does not narrow it, so our suggestion is to read the whole document. The Navy Advancement Center’s own advice is to “Study the references listed in your bibliography” and to download the material “for the correct cycle”. Practice the questions against a clock as well: the Navy E-7 HM exam simulator and the Navy E-7 MA exam simulator each give two timed 175-question exams written from these bibs, with three questions free. Both are built only from the publicly released references on the January 2027 bibs (HM: 32 of its 37 references, 15 of 20 subtopics; MA: 21 of its 41 references, 16 of 29 subtopics); the rate training manuals and controlled references are not covered, so study those from your own copies.

Below are three questions in the style of the E-7 exam, each written from a reference on the January 2027 HM bibliography, with the answer, the reasoning and the reference. Give yourself about a minute each before you read the answer.

The bib lists references; it does not tell you how many questions come from each, and the topics page is alphabetical, not ranked. What the Navy does give you afterwards is your profile sheet: it shows the number of questions in each exam section, how many you got right and your percentile in each. The Navy Advancement Center says the major subject matter, shown as sections on the profile forms, “will reappear. But not the same questions!” If you have sat the E-7 exam before, line your last profile sheet up against this year’s topics list and start with the sections where your percentile was lowest. Our guide to the profile sheet explains each line.

Ready for the next step? See the exam format and dates, how to read your profile sheet and the results and board timeline. The exam page is the Navy E-7 advancement exam page. Practice exams on these bibs: the Navy E-7 HM exam simulator and the Navy E-7 MA exam simulator. Both are built only from the publicly released references on the January 2027 bibs (HM: 32 of its 37 references, 15 of 20 subtopics; MA: 21 of its 41 references, 16 of 29 subtopics); the rate training manuals and controlled references are not covered, so study those from your own copies.