Wisconsin supervised driving
How to fill out Wisconsin’s HS-303 Supervised Driving Log
Wisconsin asks parents to certify 50 hours of supervised driving with at least 10 at night, and then offers something no other state’s log does: an hour spent with a qualified instructor may be counted as two, up to a maximum of five such hours. That single sentence at the top of the HS-303 is worth up to five hours of credit, and the Mentor column is where the claim to it is recorded.
Fill a row per date, and name the mentor
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Know which hours can count twice
Each hour accompanied by a qualified instructor may be considered two hours of experience, capped at five instructor-supervised hours counted that way. Five hours with an instructor can therefore stand in for ten of the fifty — but only if the log shows who supervised, which is what the QI code in the Mentor column is for.
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Describe the driving environment
The header gives its own examples: residential, city, rural highway, expressway. It is asking what kind of road the session was on, rather than a route or a destination.
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Fill both condition columns, not just the weather
Conditions is split in two. Weather takes what the sky was doing — sun, rain, snow. Roadway takes what the surface was doing — dry, wet, icy. They come apart more often than people expect: a road stays wet long after the rain stops, and stays icy in bright sun.
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Split the driving time into Day and Night
Driving Time is headed Hours/Minutes and splits into a Day column and a Night column, so twenty minutes after dark is 0:20 in the Night column. Ten hours of the fifty have to accumulate on the night side.
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Code the mentor, then initial
The Mentor column takes a code — P for a parent, PD for a parent designee, QI for a qualified instructor — and the Mentor Initials column beside it takes their initials. The code is what distinguishes an hour that counts once from one that may count twice.
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Carry the sub-totals to the bottom
The end of the log takes a Sub-Total for the Day column and one for the Night column, then a combined Total Hours Day + Night. Those totals cover the whole log rather than a single page.
One date across both condition columns
Take January 5: twenty minutes of residential practice in the afternoon and twenty more after dark, in rain that left the road wet.
- Date & Time
- 01/05/2026
- Driving Environment
- Residential
- Driving Skills Practiced
- Parking, Turns
- Conditions — Weather
- Clear, Rain
- Conditions — Roadway
- Wet
- Driving Time — Day / Night
- 0:20 and 0:20 — hours and minutes, not decimals
- Mentor / Mentor Initials
- P, with the parent’s initials beside it
Had this session been with a qualified instructor, the Mentor column would read QI — and that hour could be counted as two toward the fifty, up to the five-hour cap. The row itself still records the time actually driven; the doubling is a credit applied when the hours are certified, not a number written into the Driving Time column.
What a Wisconsin log leaves on the table
- Driving the full fifty without ever recording a mentor code, which forfeits any claim to the instructor doubling — up to five hours of credit that the log can no longer evidence.
- Expecting more than five instructor-supervised hours to double; the cap is five, so the most the rule can be worth is five extra hours.
- Filling Weather and leaving Roadway blank, when the form splits conditions into two columns precisely because a wet or icy surface outlasts the weather that caused it.
- Writing decimal hours into a column headed Hours/Minutes, so 0.33 appears where 0:20 belongs.
- Totalling only the final page, when the Sub-Totals and Total Hours lines cover every row in the log.
What fills the HS-303, mentor column included
The export writes one row per calendar date, summing that date’s drives:
| On the HS-303 Supervised Driving Log | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Date & Time | The practice date. Wisconsin does not ask its students for clock times, so the time half of this column is left for you if you want it. |
| Driving Environment | The environment tagged against that date’s drives — residential, city, rural highway, expressway. |
| Driving Skills Practiced | The skills tagged against those drives, joined in taxonomy order and trimmed to the cell. |
| Conditions — Weather / Roadway | Two separate dimensions recorded per drive: the weather tags in one cell, the roadway-surface tags in the other. |
| Driving Time — Day / Night | That date’s daylight and after-dark practice as hours and minutes, matching the column’s own Hours/Minutes heading. |
| Mentor | The P, PD or QI code taken from the mentor type recorded against the supervisor on that date, so an instructor-supervised session is identifiable later. |
| Mentor Initials | Initials of the supervisors who drove that date, as a prompt for their own check. |
| Sub-Totals / Total Hours | Day and Night sub-totals and their combined figure, covering the whole log rather than one page. |
The printed hours are the hours actually driven, and so is the progress you see in the app — neither applies the instructor doubling for you. It is a rule about how those hours may be counted when a parent certifies, so if some of your practice was instructor-supervised, you may be closer to the fifty than a running total of logged time suggests. Check the QI rows before deciding you are short.
Frequently asked questions
How does the qualified-instructor doubling work?
Each hour of supervised driving accompanied by a qualified instructor may be considered two hours of experience, with a maximum of five instructor-supervised hours counted that way. So five instructor hours can stand in for ten, and the Mentor column’s QI code is what shows which hours qualify.
What is the difference between the Weather and Roadway columns?
Weather is the conditions overhead — sun, rain, snow. Roadway is the surface underneath — dry, wet, icy. The form’s own examples list both together, and they are separate columns because they routinely disagree.
What do P, PD and QI mean?
P is a parent, PD a parent designee, and QI a qualified instructor. The code records who supervised each session, which matters because only QI hours are eligible to be counted twice.
Is the HS-303 the only log Wisconsin accepts?
No — the form describes itself as provided for your convenience. What Wisconsin requires is that a parent certifies the 50 hours with at least 10 at night; the HS-303 is the state’s own way of keeping that record, not a mandatory document.
Do I have to use a driving-log app?
No. The form points to a free app as an alternative to printing more copies, and either is fine. A hand-filled HS-303 is exactly as valid, provided the hours, the night split and the mentor codes are all there when a parent certifies.
Track your Wisconsin hours
Log every supervised drive and Learner Log keeps the totals ready for the HS-303 Supervised Driving Log.
Still deciding how to keep the record? Compare paper against an app. Not sure where the HS-303 Supervised Driving Log ends up? See submitting a log versus certifying the hours.
Official sources: Official HS-303 Supervised Driving Log. Wisconsin licensing instructions. This guide was last reviewed against the official form on ; Wisconsin can change its form or instructions at any time, so confirm the current version at the links above. Learner Log is an independent tracking tool, not affiliated with any licensing agency.