What is the PMP® Exam Passing Score and PMP® Exam Pass Rate?

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Once PMP aspirants started to get ready for the PMP exam, two popular questions arise about the PMP exam.

“What is the PMP Exam Passing Score” and “What is the PMP Exam Pass Rate?”

Before answering the question about the aspects of the PMP pass rate, one thing must be kept in mind: PMI doesn’t include much information about PMP exam pass rate. Here is a list of things that PMI never disclose about PMP exam pass rate:

1. The criteria related to PMP exam pass rate.
2. The details of people passing the exam in the first attempt.
3. How many questions will you get from which PMBOK knowledge areas
4. If the exam questions are random or computer-adaptive to select next question according to your previous correct or wrong answers.

PMI does not disclose any data or information on the PMP exam pass rate for attempting the exam for the first time. You can only make informed guesses from the statistics of PMP training organizations and study groups.

What is the PMP passing score?

Here is what the PMI says about the PMP passing score:

“The PMP passing score for all PMI credential examinations is determined by sound psychometric analysis. PMI uses subject matter experts -project professionals from around the world and many different disciplines- to determine how many questions you must answer correctly to pass the exam. Each scored question in the exam is worth one point; and your final score is calculated by totaling the points you have earned on the exam. The number of questions you answer correctly places you within one of the performance rating categories you see in the report.”

In short, there is no official exact answer related to PMP passing score from PMI. It is not possible to state a fixed PMP passing score that will help you pass the PMP exam. The difficulty level of the questions you get will make a change. Two candidates won’t get the same set of questions. Hence, it makes sense that the PMP passing score also varies. An exam with easy questions will have a higher PMP passing score than an exam with relatively more difficult questions. Furthermore, each question does not carry equal weight. Hence, it becomes even more difficult to estimate how much you need to score to reach the PMP passing score.

PMP Exam Pattern vs PMP Exam Pass Rate

There is a total of 200 multiple choice questions in the PMP exam. You can get a score for only 175 questions. The 25 questions are pretest questions, which will not add to your PMP exam pass rate. These questions are experimental in nature, which are tested to check the validity in the future examinations. They are scattered across the examination. Therefore, it is not possible to identify which questions are experimental and which are not. You will have to handle all the questions with equal importance.

As we mentioned, PMP exam has 200 questions, however, 25 of these are not scored and used for quality improvement purposes by PMI. Since you do not know which these 25 unscored questions are, you must answer each question seriously during your PMP exam. We recommend each PMP aspirant to schedule their PMP exam if they can score over 70% on the PMP sample questions or in a PMP exam simulator.

The exam schedule is 4 hours. There are no scheduled breaks during the exam. You can still take breaks, but this break time will be deducted from the 4 hours. The exam begins with a tutorial and it is followed by a survey.

History of PMP Exam Passing Rate

1. PMBOK Guide, 3rd Edition was introduced in 2004. In July 2005, PMP exam was changed in order to be aligned with PMBOK Guide, the 3rd Edition. PMI increased the passing percentage to a staggering 81% during the same period. With the increase in the PMP exam passing rate, the percentage of candidates clearing the exam in the first attempt decreased dramatically. PMI reacted quickly and dropped the PMP exam passing rate to a more attainable 61% in December 2005.

2. Until 2006, the PMP Handbook clearly specified 61% as the PMP exam passing rate, but afterwards, PMI stopped revealing the exact PMP exam passing rate, even though, they continued to provide the domain-wise percentage on their score reports.

3. The next big change happened at the end of 2007. This was the time when PMI changed the diagnostic results presented in the PMP exam score reports. Instead of percentages related to the domains, PMI started using global best practices in examination administration by using proficiency levels.
Below are some top myths regarding the PMP exam pass rate:

1. Is the PMP exam pass rate 61 %?
2. Can someone fail if they get ‘Below proficient’ level in any domain?
3. Is the same weighting applicable to all the questions?
4. Is there only one single PMP exam pass rate score for everybody?
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