TOPIC: PMP Pass Rate

Hi,

I tried to find information regarding the pass rate for the PMP exam. I know that this information is sort of confidential but I keep on wonder how could I assess if I am ready to take the exam. In addition to this, are the questions on the exam similar to these in the simulator or more difficult?

thank youu
Lili

Lili,

As you said pmi dies not disclose a pass score. If you can correctly respond 80% of new questions of the simulator provided by OSP you have 80% of assurance to successfully pass the test.
The questions are situational but questions generated by the simulator will enable you understand and correctly respond the questions.

Best regards and good luck

Hi Lili,

Personally I think that the level of difficulty and the types of questions in the simulator exams are almost the same as the real exam questions. The questions are not exactly the same but if you get to answer the simulator questions correctly, it will be easy for you to answer similar type of questions when you sit for the actual exam.

Getting as much practice exam as you can would also help in building your confidence. I would suggest to really answer the 200 questions in one sitting, so you'll get a good sense of how much time you should spend on each question.

Hi Lili

The time-tested way of ensuring a pass in the PMP® Exam is to get at least 75% in the sample tests.

As the passing score of PMP Exam is now based on “psychometric analysis”, candidates would get a higher score if they can answer the harder questions correctly and a lower score for the easier questions. This means that the harder questions are worth more than the easier questions. So, the minimum number of correct answers needed to pass the PMP Exam is determined by the overall difficultly of the exam.

If you could get over 75%-80% for each new set of PMP sample exams you have answered, you can almost be assured of a pass in the real PMP exam provided that you perform normally during the exam.

And as Fernando said - "Getting as much practice exam as you can would also help in building your confidence. I would suggest to really answer the 200 questions in one sitting, so you'll get a good sense of how much time you should spend on each question."

Can you explain this ? I was told every question holds the same weight and you need 106 of the 175 non practice questions correct to pass. 61% on the exam to pass

"As the passing score of PMP Exam is now based on “psychometric analysis”, candidates would get a higher score if they can answer the harder questions correctly and a lower score for the easier questions. This means that the harder questions are worth more than the easier questions. So, the minimum number of correct answers needed to pass the PMP Exam is determined by the overall difficultly of the exam."

Hi Angie,

In the past, 61% was published by PMI as the passing score for the PMP Exam (which means that PMP aspirants need to correctly answer 106 or more PMP® questions out of the 175 real questions). In fact, PMI played around with the passing score several times. It once set the passing score to 81% in 2005 and the number of candidates who could make it dropped dramatically, leading PMI to reset it to 61% in just a few months. At that time, PMP candidates would get a report card with score (in percentage) for correctly answering questions in each domain.

But no more now. From December 2005, PMI ceased to publish the passing score as it has adopted a more “scientific” approach to judge whether a PMP aspirant is eligible for the PMP title. Later, the PMP Exam report card was revised in 2007 to give only the proficiency levels (i.e. Proficient, Moderately Proficient and Below Proficient).

Basically, what I meant by that paragraph is that the passing score for every candidate is different. As no two PMP aspirants receive the same set of PMP exam questions, setting a definite passing score for the PMP exam is not fair to the candidate who, unfortunately, receive more the “difficult” questions. The statistic model, termed as psychometric analysis, is used to calculate the passing score of each individual set of PMP exam questions to make sure the “difficulty to pass the PMP exam” is similar for each individual candidate.

Therefore, as a general guideline, if you could get over 75%-80% for each new set of PMP sample exams you have answered, you can almost be assured of a pass in the real PMP exam provided that you perform normally during the exam.

Hope this helps.

thanks.