TOPIC: Possible to pass exam with 1 "below target" ?

Dear all,
One thing I am not sure and didn't find the official answer :
- To pass the PMP exam, do we need to be in "target" or "above target" on ALL process (Initiating, Executing...) ?
- Or is it a global score (all process average) to succeed ?
- What is the result if we have 4 "above target" and 1 "below target" ?

Thank you and good luck to everybody.
Olivier

Oliver,

The actual "passing score" for a professional exam is closely guarded secret. The answer to your question then is "we don't know."

With that, I've seen posts on the Lessons Learned board and there have been reports that people have passed with a single BT score. This is what I conclude. "It depends."

The PMP as it sits today is essentially 5 rubric areas (Domains) corresponding to the Process Groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing., etc.). Each group is given a weight on the exam. That information is published in the PMP Exam Content Guide. Both Initiating and Closing are listed at 13% and 7% respectively. So, I suspect that you could get a BT in one of low-weighted domains and still pass the exam.

Of course, that is all just speculation.

Harry

I passed yesterday with 'Needs Improvement' in closing. I have got 'Above Target' in the other 4 areas though.
But, I think it also depends on the difficulty level of the exam. I thought my exam was really hard.

Regards,
Kazi

Well done, Kazi! Congratulations

Kazi:

Congratulations!

I do not believe that it will depend on "difficulty" as that would require each question in the PMI test bank to be weighted twice: Once for inclusion into the exam Domain (to keep the domain weighting to the published values) and also for difficulty (however that is measured). While this is possible, it's unlikely. The difficulty rating would be a factor of how many times the question is missed in an exams. Questions that have high miss scores tend to get tossed from the question banks rather than weighted. Example: If question number X in the exam bank appears on 100 exams and 99 people miss it, that implies that the question is poorly worded/bad , not that it's difficult. This is because one would expect the number of correct answers would be at or around 25. (That's the most probable number if EVERYONE simply randomly guesses the answer). Simply put, it's easier to toss bad questions than it is to attempt to weight them.

Clearly I am a data nerd - it's part of what I do for a living.

From a personal perspective, i have taken more than a few standardized professional exams in my career and I found the PMP exam to be one of the most challenging. The choices on previous professional examinations were either right or wrong - with the plausible detractors (e.g. "wrong" answers) being answers if you worked the problem incorrectly or applied incorrect methodology to solve the problem. I found the PMP exam to be challenging because you were often selecting the "most correct answer from these four correct answers." My left-brainedness found this maddening.

Best,

Harry