What a 37% retake rate tells you about your budget and your calendar

The retake statistics for this test are usually quoted as evidence of how hard it is. That has been written up already. This page is about the two things the number should change: what you spend and when you finish.

Retakers do not come back once

Set 8,717 retake administrations against 3,760 people who retook and the average retaker generated more than two retake sittings. That division is ours; FLDOE publishes the two totals and not the ratio.

Which can mean two things and probably means both. Some candidates failed two different subtests and came back for each. Some failed the same subtest twice. Either way, the planning assumption "if I fail I will sit it again once" is thinner than the data supports.

The money, done properly

The fee schedule is in Rule 6A-4.0021(4)(b) and has been in force since 22 April 2019: $32.50 for a single subtest, $65 for two, $97.50 for three, $130 for the full battery. A retake is a fresh single-subtest registration, so it is always $32.50 no matter what you originally bought.

Our recommendation, and it is a recommendation rather than a finding: budget the middle row. Full battery plus one retake. If you clear everything first time you are $32.50 up, and if you do not you have not had to find money you were not expecting to spend.

The calendar, which is the part people get wrong

Two clocks run after a failed sitting and most candidates only know about one of them.

The first is the retake wait. Rule 6A-4.0021(3)(d) says at least thirty days must have elapsed since the previous administration of that examination before you sit it again. Thirty days from the sitting, not from the result.

The second is the essay scoring lag. The three multiple-choice subtests are scored at the center while you are still in the building. The essay goes to two raters and takes about four weeks.

Here is the useful consequence. Those two clocks run at the same time. If you sat the essay and failed it, your thirty days started the day you sat it, so by the time the result reaches you the wait is essentially over and you can book immediately. Nobody tells candidates this, and plenty of people lose a month to the belief that the thirty days starts when they find out.

Work backwards from the date you need to be certified

• A multiple-choice fail costs you thirty days plus whatever gap you need to actually study, plus finding an open Pearson appointment
• An essay fail costs you about four weeks to find out, and then very little more, because the wait ran in parallel
• Two failed subtests do not have to be sequential. The thirty days is per examination, so both clocks start on the day you sat them and you can retake both on the same later appointment

That last point is worth a sentence of its own. If you fail Mathematics and English Language Skills on the same day, you are not looking at sixty days. You are looking at thirty, and one appointment at $65.

What we cannot tell you from this figure

The 37.2% is a share of candidates, not a probability that applies to you. It also does not distinguish someone who scraped a fail on one subtest from someone who failed three. And it undercounts failure, because a candidate who fails and never comes back is not in it at all. The best-attempt pass rates are the better guide to how retakes end, and those are on the pass-rate reference page.

One more thing worth doing before you budget anything. Check whether you hold a qualifying GRE, SAT, ACT or CLT score. Rule 6A-4.0021(12) lets those satisfy the requirement subtest by subtest, and a candidate who does not need to sit a subtest cannot fail it.