United States
Hong KongHow the exam is scored
Your correct answers on the 115 scored questions are counted against a published cut of 81. There is no scaling and no curve, and the ten experimental questions are excluded entirely.
Straightforward, and unusually transparent for a licensing examination.
The mechanism
Count your correct answers on the 115 scored questions. Compare against 81. That is the whole calculation.
No scaling, no equating, no adjustment for the difficulty of the form you happened to sit.
Why a raw count is unusual
Most credentialing exams scale, which means nobody can tell you how many questions you need. The food manager credential does this - a scaled score of 75 sits behind a floating number of correct answers.
Here PSI publishes the count. Eighty-one. You know exactly what the target is.
- Administered
- 125
- Scored
- 115
- Needed
- 81
- As a percentage
- 70 percent
- Wrong answers allowed
- 34
They are trialled for future forms and excluded from the calculation. Since you cannot identify them, the practical advice is to answer all 125 as though they count and aim for about 90.
What this means for practice
Your mock scores mean something. On a raw-scored exam a 75 percent practice result is a genuine warning rather than a number that might be rescued by an easy paper.
Every question is worth the same
A three-minute earthwork calculation and a one-line lookup each move you one step towards 81.
That is the argument for the two-pass strategy: take the cheap marks first, because they are worth exactly as much as the expensive ones.
Common questions
How is the NASCLA exam scored?
As a raw count of correct answers on the 115 scored questions, against a published cut of 81.
Is it scaled?
No. There is no scaling, curve or equating between forms.
Do the experimental questions affect my score?
No. They are excluded entirely, though you cannot identify them.
How many can I get wrong?
34 of the 115 scored questions.
Are some questions worth more?
No. Every scored question carries the same weight.