The general portion versus the Texas portion

Two portions, one result. That second half of the sentence does most of the work on this page, because it means there is no such thing as passing the general portion and failing Texas. There is one scaled score and it comes from all 130 scored questions together.

The published section counts

Pearson publishes a question count for each numbered section of the content outline. These are its counts, not our estimates.

What the counts tell you that the split does not

Three things fall straight out of the table.

The biggest single section on the whole paper is section 5, accident and health types of policies, at 16 questions. Not a life section. Candidates who think of this as a life insurance examination with some health bolted on have the weighting backwards: sections 1 to 4 are the life side and come to exactly half the general portion, while sections 5 to 7 cover health and social insurance and come to a bit over a third of it.

The largest Texas section, section 10 at 14 questions, is bigger than five of the nine general sections. So the Texas portion is not uniformly small. It is concentrated: statutes common to both lines carry nearly half of it.

And the smallest thing on the paper is Texas HMO regulation, at 3 questions. It has its own numbered section, its own heading and its own sub-items in the outline, which is precisely why people spend a weekend on it.

Which portion is actually harder

Per question, the Texas portion. It is statute, so the answer is whatever the Insurance Code says rather than whatever is reasonable, and the difference between one statutory deadline and the next one along is not something you can reason your way to. General insurance concepts, by contrast, hang together. If you understand why an insurable interest has to exist at inception, you can work out several questions from the one idea.

In total, the general portion. It is more than three times the size. A candidate who is solid on general principles and shaky on Texas statute is in a far better position than one who has memorized the Code and cannot tell a modified endowment contract from an ordinary one.

The one thing the split changes about your studying

It sets the ratio. Roughly three quarters of your hours on general principles, roughly one quarter on Texas statute, adjusted by whatever your own timed results say. That is the whole recommendation, and it is worked through properly in how to split time between general and Texas.

Our opinion, and it is the strongest one we hold about this examination: the 100/30 split is the most useful fact a candidate can know, and almost nothing written about this exam is organized around it. Study material is usually organized by topic in outline order, which puts nine general sections and four Texas ones in front of you as thirteen equal-looking chapters.

The concession is that our own Texas material is better sourced than our general material, not worse. We hold 47 chapters of the Texas Insurance Code, so a Texas answer can cite the section it turns on. The general questions are explained by reasoning rather than by citation, because general insurance principles are not in a statute book. If you want the Texas half done properly you are well served here. It is just not where most of your marks are.