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How the PTCE is scored, and what the number means

You get a scaled score between 1000 and 1600, and 1400 passes. Of the 90 questions you answer, only 80 are scored; the other 10 are unmarked pretest questions PTCB is trialing for future exams.

Published August 22, 2026

A scaled score is not a percentage, and the difference trips up a lot of people staring at a practice result. PTCB converts your raw number of correct answers into the 1000 to 1600 range using a conversion it does not publish. That conversion accounts for the fact that no two forms of an exam are exactly equal in difficulty, so a slightly harder form needs slightly fewer correct answers for the same scaled score.

Because the conversion is unpublished, nobody outside PTCB can tell you the raw score that produces a 1400. Any prep product that shows you a 1000 to 1600 number, ours included, is projecting from its own questions rather than reproducing PTCB's curve. Treat it as a direction of travel and not as a prediction.

The 10 questions that do not count

Ten of the 90 are pretest items. PTCB mixes them in unmarked so they can gather performance data before those questions go live on a scored form. You cannot identify them, which means the only sensible approach is to treat every question as scored. A question that feels strange or unusually specific is not a signal you have found one.

When you find out

• An unofficial result appears on screen right after the post-exam survey, and the test center can print you a copy
• The official score report lands in your PTCB account, typically within three weeks
• The unofficial result indicates how you did but is not final

What the score does not tell you

The report gives you a scaled score and pass or fail. It does not tell you which questions you missed, and it does not break your performance down by knowledge area in a way you can study from. That makes practice diagnostics more valuable than they would be on an exam with a detailed report, because your own practice history is the only per-domain picture you will get.

How we project a score, and why we say projected

Our readiness number is built from how much of each domain you have proven rather than from your hit rate on questions you happen to have seen. Every concept counts once, a domain is weighted by its share of the exam, and a concept you have never met counts as zero. That is a deliberately harder number to move than a percentage correct, and it is the reason re-answering questions you already know does not raise it. The full arithmetic is in the FAQ, and the blueprint guide covers the domain weights it uses.

Sources: PTCB's certification pages and guidebook for the scale, the passing score, and result timing. The raw-to-scaled conversion is not published by PTCB, so no one can reverse it accurately. You can practice free with no email or card and watch the projection move: start a plan.

Related

• The 2026 PTCE blueprint, domain by domain
• What changed on the 2026 PTCE, and what you can stop studying