....As an added benefit, scaling scores makes it much easier for us to communicate the passing score for our exams—a score of 700 is required to pass any MCP exam. I have to manage ~125 live exams, and if someone asks me what the passing score is for a particular exam, a common cut score across all our exams simplifies things. What’s the cut score for 298? 700. 350? 700. 640? 700. 680? 700. By the way, scaling scores is not unique to Microsoft; most certifying organizations provide scaled scores rather than raw scores for these reasons.

Here’s the key that bears repeating—700 is not equal to 70%. I hear this a lot… I need to answer 70% of the questions correctly to pass the exam. This is not true; in fact the actual percentage of items that you have to answer correctly varies for exam to exam and can range from roughly 50% to 85%. I can’t tell you what the range is exactly for our exams or what the cut score percentage is for a specific exam, but I can tell you that it varies—on some exams you need to answer a higher percentage of items correctly to pass than you need to on other exams. The cut score for a particular exam is based on input from SMEs, the minimum qualifications for competency, and the difficulty of the item pool. Carrying this one step further, this also means that the score that you see in the score report is not the percentage of items that you answered correctly (unless you answered all the questions correct (1000=100%) or incorrect (0=0%), but these are the only exceptions). It’s simply an indication of your performance in relation to the cut score.

Are you sensing that this is a pet peeve of mine? Why do I care so much? I care because Microsoft doesn’t arbitrarily decide what the cut score should be on an exam. We set the cut score based on input from SMEs who help us determine the point at which minimal competency is demonstrated given the target audience for the exam. Every step of the exam development process is driven by SME input; nothing is done arbitrarily, including setting the cut score....