Real Estate Exam Passing Score by State: Percent, Raw Count or Scaled 75

Passing standards in 12 states, checked October 28, 2026

There is no national passing score. Each state commission sets its own cutoff, usually with its testing vendor, and most states in this table score the two portions separately, so you must reach both cutoffs.

Three patterns stand out. Most PSI states checked put the national cutoff at 56 of 80, which is 70%, while Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska ask for 75% (60 of 80 in Colorado and Nebraska) and North Carolina sets 75 on each section. Iowa is the only state checked whose scoring rules add the two portions together, and even there the state portion has its own floor. New Jersey and California score a single exam.

Percent, raw count or scaled: three ways to state a cutoff

The same idea, a minimum level of competence, is expressed in three ways:

• Raw count. Texas says its score "is the number of questions answered correctly," so 56 means 56 correct answers out of 80 scored items.
• Percent. Arizona reports "the percentage of questions answered correctly on the examination," and you need 75%.
• Scaled. Pennsylvania converts raw scores to a scale from 0 to 100 and says the scaled score "is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly." A 75 there can't be turned into a fixed number of correct answers, even though the handbook's exam table prints the minimum as "75%."

Behind all three is the same process. Each exam comes in several versions, called forms, and Pearson VUE's handbooks say a statistical procedure called equating keeps form difficulty comparable. The passing score itself was set by the state's commission or department "in conjunction with" Pearson "after a comprehensive study," in the words of the Arizona, Texas and Pennsylvania handbooks. Cutoffs can change when an outline changes: Kansas's commission reported in April 2024 that changes to its state outline led Pearson VUE to run a standard-setting review with six Kansas subject matter experts, after which the commission adopted a new broker cut score.

Unscored pretest or experimental items never count toward these totals. Pearson VUE says its pretest items look exactly like scored ones, and PSI's bulletins give no way to spot experimental items, so counting answers you feel sure of during the exam won't tell you where you stand.

What your score report shows, pass or fail

Results arrive quickly. Pearson VUE's Arizona and Texas candidates leave the test center with an official score report, PSI shows the score on screen at the end, and California gives electronic exam results on completion.

What you see depends on the result:

• If you pass, several states tell you less than you might expect. Texas marks the report "pass." California says examinees who pass "are not informed of their final score," and Pennsylvania and Nebraska report numeric scores only to failing candidates. Arizona's passing report includes the link to the license application.
• If you fail, the states checked give you a numeric score and a breakdown by content area. Texas's report covers the portion you failed, and PSI's bulletins describe a diagnostic report of strengths and weaknesses by topic.

Read the breakdown carefully. Arizona's handbook says the content-area percentages can't be summed or averaged to get your overall score, because each area has a different number of questions, and California's DRE says the same. A content area with 7 items moves about 14 percentage points per question, so a low area percentage can come from one or two misses.

To turn a breakdown into practice that targets the right areas, accuracy tracking by content area planned for launch names the area to work on next.

Reading a near miss

A failing score close to the cutoff tells you the gap is small. It doesn't tell you which questions were scored, and in Pennsylvania it doesn't convert to a number of correct answers. What it does tell you is that a focused retake plan on your weakest areas is realistic. Questions you missed are the best material to study from, and explanations planned for every answer, right or wrong, show why each wrong option fails.

The retake guide lists how soon you can book again in each state and whether a passed portion carries over. The free retake planner turns your score report into a week-by-week plan.

For the bigger picture on difficulty, including official first-time pass rates, see how hard the real estate exam is. When you start practicing again, Fix It, planned for launch, saves each missed question for another try.