Same Hours, Different Practice Scores: What 28 EPPP Results Showed

Members who passed the EPPP and members who did not studied about the same amount with us before the exam.

About 27 hours each. Hours were never the problem.

What did differ was their score on a full-length practice exam. This post shows both numbers, what they can and cannot tell you, and what we changed because of them.

The limits come first. These are self-reported results from a small group. They are not a pass rate, and nothing here shows that a study habit caused an outcome.

Who is in this review

As of October 4, 52 members have told us how their real EPPP went: 28 passed and 24 did not.

We could only study the people where we know the exam date and what they did before it. So this review covers 28 members who reported an exam date and joined us before that exam. 17 passed and 11 did not. We counted only activity dated before exam day.

We left out 24 reports:

• 18 had no exam date.
• 1 was not linked to an account.
• 5 took their exam before they joined us.

A full-length practice exam here means at least 150 questions, with 95% or more of them answered.

Same effort

Before the exam (median)	Passed (17)	Did not pass (11)
Study time	1,593 minutes	1,608 minutes
Quizzes	34	38
Days with any study	19	16

That is a 15-minute gap in study time, in the other direction from what most people would guess. Quizzes and study days are close too.

If you have been counting hours to decide whether you are ready, this is the part to sit with. In our data, the two groups put in the same work. Hours could not tell them apart.

Different practice scores

Nineteen of the 28 took at least one full-length practice exam before test day: 14 who passed and 5 who did not.

Full-length practice score (median)	Passed (14)	Did not pass (5)
First one	76%	68%
Last one	83%	69%
Best one	84%	74%

Passers started higher and climbed. The five who did not pass started lower and stayed closer to where they began. Five people is a very small group, so read that row as a hint, not a finding.

Here is the same group sorted by their best full-length score before the exam:

Best full-length practice score	Passed	Did not pass
80% or higher	10	1
75% to 79%	2	1
70% to 74%	2	2
Under 70%	0	1

Of the 11 people whose best score reached 80% or higher, 10 passed. Below 80%, it was split: 4 passed and 4 did not.

What this cannot tell you

80% is not a guarantee. One person in the 80%-plus row did not pass. Their best score was 91%. Most of their full-length exams were taken in "Learn as you go" mode, where you see each answer and explanation as you go. That mode is built for learning, so a score from it may not show what you can do cold. We wrote more about this pattern in Practice Scores Tracked the Margin, Not the Pass.

Under 80% is not a fail. Four people passed with a best score in the 70s. Our readiness post explains why a single cutoff cannot sort these outcomes cleanly.

Skipping a practice exam did not cause anyone to fail. More of the passers took a full-length practice exam than the non-passers did. But 4 of the 6 non-passers who skipped one barely used the app at all, 500 minutes or less. Among members who studied 1,000 minutes or more, nearly everyone took one: 11 of 12 passers and 5 of 6 non-passers. So that gap mostly tells us who was using the program, not what made the difference.

This is not a pass rate. It is 28 people, and only 19 with a practice score. Passers tell us their results more often than non-passers do. A missing result is not a fail. And a number that goes along with passing is not the same as a number that causes it.

How to use this

Do not judge your readiness by hours logged. Two people can log the same 27 hours and walk in with very different footing.

Take a full-length practice exam in "Measure where you stand" mode, where nothing is shown until the end. That score is the closest thing in our data to a signal. If your best is 80% or higher, you are in the range where nearly everyone in our data passed. If you are in the 70s, passing is possible, but your cushion is thin. Spend your next sessions on your weakest weighted domains, then test again.

Either way, review the misses. The research on whether practice tests work is clear that the score matters less than what you do with the questions you got wrong.

What we changed so the next person knows what to do

The members who did not pass worked as hard as the members who did. So if someone puts in the hours and still does not know where they stand, that is on us to make clearer. Here is what is live now.

A nudge to take a timed run. Since September 20, if your exam is three weeks out or closer and you have not finished a full-length exam in "Measure where you stand" mode, your dashboard asks you to take one while there is still time to act on it.

Unfinished exams no longer count. Since the same day, an exam you started and left no longer counts as a full-length practice exam. Your readiness card now reflects only the runs you finished.

We removed a guessing trick from our practice exams. A member who passed the EPPP wrote to tell us that the longest answer choice was usually the right one. We checked, and they were right. Across our 20 full-length practice exams, 4,500 questions in all, the correct answer was the longest choice, or tied for longest, 48.6% of the time. On some exams it was 60%. On the free practice exam it was about 61%. With four choices, a blind guess is right 25% of the time.

So on October 4 we made the wrong answers longer. We did not change the questions or the correct answers. Now the correct answer is the longest choice 25.0% of the time across the full-length exams, between 24% and 27% on each one, and about 25% on the free exam. Picking the longest answer now works no better than guessing.

Why this matters for this post: if your practice score is the signal, it has to be an honest one. It should show what you know, not a trick that will not help you on the real EPPP. Every score in the tables above was taken before this fix. If you took full-length practice exams before October 4, your scores may run a little high. One fresh full-length exam now will give you a cleaner read.

Thank you to the member who flagged it. Reports like that one make the practice exams better for everyone who comes next.

We also rebuilt questions and lessons in the areas that cost members the most points. That work is in What 8 EPPP Score Reports Showed Us, and What We Changed.

Keep the reports coming, either way

If you have taken the real exam, you can tell us how it went without agreeing to have your name, score, or comments published. Permission to use a testimonial is a separate choice.

Every report, pass or not, makes this picture clearer for the next person. If you are still preparing, take a full-length practice exam in "Measure where you stand" mode and see where you are today.