Test scores

So it looks like the FAA test scores for passing is 70. I used to be in financial services and then investment banking where the passing score for the various tests were also 70 and as weird as it sounds, your peers actually made fun of you if you scored too high as that meant that you wasted too much time studying. I’m sure that’s not the case here, as everyone strives to be proficient in safety, procedure and policies but will your score be carried with you…meaning will others see what you got and judge you on it? I usually do well on standardized tests, but some of the material seems tricky and hard to grasp coming from a completely different world and trying to cram all the different material, abbreviations and terms.

Seuk,

Absolutely. So here’s the deal. First I’m not sure what you’ve been using to study but I believe you said you’re enrolled and scheduled to start soon? If that’s the case you should have received all the study materials for the FAA Knowledge exams. If you’re using anything other than the Kings and the Sheppard provided you’re doing yourself a disservice. Many people want to actual study and learn the material as their method for passing the written exams. This is a mistake. You’re not a pilot, the written exams follow no curriculum and with no actual reference the information can be very disconnected and difficult to grasp because you have no context. This is why virtually EVERYONE who is successful and does well uses the study material which relies solely on rote memorization. Period.

Now to your question. No one will ask to see your written exam scores EXCEPT (and this is a big EXCEPT) for the examiner who’ll be giving you your practical and oral exam for each license and rating. Now these folks no fully well that no one really studies for the Knowledge exams (besides using the guides) but they also know that those exams are incredibly easy to do well on provided you spend a little quality time working on them. I know more than a few DEs and everyone had told be that the first thing they do is look at the score. If it’s low (which is anything below 90) they automatically assume one of two things. You were either too lazy to spend time working on the simplest part of the process OR you did and couldn’t retain some basic info. Regardless you’re going into your checkride (which is the hard part) with an examiner who’s not thinking too fondly of you. So yea it matters.

Oh and btw if you’re at all concerned about being mocked about doing too well that’s not going to happen but you may be with a 70. Further when/if you get to an airline passing is usually 80 and sometimes higher.

Adam

Adam knocked it out the park but just gonna piggy back on some of his points if that’s ok. First, as Adam said, DPE’s will know what your score is as they develop a plan of attack for the oral exam based off of the questions that you missed. Legally, DPE’s cover every line item that correlates with the questions you missed so theoretically the more questions missed, the longer the oral. When I did my PPL someone told me that my score didn’t matter because no one will know but the DPE so I foolishly took their advice, barely studied and got a 73. My PPL oral lasted about 3 hours. About a year later, I started my instrument. I got a 93 on my IRA and from then on I haven’t scored below a 90 on the rest of the tests I’ve taken. My instrument oral was literally about an hour and a half, if that.

Also, I think that its important to make a good first impression with your DPE. As Adam said, going into a checkride with the DPE not thinking too fondly of you isn’t really the best move. After I failed my PPL oral, the DPE said that he had a pretty good idea I would fail before the exam even begun because of how low my score was and in his experience most people with scores as low as mine failed also. Thankfully, I haven’t failed another checkride since and as I mentioned before, I haven’t scored below a 90 on any of my writtens (thanks to Sheppard Air). Unfortunately, as embarrassing as it is to say, I had to learn the hard way by failing a checkride. Don’t make the same mistake I did and have to answer yes to the question, “Have you ever failed a checkride?” I try not to post super long responses but since I could relate to this I just simply wanted to share my experience with this same topic.

And as far as people making fun of you because of your high score, I’ve found it to be the opposite in flight school. People would ask me what I got on my written and I’d say a 73. Then its usually followed by, “Bro how’d you do so bad? Those things are so easy, its literally just memorizing the questions and answers!” So if you’re the type of person that cares about what people think then I guess that’s just more motivation to do well. I’m sure you’ll do well regardless, good luck.

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…my recommendation (not that it was asked for)? If the friends around you tell you that “just okay” is okay…find new friends.

Just okay, is not okay.

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Thanks for all of your replies and input. The young and hungry investment banking crowd of the late 90s on Wall Street were an interesting bunch to say the least.

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Sorry to interrupt. Would you suggest Kings over Sportys for PPL? Do you have a preference or opinion on one or the other? Thank you!

Dylan,

I am a huge fan of the Kings, I find their videos to be entertaining and very informative. But, I would just use the Study Buddy to pass the PPL exam. I know it sounds crazy, but don’t worry about necessarily learning the information, just focus on memorizing the answers so you can pass the test.

Chris

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Dylan,

I second all that Chris said. King’s courses are fantastic but for the writtens Study Buddy is plenty.

Adam

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That’s nice to hear, didn’t want to spend 250$ if I didn’t have too. Just go over the 900 practice questions over and over until I memorize it haha. Thank you guys! Guess I better get to studying!

Hey Dylan! I just took my private pilot written back in December and I used the ASA private pilot test prep book which you can get off amazon for I think $15. It was very useful to me since it showed all the figures and all the questions I got in the book were the exact same at the testing station! If you want to try that book out I highly recommend it!!

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Thank you so much! I will definitely look into it!

So I’m in the middle of my second week and took the test last Friday. My prep consisted of only going through the Kings courses and practice tests and I thought I’d ace it. I was getting consistently in the mid 90s in the practice tests so went in confidently. Unfortunately, all the stuff that I spent a lot of time working on (like reading charts, plotting, wind corrections, etc…) were a tiny part of the actual exam and most of it was stuff that I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to and didn’t show up in the practice exams at all. Almost stuff that I would consider to be minutiae.

…so if I had a tip for someone that’s getting ready to take the exam, I would perhaps look at a different study guide to supplement the Kings course. I passed and my score wasn’t horrendous, but it wasn’t anywhere near what I thought it would be going into it.

Hey Seuk, I’m going through the Kings Course right now. I’m about half way done and on the VOR navigation section of the course.

Are there any recommendations you’d say I should focus on more or less? I’m honestly having trouble fully understanding the VOR section, but everything else has made sense so far.

Thank you in advance!

I honestly can’t say as I think the questions are randomly generated from a bank, so you might get an entirely different set of questions as me. I made the mistake of prioritizing and and really focusing on what I thought was important (like estimate time, speed, wind correction, weight and balance, etc…) which take longer time to do since they require calculations and neglected a few other things that I thought were less significant which was a mistake. All the questions are weighted the same, so it doesn’t matter if you get one of those questions that take 3-5 minutes to compute or an “easy” one…they count as one.

I too was having a tough time with the VOR section and there was definitely a couple of them on the exam. I had to go through that video a couple of times and watch a youtube video on actual usage from a pilot to fully understand it. I actually think that if you study for this at the same time you start the flying lessons, it will be beneficial as you can actually relate to practical usage.

I’m not sure where you’re having the VOR issues, but for me, I would make the little diagram shown in the video and put place it on the chart where it said my location was. It took me a while to figure out that you are supposed to put it on the compass rose of the VOR itself. Once I figured that out, it became easier. I’m not sure if that helps. If you have specific questions, you could ask and me or someone that knows better could probably answer it.