Your CFA mock score is a range, not a number
You sit a full mock, you get 68%, and the number feels definitive. It is not. A mock is a sample of what you know: 180 questions drawn from a curriculum with hundreds of learning outcomes. Sit a different paper of the same kind next week, knowing exactly the same things, and you would not score 68% again. You would score a few points either side.
How wide is the range?
Wider than most candidates expect. Treat each question as a draw that you either get right or wrong, and the arithmetic of sampling says how far a score can wander from the level behind it. For a 68% on a 180-question paper, the level behind the score is somewhere between about 62% and 73%, nine times in ten.
Halve the paper and the range widens. The same 68% on a 90-question half paper could stand for anything from about 60% to 76%. That is why a half paper is a good way to find out roughly where you stand, and a poor way to decide whether you are ready.
What this means for reading your scores
- One mock is weak evidence. A jump from 64% to 72% between two papers feels like progress, and it might be. But the two ranges, roughly 58–70% and 66–77%, overlap. It could also be two different samples of the same candidate.
- Several mocks together are strong evidence. Three full papers averaging 68% are, in effect, one 540-question paper, and the range tightens to roughly 65–71%. This is the real argument for sitting more than one full mock: not practice alone, but a measurement you can trust.
- The trend matters more than any single score. A line through five papers says more about whether you are improving than the gap between the last two.
What no mock can tell you
A mock measures you against that paper. It cannot tell you whether you will pass. CFA Institute sets the minimum passing score for each exam through its own standard-setting process and does not publish it, and papers from different sources are not equally hard. A 70% on one provider's mock and a 70% on another's are not the same achievement.
So pick a target you are working towards, knowing it is a rule of thumb, and judge your scores against it with their ranges attached. If your recent papers put you clear of it, good. If the range straddles it, the honest answer is "too close to call", and the useful response is another paper and another round of work on the topics that cost you marks, not a coin toss about whether to book the exam.
Try it on your own scores
The mock-score readiness checker does this arithmetic for you. Put in your scores, oldest first, and it shows the range behind each, the trend across them, and the chance that the level behind your recent papers clears your target.