Only 51% of First-Time BCBA Candidates Passed in 2025

The BCBA exam pass rate for first-time candidates fell to 51% in 2025, according to the university pass rate reports the Behavior Analyst Certification Board posted on October 8, 2026. That's the lowest figure in the BACB's five-year table, and retakes passed at only 23%. The release also adds analyses of program size and accreditation, which matter if you're choosing a master's program now, because from 2032 only an accredited degree will qualify you to apply.

Key Dates for the 2025 BCBA Pass Rate Results

BCBA Exam Pass Rate by Year, 2021 to 2025

The BACB publishes five years of national results on its examination information page. The BCBA first-time pass rate was 60% in 2021 and hasn't been that high since. It dipped to 55% in 2022, rose a point to 56% in 2023, then fell to 54% in 2024 and 51% in 2025. The slide wasn't steady, but 2025 is the low point of the five years.

The table starts at 2021. Behavioral Health Business cites a 66% first-time rate for 2020, but none of the BACB documents we checked, including the BACB's 2020 university report, gives an overall rate for that year. So we stick to the BACB's own table and don't call 51% a record.

More BCBA Retakes Than First-Time Candidates

The second half of that table shows a different pattern. The BACB counted 13,196 retakes tested in 2025 against 9,955 first-time candidates, and retakes have outnumbered first-timers every year since 2022. By our count, 57% of the BCBA exams given in 2025 were retakes (13,196 of 23,151). The BACB labels the row as candidates tested and doesn't say whether someone who retakes twice in a year counts twice, so read it as retake exams and not necessarily separate people.

Retakes passed at 23% in 2025, down from 25% in 2024, and haven't topped 28% since 2021. The 51% and the 23% describe different groups of candidates, so they aren't odds you can swap between. If you do fail, the BACB sends a report with the percentage of questions you answered correctly in each content area. It also warns that each area has few items and tells you to "study all of the content" when you retake.

What BACB's CEO Says Is Driving the BCBA Pass Rate

In a March 2026 interview with Behavioral Health Business, BACB CEO Jim Carr gave two reasons for the drop. The first is the exam. He called it "a new exam covering some different content" and said "You're not really supposed to compare pass rates across eras of an examination," because each era has its own cut score. The second is program size. Carr said around 10 university programs produce around half of all first-time test takers, and "a number of those programs are very large and they have very low pass rates. So as they get larger, our pass rates decrease."

The BACB's report backs the size point with numbers. The 10 largest programs sent 5,446 of the 9,955 first-time candidates, which is 54.7%, and had a mean program pass rate of 42.9%. The report says they "had a considerable influence on the overall first-time pass rate." Weighted by candidates instead of averaged by program, the 10 come to about 47%, by our arithmetic from the rounded rates. All 10 are taught at least partly online.

Of the 10, Florida Tech's online certificate is the one well above the national rate, at 69% across 807 candidates. Arizona State (1,197 candidates, 44%) and Ball State (1,026, 50%) are the largest. The full list is in our BCBA pass rates by school table. Those two alone sent 2,223 first-time candidates, more than a fifth of everyone who tested for the first time in 2025. The report gives the numbers, not the reasons, and says pass rates "are not rankings, endorsements, or guarantees of future or individual performance." Behavioral Health Business reports that Carr's fix isn't changing the exam but "raising the bar for quality university training" so that lower-performing programs have to meet a higher standard.

What Changed on the BCBA Exam in January 2025

As of January 1, 2025, the BCBA exam is based on the 6th edition Test Content Outline, according to the BACB's transition guidance. Behavioral Health Business reports that the BACB discontinued task lists in favor of the outline at the same time. A new outline means a new base form, and the BACB sets a criterion-referenced passing score for each base form. That standard belongs to the 2025 exam, which is why Carr cautions against lining 2025 up with earlier years. The BACB says there are no upcoming changes to the exam or the outline. Our guide to how hard the BCBA exam is covers the format and how the score is set.

How to Read a University's BCBA Exam Pass Rate

The BACB's advice is to treat a program's rate as the odds for its own first-time candidates, "a 60% pass rate would roughly indicate a 3-in-5 chance of passing," and not to compare it with the national figure, "as the overall pass rate is impacted by several large programs." Then check how many candidates stand behind the number. A rate built on 13 people can swing far more than one built on 807.

Here's the arithmetic, ours and not the BACB's. The University of Houston, Clear Lake's 100% is 13 passes out of 13, so one more failure would have dropped it to 92%. Florida Tech's online certificate passed 69% of 807, and one more failure would barely move it.

The size cutoff is worded two ways. The BACB's pass rate page says data are not published for programs with "fewer than 6 first-time candidates in a year," while the BCBA report says a program is included only if it had "more than six." The report's own tables list programs with exactly six, such as the University of North Carolina Wilmington at 100%, so 6 or more is what actually applies. Programs with fewer can be combined across 2024 and 2025, and the report marks those with an asterisk. In all, the report covers 204 programs and 8,558 first-time candidates, 86.0% of the 9,955. The other 1,397 aren't represented, and the BACB notes that people who first sat the exam in 2025 may have finished their program earlier.

Accreditation shows up in the numbers. The 25 ABAI-accredited programs averaged 79.3%, against 53.2% for the 179 other reported programs, a gap of 26.1 points. Two cautions apply. These are means of program rates, so an 8-candidate program counts as much as an 800-candidate one. And by our count the accredited programs total 295 first-time candidates, about 3% of the 8,558. The report compares averages and doesn't say accreditation causes the gap. Our list of ABAI-accredited ABA programs shows which programs qualify today.

BCaBA Pass Rate in 2025: 60% on the First Try

The BCaBA exam went the other way. According to the BACB's examination page, 60% of 1,196 first-time candidates passed in 2025, up from 54% of 1,011 in 2024. The first-time rate has bounced around since 2021: 61%, 49%, 56%, 54%, then 60%. Retakes passed at 30% of 1,019, up from 22% in 2024. The BACB's university report says 2025 was the first year the BCaBA exam was based on the 6th edition outline.

The BCaBA university report is smaller than the BCBA one. By our count it lists 18 programs and 557 first-time candidates, under half of the 1,196, and it has no accreditation or high-volume analysis. The three largest are Florida Tech's online assistant certificate (114 candidates, 79%), Florida International's online B.A. track (88, 56%) and the University of West Florida's health sciences program (80, 50%). The same threshold applies: programs need six first-time candidates, and the same advice about candidate counts holds.

RBT Exam Pass Rates by 40-Hour Training Provider

The RBT exam pass rate nationally was 75% for 109,341 first-time candidates in 2025, and 38% for 54,674 retakes. Every RBT applicant has to finish a 40-hour training, and the BACB publishes a pass rate report for those providers. It covers providers that were publicly available and had 10 or more first-time RBT candidates in 2025, which by our count is 51. The spread is wide, from 8.1% to 100%. The BACB's top table lists nine providers at 90% or better, and by our count 13 are below 50%.

Here are the providers with more than 1,000 first-time candidates:

Read it with the BACB's own warning: the names come from what applicants typed on their applications, and candidates may have taken the exam in a different year than they trained. Still, the gap among large providers is hard to ignore, from 36.7% to 86.3%. If you can pick your training, check the provider here before you pay, and weigh small providers loosely, since a rate on 12 candidates is noisy. If your employer assigns the course, that's no reason to skip the exam prep in our RBT exam guide. Our 40-hour RBT training guide covers what the course must include.

Questions to Ask a Program Before You Enroll

1. How many of your graduates took the exam for the first time last year, and how many passed? The BACB leaves out programs with too few candidates, and 1,397 candidates in 2025 aren't in the report at all, so a small program may have to tell you itself.
2. What were your rates in the two years before that? The BACB tells readers to weigh pass rates with prior-year results, and some small programs report two years combined.
3. Does your published rate count students who finished all their coursework with you? The BACB counts only people who earned a qualifying degree from the program or completed all of the Pathway 2 coursework in one program.
4. Is the degree ABAI- or APBA-accredited? From January 1, 2032, that decides whether it qualifies you to apply at all.
5. Does your number include people who finished the program years earlier? The BACB notes that its data cover people who took the exam for the first time that year, which might include people who completed the program before it.
6. What support do you give students who fail the first attempt? Only 23% of BCBA retakes passed in 2025, so a program's help after a failure matters as much as its help before the exam.
7. How does your coursework map to the nine exam domains? Behavior-Change Procedures and Concepts and Principles are 14% of the exam each, and a program should show you where it teaches them.
8. What support do you give students at your size? The 10 programs with more than 100 first-time candidates averaged 42.9%, so ask a big program how it keeps supervision and feedback personal.