NE-BC format, scoring and pass rates

Who may apply: BSN + 2,000 h unit leadership, with recent leadership CE on top. The degree must be in nursing, and the hours must come from a role responsible for a unit's or department's daily operations. Each condition and the proof you may need: eligibility.

• Questions: 150 in one sitting. Only 125 count; the other 25 unscored pretest questions are being trialed and cannot be told apart.
• Item type: Multiple choice, 4 options, single best answer.
• Time: 3 hours, about 72 seconds per item.
• Where: at a Prometric test center. The current handbook lists no remote-proctored option.
• When: Apply year-round; after approval you have a 120-day window to test. If the dates fail you, one move to a new window is possible ($100 window move): see cost.

Weights: Human Resource Management 32% · Quality and Safety 17% · Business Management 16% · Health Care Delivery 35%.

Health Care Delivery alone accounts for 44 of 125 scored questions; our pages split it into ethics and regulation and care delivery. This outline replaced the 2021 version on October 15, 2025. What moved, and what that means for older study material: study guide.

Pass mark: A scaled score of 350 on a scale that tops out at 500. Subject-matter experts set the standard item by item (the modified Angoff method), and your raw result on the scored items is then placed on the scale (handbook). No percentage of correct answers is published.

Results: Pass/fail on the Prometric score portal after the exam; ANCC has the result within 24–48 hours. A fail comes with feedback by domain, a guide for planning the next round of study.

First-time pass rate: 63% of first-time candidates in 2025 (907 of 1,443). Earlier years: 66% in 2024 (874 of 1,317) and 66% in 2023 (759 of 1,149).

How hard is it? By the published numbers, harder to pass than the advanced exam. The NEA-BC's first-time rate was 73% (2025), and it was higher than this exam's in 2024 and 2023 too (70% and 75%). No reason is given. Two plausible ones, our reading rather than an official one: candidates for the unit-level exam are often earlier in their leadership careers, and two-thirds of its scored items sit in the two broadest domains.

Rule: After 60 calendar days, up to 3 attempts in any 12 months, with a new retest application and fee. The retest application opens a few days after the exam, and eligibility is reviewed again, so the hours and CE you list must still be recent enough to qualify. No retest amount appears on ANCC's NE-BC page, in its handbook or on its scores and retest page: see cost.

The credential runs 5 years. Renewal is 75 CE hours + 1 of 8, at $350 for non-members. The categories and the in-cycle rule are explained once, for the four exams on this site that share them: ANCC renewal.