Monday, October 29, 2007

CISA Exam Scaled Score System

There was a question about CISA scaled score system.
Here is an excerpt from ISACA's explanations:

"...Beginning with the June 2007 exam administration, exam scores are being reported on a scale from 200-800. This is a change from the 1-100 point scale that was used previously. Regardless of the scoring scale, the overall exam pass/fail results are the same. In other words, no more, or fewer candidates pass or fail the exam under the 200-800 scale scoring as did under the 1-100 scale scoring....

...A scaled score of 450 or higher is required to pass, which represents the minimum consistent standard of knowledge as established by ISACA's CISA Certification Board...."

According to isaca.org CISA exam is divided into 6 areas:

  • IS Audit Process - 10%

  • IT Governance - 15%

  • Systems and Infrastructure Life Cycle - 16%

  • IT Service Delivery and Support - 14%

  • Protection of Information Assets - 31%

  • Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - 14%


Each area of exam is assessed by the scale from 200 to 800. Total score is calculated accrording to the numbers above. And if it is 450 or higher, you should open a bottle of fizz :)

UPD: I received following info from ISACA Certification Department:

"The web site location for the CISA job practice areas that you have looked at is correct. The percentages that are listed there are indicating the percentage of questions in a particular job practice area that are on the exam itself. The percentage of questions in each area is not considered when the exam is scored by us."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

sir,

it is still not clear how the total marks are arrived at. at one point isaca says that the cut-off for pass is 75 percentile. at another point it says that one should score 450 marks. we tend to equate 75 percentile with 450 and think that the total marks is 600 and one should score 450 out of it (or thereabouts since it is percentile and not percentage). but what we get is 200 questions with a rider that some questions are put for research and analysis purpose only and are not valued. when we get the domain-wise score card, the total score adds upto around 3200 (in my case) and my score is shown as 510. i also gather that there are people who have final score in excess of 600 which implies that the total score is 800. in such case the cut-off marks for pass work out to 56 percent only (450 out of 800) and not 75.

can you throw some light on these ambiguities