Failed the Texas P&C exam? What to do next

Short version

You can schedule a new attempt at the Texas General Lines Property and Casualty exam the next day, with no limit on attempts. Each attempt costs $49. Before rebooking, use your score report and practice results to choose the topics you need to review.

A failed attempt does not close off the standard resident licensing route. Give yourself time to identify what needs more work before choosing another date.

The Texas P&C retake rules

These rules come from the Pearson VUE candidate handbook.

You can schedule a new attempt the next day. The handbook's wording is that a candidate who failed can schedule for a new exam within one day. There is no mandatory cooling-off period, no two-week wait, no thirty-day wait. Texas is unusually permissive on this compared with other states and other licensing exams.

There is no limit on attempts. The handbook states plainly that there is no limit to the number of attempts a candidate can make on the same exam. You will see claims elsewhere that Texas allows four attempts in a twelve-month period. That is not in the handbook and it is not a Texas rule.

Each attempt costs $49. There is no reduced retake rate. The fee is paid when you book. It is non-refundable except as provided in Pearson VUE’s change/cancellation policy.

The two different 24-hour rules, which are constantly confused

This trips people up because two separate rules both involve 24 hours, and several prep sites merge them into one.

The second rule applies to your first attempt exactly as much as your fifth. It is a scheduling constraint, not a punishment for failing.

The practical effect is that the soonest you can sit again is governed by booking notice and seat availability at your test center, not by any rule about retaking. So if you are told there is "a 24-hour wait between attempts," the number is right by coincidence and the reasoning is wrong. One widely circulated guide manages to state both versions on two different pages of the same site.

What has not changed

Passing is still the same target: 130 scored questions, 150 minutes, a scaled score of 70 to pass. Failing does not alter the exam, raise the bar, or affect your eligibility to apply for a license once you do pass. For the standard resident route, your 12-month application window starts when you pass, so a failed attempt does not start any clock against you.

What your score report actually tells you

This is where most advice goes wrong, so it is worth being precise.

You leave the test center holding an official score report. Per the handbook, what it contains is a pass or fail result and a scaled score between 0 and 100, with 70 as the passing mark. You can also pull it up later by logging into your Pearson VUE account.

Here is the part that matters, and the handbook is unusually direct about it: the scaled score is not the number of questions you got right, and it is not the percentage you got right. A score below 70 tells you how close you came to passing, and that is all it tells you.

So if your report says 64, you cannot work backwards to "I got 83 of 130 right." Scores are equated across different forms of the exam to correct for one form being slightly harder than another, then placed on a common 0 to 100 scale. The number is a position relative to the passing standard, not a count.

Use any diagnostic information your report provides. The handbook describes whole-exam scoring, not separate passing requirements for each section. Your practice results can help identify topics to revisit, but they cannot reconstruct exactly which scored questions you missed on the licensing exam.

Working out which section cost you

The exam is built from eight scored sections. Six come from the general knowledge outline and two are Texas-specific. They are not equally weighted, which matters a great deal when you are deciding where to spend your time.

That is 100 scored questions of general insurance knowledge and 30 of Texas law and regulation, 130 in total.

Three things follow from the shape of that table.

Record broad topics to revisit. Note subjects you felt uncertain about, such as policy exclusions or licensing responsibilities. Do not write down or reconstruct exam questions. Compare those topics with your practice results.

Consider section size alongside your practice results. The two biggest general knowledge sections account for 45 of the 130 scored questions. Pearson scores the exam as a whole, so performance across sections contributes to one result. Larger weak areas deserve attention, but there is no separate passing threshold for each section.

Check the Texas sections separately. 30 questions of Texas statute and rule is an important part of your preparation, and it is the part that general insurance knowledge, prior industry experience, and out-of-state study material do not prepare you for. It is also the part most likely to be out of date in older study material, because the citations change.

If you cannot tell from recall alone, the more reliable route is to work through practice questions section by section rather than in mixed sets and compare your accuracy across the eight. Mixed practice tells you your overall level, which you already know. Section-by-section tells you where the problem is. The exam-format guide sets out what each section covers in detail.

About the retake pass rate

Over August 2025 through July 2026, the repeat-attempt pass rate was 37.4 percent, compared with 59.2 percent for first-time attempts. There were 8,679 repeat sittings, of which 5,432 did not pass. These are counts of attempts, not necessarily distinct people.

The reports do not establish why the groups differ or predict your personal chance of passing. Our pass-rate guide explains the source window and the limits of these statistics.

A reasonable plan from here

Choose a new date after reviewing your practice results across the outline. Work on weak topics, explain your mistakes in your own words, and then try a mixed timed set. Improvement on practice questions is useful feedback, not a guarantee of a passing licensing score.

For the standard resident route, the application window begins after passing. See the licensing requirements for the sequence and exceptions, and the cost guide for planning another exam fee.