ASCP Pass Rates by Program: 2025 Data and 11-Year Trends

By the Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team Last verified: August 6, 2026

Castleport Research is an independent research and reference section published by Castleport Test Prep.

The national number. In 2025, people testing through an accredited program passed an ASCP Board of Certification exam on the first try 80% of the time across 7,811 first-time exams. The two largest groups were Medical Laboratory Scientist (MLS) at 79% across 4,172 first-time exams and Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT) at 78% across 2,475.

The original finding. Across three programs at two schools with complete 2023 and 2024 counts, the posted tables showed 263 passers among 302 within-window examinees, or 87.1%. Those same 263 passers were 67.8% of all 388 graduates. The difference was 19.3 percentage points.

That second number is a denominator gap, not a certification-rate estimate. Mercer reports first-time passers within 12 months, while Weber reports graduates passing within the first year. The calculation shows how much the percentage changes when the same published passers are divided by examinees instead of all graduates.

Two different numbers are often called an “ASCP pass rate.” One is a national exam measure. One is a school outcome measure. They use different people, time periods, and attempt rules, so they should not be treated as the same fact.

Quick definitions:

• First-time pass rate — the share of first-time exams that ended in a pass.
• Repeat pass rate — the share of repeat exams that ended in a pass.
• Overall pass rate — first-time and repeat exams together. In 2025, it was lower than the first-time rate because repeat exams had a lower pass rate.

Data files: 2025 program table · 2015–2025 trend data · 2025 revision log · 2025 reconciliation · school denominator dataset

What are the ASCP pass rates by program in 2025?

The 2025 first-time pass rate was 80% across 7,811 accredited-program exams. The overall rate was 73%, and the repeat rate was 43%. MLS and MLT made up most of the reported volume, so their large sample sizes matter more than a perfect rate built on only a few exams.

Why the sample size beside each pass rate matters

A rate built on 13 exams is not the same kind of fact as a rate built on 4,172. Cytogenetics shows 100% in 2025 on 13 first-time exams. One different result would move that rate by about 7.7 points.

The small groups move more from year to year. From 2015 through 2025, Blood Banking ranged from 62% to 79%, and Cytogenetics ranged from 73% to 100%. MLS, backed by thousands of exams in recent reports, stayed between 78% and 85% across the full 11 years.

The rate tells you what happened. The exam count tells you how easily that rate can move.

Did ASCP change its 2025 pass-rate report?

ASCP published an earlier 2025 file and later linked a file labeled updated April 24, 2026. The current file reports 9,523 accredited-program exams; the earlier file reported 8,465. ASCP does not explain the change, so this page uses the current file and keeps the earlier values in a revision log.

Why the current 2025 totals do not fully tie out

The current file prints three different first-time exam totals, depending on how the number is obtained. The report headline says 7,811. The 12 printed program rows add to 7,821, while 9,523 overall exams minus 1,700 repeat exams equals 7,823.

Two program rows also miss by one exam. MLS prints 5,159 overall exams, but 4,172 first-time plus 986 repeat equals 5,158. MLT prints 3,024 overall exams, but 2,475 plus 548 equals 3,023.

The 2024 file has a smaller version of the same problem: its program rows add to 7,723 first-time exams while its headline says 7,718. These are whole exam counts, so rounding cannot explain the mismatch. ASCP does not give a reason, and we do not invent one. We keep every figure as printed and flag the differences so another reader can reproduce the check.

What have ASCP first-time pass rates been since 2015?

Across 11 annual reports, MLS moved from 81% in 2015 to 79% in 2025, while MLT moved from 83% to 78%. Both large groups stayed in the low-to-mid 80s through 2020, then dropped in 2021. Neither has gone above 79% since that year.

What the 11-year record shows

The clearest pattern is the shared 2021 drop in the two largest groups. MLS fell from 83% in 2020 to 79% in 2021. MLT fell from 84% to 78% in the same year.

PBT stayed in a narrow 90%–95% band for all 11 years. PA also stayed high, between 92% and 99%.

Molecular Biology had the largest endpoint drop, from 100% to 89%. Its 2025 result came from only 61 first-time exams, so the count belongs beside the percentage.

The largest swings came from small groups. Cytogenetics rose 18 points from 2015 to 2025 and reached 100% in 2024 and 2025, but the 2025 rate came from 13 first-time exams. Blood Banking covered a 17-point range with fewer than 100 first-time exams in 2025.

The annual report layouts changed over time. Older reports often printed first-time pass counts beside the rates, while newer reports also show exam counts. This page compares the published percentages across all 11 years and keeps every count in the downloadable file under the label used by its source.

What are the MLS and MLT ASCP pass rates?

In 2025, the MLS first-time pass rate was 79% across 4,172 exams, and the MLT first-time rate was 78% across 2,475. Including repeat exams, the overall rates were 72% for MLS and 71% for MLT. Repeat pass rates were 45% and 40%.

The first-time and repeat columns answer different questions. In 2025, about four of five first-time MLS and MLT exams ended in a pass. Fewer than half of repeat exams did.

Why is there no public list of ASCP pass rates for every school?

As of August 6, 2026, we did not find a current public table that names every school and gives its ASCP pass rate. ASCP publishes national figures by credential and gives programs their own results through the paid Program Performance Report. NAACLS requires each accredited program to make its outcomes readily available. When outcomes are posted online, the current guide says they must be on the program homepage or no more than one click away. Its public national summaries are grouped by program type rather than named school.

ASCP’s Program Performance Report, or PPR, is an optional annual subscription. The 2026 fee is $175 per program. ASCP says a program has no access to PPR data until the current invoice is paid, and student results appear in the report 10 business days after an exam.

ASCP also limits what a program may release from the PPR. Its public guidance says specific PPR data is not public and lists student-level information, subtest means, score comparisons, and the score histogram as private. A program may publish an overall pass rate, and ASCP provides an example sentence for doing that.

NAACLS uses a different system. Its current Standards Compliance Guide says those outcomes must be readily available. When a program posts them online, they must be on the program homepage or no more than one click away. NAACLS’s 2024 annual survey covered 614 programs and published grouped findings, including program-type averages, but not a current table of named schools and their ASCP rates.

So the school summaries are public but scattered. The detailed PPR data is private. A complete named-school table cannot be rebuilt from one official download.

What does a school’s ASCP pass rate actually count?

A school pass rate normally divides passers by graduates who entered the stated exam window, not by every graduate in the class. Across three programs at two schools with complete 2023 and 2024 counts, the posted-table rate was 87.1%, while the same passers were 67.8% of all graduates. That 19.3-point difference is the denominator gap.

A pass rate is a fraction. The top is the published number of passers. The bottom is the published number of examinees. A graduate outside that exam denominator is not counted as a pass or a fail.

That is a normal outcome-measure rule, not a hidden trick. But it means the number does not answer every question a reader may have. It shows how the reported examinees performed under the school’s stated window and attempt rule. It does not, by itself, show what share of the whole graduating class became certified.

The arithmetic is simple: 388 graduates minus 302 within-window examinees equals 86 graduates outside the exam denominator, or 22.2%. The source pages do not tell us what every one of those 86 people did later, whether some tested outside the window, or whether some used another accepted exam. “Outside this denominator” does not mean “failed.”

Two things belong beside this finding.

First, these programs are not the problem. They are the programs we could check because they published graduate, examinee, and passer counts. Their detail made the calculation possible.

Second, the three numerators are not worded in exactly the same way. Mercer reports first-time passers within 12 months. Weber reports graduates passing within the first year. That is why the combined result is labeled a posted-table denominator gap, not a standardized school certification rate.

One school’s full 11-year record

Mercer County Community College publishes graduates, examinees, first-time passers, and the rate for every year from 2015 through 2025. All 11 whole-number rates match the printed counts after rounding. The share of graduates in the exam denominator ranged from 44.0% to 91.7%.

The 2025 row shows why the labels matter: 10 first-time passers among 11 examinees gives 91%, while those 10 passers equal 40% of 25 graduates. The second percentage is not proof that only 40% became certified. It is only the published first-time-passer count divided by the full graduating class.

For completeness, adding the still-open 2025 rows from Mercer and Weber produces 364 published passers among 420 examinees, or 86.7%, and 364 passers among 582 graduates, or 62.5%. The provisional denominator gap is 24.1 points. It is not used as the headline because Mercer’s 2025 window was still closing and Weber marks 2025 as ongoing.

Why can two schools’ ASCP pass rates mean different things?

The window, exam, and attempt rule can change the number. NAACLS’s benchmark uses accepted certification exams taken within the first year after graduation and counts each graduate once. School pages sometimes add a first-attempt rule, use a shorter window, mix ASCP with another accepted exam, or show a year that is still open.

Timing is not just a label. A peer-reviewed study used 9,957 first-time ASCP examinees — 6,037 MLS and 3,920 MLT — and grouped them by the time from program completion to testing. Mean scores and pass rates were lower after the first three-month group for both exams. The paper does not prove that delay alone caused every difference, but it shows why a three-month result and a 12-month result should not be treated as the same measure.

How should a three-year school pass rate be calculated?

NAACLS says programs should pool raw student counts across the three active years. It says not to add the three yearly percentages and divide by three. The two methods can give different answers when class sizes differ.

A 100% year with four examinees and a 60% year with 40 examinees should not receive equal weight. Raw-count pooling gives each person the same weight.

Among the school pages reviewed here, several do not publish all three raw counts. When only yearly percentages and one combined percentage are shown, the method cannot be checked from the outside.

Why do ASCP and NAACLS pass rates look different?

ASCP’s national report counts exams in one calendar year. A school’s NAACLS outcome counts graduates over the last three active years under a one-year post-graduation rule. Both numbers can be correct while answering different questions.

The plain rule is simple: use the ASCP number for a national statement and name its year. Use the school’s own outcome for a statement about that school and name its date range, exam, and attempt rule.

NAACLS sets three outcome benchmarks.

NAACLS says a program below a benchmark is asked for an Action Plan rather than cited for the benchmark result itself. The plan is due about two months after the annual survey closes. NAACLS’s 2024 survey report says certification pass rates were the largest of the three outcome challenges in recent Action Plans.

How do I find a specific school’s ASCP pass rate?

Start on the program’s own page and look for “Program Outcomes,” “Accreditation,” or “NAACLS Outcomes.” When outcomes are posted online, the current NAACLS guide says they must be on the program homepage or no more than one click away. If the program provides them another way, the page should explain how to get them.

Finding a percentage is only the first step. These six checks tell you what the number means.

A missing count is not proof that a program is weak. It means the percentage cannot be fully checked from the page alone.

How did ASCP pass rates change from 2024 to 2025?

The headline first-time pass rate rose one point, from 79% to 80%. MLS did not change, and MLT rose one point. The two largest moves were in much smaller groups: Specialist in Cytology rose 13 points, and Histotechnology rose 11.

Read the last column with the change. The +13 result came from 15 first-time exams. HT, MB, and SBB each moved five points, but their 2025 exam counts ranged from 61 to 234. MLS and MLT, the two large groups, moved by zero and one point.

What score do you need to pass an ASCP exam?

The minimum passing scaled score is 400 on a scale from 100 to 999. ASCP says this passing score applies to all certification exams. A scaled score is not the percent of questions answered correctly.

ASCP uses criterion-referenced testing for its exams. Most certification exams use computerized adaptive testing, or CAT, in which the question set changes with the examinee’s performance. The result is measured against a fixed passing standard, not against how other people performed that day.

Source: ASCP Board of Certification, About the Examination and Program Performance Reports. Verified August 6, 2026.

How was this ASCP pass-rate dataset built?

We used ASCP annual reports, NAACLS standards and survey findings, and school outcome pages. Published national rates were transcribed as printed. Original percentages were calculated only where the source gave the needed integer counts.

National data. We normalized the accredited-program first-time pass rates from 11 ASCP reports covering 2015 through 2025. For 2025, we compared the earlier and current files, used the current file in the article, and kept both versions in a public revision log. We also checked the current report’s totals against its program rows.

School data. We used three programs at two schools that publish graduates, examinees, and passers. For all 17 school rows, the whole-number rate printed by the school matches the rate calculated from its counts after rounding. We then calculated passers divided by all graduates and the share of graduates inside the exam denominator.

Denominator-gap calculation. For complete 2023 and 2024 rows, the posted passers were added across the three programs: 263. The same numerator was divided first by 302 examinees and then by 388 graduates. The two results were 87.1% and 67.8%, a difference of 19.3 points.

Window review. We recorded the wording used by the current NAACLS guide and by each named school page. We did not treat a three-month note, a first-attempt rate, and a one-year any-attempt measure as equal.

Three-year math. Where raw counts were public, we compared the school’s combined figure with both the simple mean of yearly percentages and the raw-count pooled rate. Where counts were missing, we did not estimate them.

What we did not do. We did not buy the PPR, use private student data, fill missing cells, or turn pass rates into a school quality score.

Downloadable data. Each CSV carries source URLs and a verification date:

• ASCP pass rates by program, 2025
• ASCP first-time pass rates by program, 2015–2025
• ASCP 2025 report revision log
• ASCP 2025 internal reconciliation
• School denominator dataset, 2015–2025

What does this data not show?

The national table does not show the performance of a named school, and the school sample does not support a national estimate. The denominator-gap sample covers three programs at two schools because those pages publish unusually complete counts. Its value is that the arithmetic can be checked, not that the sample represents every program.

The school numerators are not identical. Mercer reports first-time passers within 12 months. Weber reports graduates passing within the first year. Their counts can be combined only under the broad label “published passers,” not as one standardized certification measure.

A graduate outside the denominator is not known to have skipped certification. The person may have tested later, taken another accepted exam, or not tested. The published tables do not answer that.

The newest school rows are still open. Mercer says its 2025 figures were current in July 2026, and Weber marks 2025 data collection as ongoing. That is why the main 19.3-point finding uses 2023 and 2024 only.

Weber’s graduate counts and certification counts sit in separate tables. Their year labels appear to match, but the page does not state that the two tables use identical start and end dates.

Small exam groups move sharply. A perfect rate on 13 exams should be read with its count, not as a stable long-term result.

The annual report layouts changed. We use the published rates for the 11-year trend and keep old count fields under their original labels rather than forcing them into one count series.

Published files can change. The 2025 revision proves that. Every table on this page carries a date so a later reader knows which version was checked.

This page is educational. ASCP BOC controls exam rules and eligibility. NAACLS controls accreditation standards. A program director is the direct source for a school’s current outcome details.

How to cite this page

This block gives the publication and dataset details needed to identify the page correctly. The source notes below also show when the original ASCP, NAACLS, or school page is the more direct source.

Publication: Castleport Research, Castleport Test Prep Page title: ASCP Pass Rates by Program: 2025 Data and 11-Year Trends URL: https://castleporttestprep.com/research/ascp-pass-rates-by-program/ Author: Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team Last verified: August 6, 2026 Dataset version: 1.0

Suggested page reference

Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team. “ASCP Pass Rates by Program: 2025 Data and 11-Year Trends.” Castleport Research. Last verified August 6, 2026. https://castleporttestprep.com/research/ascp-pass-rates-by-program/

Suggested dataset reference

Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team. ASCP Pass Rates by Program, 2015–2025, with 2025 Revision and School Denominator Analysis. Version 1.0. Snapshot date August 6, 2026.

For a national pass rate printed by ASCP, the ASCP annual report is the original source. For a named school’s posted result, that school’s outcome page is the original source. Castleport Test Prep produced the normalized 2015–2025 series, the two-file 2025 revision log, the internal reconciliation, the 19.3-point denominator-gap calculation, and the three-year averaging checks.

ASCP pass rates by program FAQ

These answers keep the year, denominator, and attempt type attached to each percentage. That is the difference between a number that can be checked and a number that can be misunderstood.

What is the ASCP MLS pass rate?

In 2025, the MLS first-time pass rate for accredited-program exams was 79% across 4,172 first-time exams. The overall rate was 72%, and the repeat rate was 45%.

What is the ASCP MLT pass rate?

In 2025, the MLT first-time pass rate was 78% across 2,475 first-time exams. The overall rate was 71%, and the repeat rate was 40%.

What is a good ASCP pass rate for a school?

NAACLS’s certification benchmark is a three-year average of at least 75% for graduates who take an accepted exam within one year. The rate should still be read with its counts, exact date range, exam agency, and attempt rule.

Is the first-time pass rate the same as the overall pass rate?

No. In the 2025 accredited-program report, the first-time rate was 80%, the repeat rate was 43%, and the combined overall rate was 73%.

Does a 100% pass rate mean a program is better?

Not by itself. A 100% rate on 13 exams can change by about 7.7 points with one different result. The count and the length of the record belong beside the percentage.

Does ASCP publish a school-by-school pass-rate table?

We did not find a current public table covering every named school as of August 6, 2026. ASCP publishes national credential figures and gives program-level results through the paid PPR. NAACLS requires each accredited program to make its outcomes readily available, and many programs post them online.

Where can I find a specific school’s ASCP pass rate?

Look on the program homepage or one click away under a label such as “Program Outcomes,” “Accreditation,” or “NAACLS Outcomes.” The current NAACLS guide sets that one-click rule when outcomes are posted online; a program using another access method should explain it.

Why can a school rate look different from the national ASCP rate?

The measures use different periods, populations, and attempt rules. ASCP’s national report counts exams in one calendar year, while a NAACLS school outcome uses graduates over three active years under a one-year testing rule.

Does a school pass rate show what share of all graduates became certified?

Not by itself. The denominator is usually graduates who entered the stated exam measure, not every graduate. In our three-program sample, the same 263 published passers produced 87.1% when divided by 302 examinees and 67.8% when divided by all 388 graduates.

How many accredited-program ASCP exams were reported in 2025?

The current ASCP file reports 9,523 accredited-program exams: 7,811 first-time and 1,700 repeat. Its program rows contain a small unexplained first-time count mismatch, which is shown in Table 4.

Related Castleport research

These pages use the same source-led method: keep the denominator, date, and reporting limit beside the headline number. They are independent reference pages with no product or provider recommendation.

• Praxis Pass Rates by College: 2023–24 Pennsylvania Data
• Medical Assistant Scope of Practice by State: 2026 Data

Primary sources

The article relies on the issuing bodies and original school outcome pages. The links below are the materials used for the headline figures, rules, and original calculations. All were checked August 6, 2026.

ASCP Board of Certification

1. Accredited Program Examination Pass Rates, 2025 — current file labeled updated April 24, 2026
2. Accredited Program Examination Pass Rates, 2025 — earlier public file
3. ASCP Examinations & Credentials — Insights & Analytics
4. ASCP examinations and credentials report, 2024
5. Program Performance Reports
6. Sharing PPR Information
7. Paying for the PPR
8. About the Examination

NAACLS

1. Standards Compliance Guide
2. CEO’s Corner: Findings from the 2024 Annual Survey

School outcome pages used in original calculations and comparisons

1. Mercer County Community College — MLT Program Outcomes
2. Weber State University — Medical Laboratory Sciences Program Outcomes
3. San Diego Miramar College — MLT Program Outcomes
4. Shoreline College — Medical Laboratory Technology
5. University of Wisconsin–Parkside — Medical Laboratory Concentration
6. Wichita State University — MLS Program Outcomes

Peer-reviewed literature

1. ASCP Board of Certification Research and Development Committee et al. “Impact of Time Lapse on ASCP Board of Certification Medical Laboratory Scientist (MLS) and Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT) Examination Scores.” Laboratory Medicine. 2015;46(3):e53–e58.