Primary Certification

Part I Examination: Displaced Candidate FAQ

After Pearson VUE's seat displacement announcement and exercise over the last couple of weeks, candidates who were unexpectedly displaced understandably have questions. Here are a few of the most common questions we've been answering. We hope the responses provide more context behind how the events played out the way they did. Candidates, as always you may contact us with any questions.

Why aren’t you offering remote proctoring or a virtual option?
We looked into this quite seriously with more than one vendor. Ultimately, we were unable to find a solution that would allow us to offer a secure, high-stakes, remotely proctored examination within this calendar year. We will continue to consider all options in the future, taking into account the ABPMR’s duty to the public to ensure a reliable credential, as well as candidates’ need for a consistent and high-quality exam experience.

Why haven’t additional dates been made available to take the exam?
November is a lot later than August. We made more than one request for our candidates to be offered multiple options/dates/date ranges, but given Pearson VUE’s own limitations due to COVID-19 and other testing clients’ needs, they were able to offer November 9th as the only available alternative for ABPMR candidates.

How do we know that the November exam won’t be disrupted?
In our COVID-19 reality, we can’t guarantee that the November administration won’t also have challenges. We are hopeful that because you scheduled your November seat while capacity limitations were in place in many locations, that these seats will be at lower risk of displacement. A smaller candidate group in November also decreases any displacement impact, and allows ABPMR staff to help individual candidates find other seats. We will work with Pearson VUE to understand the COVID/testing center landscape regularly between now and November, and our commitment to you remains: we will share what we know when we know it. We are pressing to get accurate information from Pearson VUE earlier, and will share with our candidates when we can. I’m worried this disruption will affect my performance on the exam.

Will the 2020 candidates be treated as one big group for scoring?
No. The August and November examinations will be treated as separate administrations with distinct cohorts.