Career Compass

PANCE Overview

An independent, unofficial guide to the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam (PANCE) — not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA).

Format last checked: August 2026. The PANCE is delivered year-round by appointment at Pearson VUE testing centers as a single computer-based exam of 300 multiple-choice items, split into five 60-question blocks of 60 minutes each. Verify current item counts, timing, fees, and retake rules against NCCPA's own PANCE candidate handbook before scheduling.
300Total questions, 5 blocks
5 hrsTotal testing time
200–800Scaled score, pass at 350
~5 hrsTotal appointment length

CardiovascularGI Infectious DiseaseMusculoskeletal NeurologicDermatologic EndocrineEENT GUHematology PsychiatryPulmonary RenalReproductive Professional Practice

Content CategoryWeight on this platform
Cardiovascular, GI, Infectious Disease, Musculoskeletal, Neurologic40 items each — largest categories
Dermatologic, Endocrine, EENT, GU, Hematology, Psychiatry, Pulmonary, Renal, Reproductive, Professional Practice30 items each

Independently researched from NCCPA's publicly released PANCE content blueprint — verify current category weighting against NCCPA's own materials before relying on it for study planning.

How this platform's testlets differ

The real PANCE mixes all fifteen content categories together within each of its five 60-question blocks, rather than testing them as separate named sections with their own timers. This portal instead lets you drill one category at a time: pick a category below and take a focused, timed testlet (15 questions, or fewer for smaller categories), paced at roughly the real exam's overall minutes-per-question. It won't feel like sitting a real 60-question block, but it's built for honest, untimed-then-timed review of each category.

A note on scoring

The real PANCE converts your raw score to a single scaled score (200-800, passing at 350) using NCCPA's own proprietary conversion, which is not publicly reproducible — and a small number of the 300 real items are unscored pretest questions you can't identify while testing. This portal cannot recreate that conversion, so testlet results here report plain accuracy (percent correct) on a fixed testlet, with a study-signal label — not a scaled score of any kind.