CCC-A Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows

The CCC-A Pass Rate Question: What's Actually Published

Anyone researching the Certificate of Clinical Competence in Audiology (CCC-A) eventually asks the same question: what percentage of candidates actually pass? It's a reasonable thing to want to know before committing time and money to Praxis Audiology (5343). The honest answer is that ASHA's Council for Clinical Certification in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology and ETS, the exam's administrator through 2026, do not publish a standing national pass rate for this specific exam the way some other credentialing programs do.

That absence of a published number is worth sitting with rather than filling in with a guess. Because the CCC-A acronym is shared by other, unrelated professional credentials, it's easy to stumble onto a pass-rate figure online that belongs to a completely different certification and mistakenly apply it here. If a statistic you find isn't clearly sourced to ASHA's audiology certification program and the Praxis Audiology test code 5343, treat it as unreliable for planning purposes.

For a broader look at exam difficulty beyond the scoring mechanics, see How Hard Is the CCC-A Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026, which walks through content demands and timing pressure in more depth.

What the 162 Passing Score Really Tells You

ASHA's passing score for Praxis Audiology (5343) is 162 on ETS's 100-200 reporting scale. The exam itself is computer-delivered, contains 120 selected-response questions, and must be completed in two hours. It's also worth knowing that ETS may embed unscored items among the 120 - questions that don't count toward your final score but are indistinguishable from scored items during the test.

That last detail matters more than it seems. Because you can't tell a scored question from an unscored one in the moment, pacing discipline has to apply to every single item. There's no efficient way to "skip the ones that don't count," so budgeting roughly one minute per question across all 120 is the only reliable approach.

If you want the full mechanics of how the 100-200 scale converts into a pass/fail decision, and how ASHA's standard compares conceptually to other scaled exams, CCC-A Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass covers that in detail.

Domain Weighting and Why It Predicts Difficulty

Praxis Audiology (5343) is organized into five content domains, and the weighting is the closest thing to a public "difficulty map" that candidates have to work with. A domain's percentage weight roughly corresponds to how many of the 120 questions will draw from it, which means uneven study time across domains creates uneven risk.

Assessment's 35% weighting makes it the largest single domain on the exam by a wide margin - more than triple the weight of either Prevention and Screening or Professional and Ethical Responsibilities. A candidate who is strong in Foundations of Audiology but shaky on Assessment protocols is carrying more risk than one whose weaknesses sit in the smaller domains, simply because of how many questions draw from that content area.

For a complete breakdown of every domain - including the content boundaries within Foundations of Audiology, Prevention and Screening, and Professional and Ethical Responsibilities - see CCC-A Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 5 Content Areas.

Registration, Fees, and the ETS-to-PSI Transition

Praxis Audiology (5343) currently costs $146 per attempt and is administered by ETS. That fee is separate from ASHA certification itself: earning the CCC-A initially costs $490 if you're an ASHA member or $446 if you are not, on top of the exam fee. Ongoing certification maintenance requires annual dues or certification fees plus 30 professional development hours every three years - including at least 1 ethics hour, and starting in 2026, 2 hours specifically in designated person-centered, reflective, or collaborative-practice topics.

Candidates registering in 2026 should still expect the ETS-administered version of the exam under the current fee and format. If your testing window falls close to the 2027 changeover, confirm current scheduling details before locking in a date - CCC-A Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling tracks these specifics. For the full fee picture across the exam, initial certification, and maintenance cycle, CCC-A Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown lays out every line item.

Registration itself sits inside a larger eligibility framework - a doctoral degree, ASHA's knowledge-and-skills requirements, and supervised clinical practicum hours all have to be satisfied before you're even eligible to schedule the exam. If you haven't confirmed you meet those prerequisites, CCC-A Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify is the place to check before you pay the $146 fee.

Who Sits for the Praxis Audiology Exam

Because CCC-A holders have completed a doctoral-level audiology education along with supervised clinical practicum, this isn't an entry-level screening credential - it's the exam that stands between a doctoral audiology graduate and full clinical practice authority under ASHA certification. Employers who require or strongly prefer the CCC-A include hospital audiology departments, ENT and otolaryngology practices, pediatric hearing centers, school-based audiology programs, and private audiology clinics, since ASHA certification is frequently the credential referenced in job postings and state licensure pathways for clinical audiologists.

If you're evaluating whether pursuing certification lines up with your career goals, CCC-A Jobs and Is the CCC-A Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 both look at how the credential factors into hiring and long-term practice decisions. Compensation considerations are covered separately in CCC-A Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis.

Building a Domain-Weighted Study Timeline

Given that Assessment alone accounts for over a third of the exam, the most defensible way to allocate a multi-week study plan is proportional to domain weight rather than splitting time evenly across all five areas. A candidate who gives Prevention and Screening the same number of study hours as Assessment is misallocating effort relative to how the exam is actually built.

Within any given week, techniques like spaced repetition for terminology and timed question blocks under two-hour, 120-question conditions are useful - but they only pay off if they're pointed at the domains carrying the most weight. A full walkthrough of pacing drills and review cycles built specifically around this domain structure is available in CCC-A Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt. You can also run full-length practice sessions modeled on the actual format at our practice test platform to see how your timing holds up under real exam conditions.

Risk Factors That Push Candidates Below 162

Without a published pass rate, the more useful exercise is identifying the specific failure patterns that show up around this kind of exam structure:

• Underweighting Assessment prep. Given its 35% share, any gap in diagnostic interpretation skill compounds across dozens of questions rather than a handful.
• Pacing breakdowns. At two hours for 120 questions, spending extra time deliberating on a handful of difficult items early can crowd out the back third of the exam.
• Treating unscored items as a reason to relax. Since scored and unscored questions are indistinguishable, inconsistent effort anywhere in the test is a real risk.
• Confusing this CCC-A with unrelated credentials during self-study. Because the acronym is reused elsewhere, importing study material, fee figures, or format assumptions from a different certification can waste preparation time or create false confidence.
• Neglecting the smaller domains entirely. Prevention and Screening and Professional and Ethical Responsibilities are each worth 10% - skipping them outright still leaves meaningful points on the table.

For a condensed, single-page reference to keep the domain weights, fee figures, and passing score straight while you study, CCC-A Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts compiles them in one place. And if you're still early in researching what the credential involves at all, What Is CCC-A Certification? and CCC-A Certification both provide foundational context before you commit to a study timeline.

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