APMP Exam Scores
Strategic Proposals offers APMP Foundation Level Accreditation Exam Preparation Workshops (dare we refer to these as APMPFLAEPW?) on both sides of the Atlantic. Last year alone Jon and I have delivered 17 workshops, with a total of 142 participants*.
The exam is a pass/fail and scores aren’t revealed. That said, after each course, both Jon and I review the scores, calculate the average score for the group, etc.
An interesting aspect to the scores is that, very consistently, the person with the least amount of experience receives one of the lower scores and the person with the most experience tends to have one of the highest scores. Average scores tend to range from 55-65 (candidates must answer 42 out of the 75 questions correctly to pass.). The passing rate for those attending the workshop is very high (98% in the US) and those who have not passed the exam, from my perspective as the facilitator clearly did not have the understanding of proposals required to answer the questions.
I know this seems like common sense and I guess it is. I point this out to demonstrate that the exam does do a good job of testing a candidates understanding of the basic knowledge of proposal that someone with over a year of experience would have.
*Did you know that the number of people who achieved APMP Foundation Level accreditation this year is 54% higher than last year? Did you know that, to date, more than 1350 people are APMP accredited? At this rate, by the next annual conference (June, 2010, a majority of the members of APMP will have some level of accreditation. Will you be one of them or will you be playing catch up?
This article was written by BJ on 26 January, 2010 and filed under APMP & accreditation. If you found it useful, you can with others. To receive automatic updates, subscribe to The Proposal Guys via 
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Regarding those not passing the accreditation, the exam is designed for government proposal types. For us in the commercial sector, we do not deal with a lot of the concepts that were presented during the workshop or on the exam. I think it would be more meaningful to divide the data further into government and commercial.
Proposal Manager
Healthcare sector
Very many thanks for your comment. I’ve asked BJ for his views on your question regarding data, as he wrote the post – albeit APMP don’t provide much in the way of a breakdown of the stats.
From my own perspective, I do think it’s vital that we have a robust accreditation process and some ‘common language’ to bind us together as a profession. That said, I agree entirely that the APMP competencies are far too biased towards government / defense / larger bids – and it sometimes strikes me that there’s an implicit arrogance within this (i.e. that their heavier-duty processes are somehow the right ones, so that – for example – everyone needs to understand their interminable review processes and the associated jargon).
There are whole areas of the syllabus that need to be addressed, never mind many of the questions in the database. And I think the problem is even more acute at Practitioner Level, when some of the ‘mandatory’ requirements are frankly far from best practice in the commercial world.
The majority of those *we* train and work with don’t operate in those markets; when presenting our Foundation Level course, I’ve always thought that one of the secrets of success has been to help those attending to (a) understand the theory needed to pass the exam, whilst (b) talking about how they can apply the core principles in their own work – where lead times are tighter, bid teams smaller, processes less formal and (in some cases) the buy-in from senior management far lower.
As the accreditation scheme moves on to its next iteration – with early discussion already having taken place around options to review the syllabus / competencies / exam questions – you can be sure we’ll be fighting hard to make sure it becomes far more relevant to the commercial world.