What's the EIAT passing score?
Seventy percent, scored pass or fail. That's not a vendor estimate: it's the wording in the U.S. Department of Labor's own registered apprenticeship standards for the trade, and it's still the wording in a state filing updated in July 2026, two decades after the standards were first certified.
The Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration certified the standards NEIEP wrote for the IUEC and its signatory employers back in 2005. Section III, "Testing and Interviewing and Pre-Qualifications," says it plainly: "A score of 70% is the minimum passing grade. Applicants not passing the test will not be interviewed and will be removed from the pool of applicants." Washington State's Department of Labor & Industries registered the same standards under its own filing, WSATC-1618, revised as recently as July 16, 2026, and the sentence hasn't moved: "A score of 70% is the minimum passing grade."
A pass gets you an interview, and nothing more. Your place on the ranked hiring list comes from a composite of education, work history and interview score, not from how far above 70 you scored on the EIAT itself. A candidate who clears the line by one point and a candidate who aces the test start the hiring list on equal footing as far as the EIAT is concerned.
Some prep sites sell scoring tiers, things like 96-100, 90-95 and 80-89, as if that's how the EIAT itself gets graded. It isn't. Those bands come from the 2005 revision of the standards, and they describe the interview score, not the EIAT. The current standards drop the tiers entirely.
One honest gap worth flagging: the official text says "70% is the minimum passing grade," not "70% correct." Whether that means 70 percent of all 100 questions answered correctly, or something scaled differently across the three sections, isn't spelled out anywhere in the standards.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, ETA Bulletin 2005-15The certified national apprenticeship standards for the trade. Section III sets the 70 percent line in the sentence quoted above.
- Washington State L&I, WSATC-1618A state-registered copy of the same standards, revised July 16, 2026: independent confirmation the 70 percent rule is still current, not a 2005 artifact.