Among the 77,000 people that sat for Level I of the CFA program last December, 45%, or 35,000, passed the exam. December's pass rate was the highest it has been since the CFA Institute began offering Level I twice annually in 2003. Since 2013, December results were the same or better than that year's June results; the pass rate of the December 2018 exam was 2 percentage points higher than June's exam.
From here, candidates who passed can move on to take the next level, which has historically maintained a marginally higher pass rate. Since 2003, the average pass rate of Level I, collectively, was just less than 40%, while Level II's average pass rate was about 44%. Those numbers include 2005, which saw a large divide in the pass rates between Level I and Level II. That year, about 35% passed Level, while Level II results saw a 56% pass rate.
