Texas repeat takers pass at 40 percent. First timers pass at 57 percent. Going back in with the same method and more hours is, statistically, the losing move. That is not a comment on you. It is a comment on the method.
The numbers
First attempt
57%
passed
Repeat attempt
40%
passed
Read that the right way round. The people coming back had already seen the exam. They knew the format, they knew the pacing, and they had put in more hours than they had the first time. They still did worse than people walking in cold.
If effort were the missing ingredient, that number would go up. It goes down. Which means the thing that failed the first time was never how hard you worked.
The real handicap
Texas gives you a scaled score with 70 as the passing mark. The candidate handbook says it plainly: a score below 70 shows how close you came, not the number or percentage of questions you got right.
So you walk out with no questions, no answers, and no dependable breakdown of which of the thirteen sections collapsed. And then the only advice anyone gives you is the one thing the data says does not work: study more.
The people who study more are the 40 percent.
What to do differently
Data about yourself. You sat the real thing. You have a rough sense of where it went sideways, and even that vague sense is more than you had the first time around.
Turning that into a plan means measuring which sections are actually losing you points, weighting them the way the real exam weights them, and then spending your hours in that order instead of spreading them evenly across everything. A plan built on that is a different object from a course you restart at chapter one.
A note on buying another course
Texas does not require one, and the state data does not suggest one fixes this. Indiana publishes first attempt pass rates by provider. In 2025, candidates who submitted no prelicensing course at all passed the Life Producer exam at 69 percent, ahead of both of the largest providers by volume. Whatever is deciding this exam, it is not sitting through more video.
Start with 20 questions across every section of the official outline. It takes about ten minutes and costs nothing, and it ends with the two or three sections that are actually costing you the exam.
There is no mandated waiting period and no cap on attempts in Texas. You reschedule with Pearson VUE and pay the exam fee again, 49 dollars for the General Lines Life, Accident and Health exam. The constraint is readiness, not the calendar.
In 2025, first attempts on the Texas General Lines Life, Accident and Health exam passed at 57 percent. Repeat attempts passed at 40 percent. Repeat takers do worse than people who have never seen the exam, which is the opposite of what more studying would predict.
Two things compound. First, the group is selected: it is made up of people for whom the current method already failed once, so repeating that method reproduces the result. Second, the standard response to failing is to study more of everything, which spends the extra hours proportionally across all thirteen sections instead of concentrating them on the two or three that actually lost you the points.
No. Texas reports a scaled score with 70 as the passing mark, and the handbook is explicit that a score below 70 indicates how close you came rather than the number or percentage of questions you answered correctly. You do not get the questions, you do not get your answers, and you get no reliable section by section breakdown. That is precisely why a diagnostic on your own performance is worth more the second time than the first.
Texas does not require one, and the state data does not suggest one solves this. In Indiana, which publishes first attempt pass rates by provider, candidates who submitted no prelicensing course at all passed the Life Producer exam at 69 percent, higher than the two largest course providers by volume. A course restarts you at chapter one. The problem is rarely chapter one.
Pass rates from examination pass rates published by Pearson VUE for the Texas Department of Insurance, January to December 2025, exam InsTX LAH05. Scoring and retake policy from the Texas Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, Pearson VUE publication 124400. Provider pass rates from the Indiana Department of Insurance 2025 pass rates by prelicensing education provider. Updated Aug 2026.
Twenty questions across every section of the official outline. Ten minutes, no signup, no card, and you walk out knowing exactly where the points are going.
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