Not too long ago someone was discussing retaking the BJCP exam and they had not yet received the results from their previous attempt. They felt there score was very good, but without the results did not want to vacate the seat at the scheduled exam. It can be very difficult to get a seat at an exam in the first place and so to give up that seat should not be decided hastily. So how is a person to know whether or not to take the exam? It is actually a pretty simple litmus test, only retake the exam if you feel your judging skills or knowledge has advanced enough to do better than your last attempt.
Let’s say you believe your score on the taste exam is good enough for National, but you have not yet received your score. The question is how high was the score. If you think it is just barely National in the low 80’s then the question is can you push the score higher. If you can then by all means retake the exam. The time to stop retaking the exam is when your score is Master which would be 90 or higher. If you do score a 90 on the taste portion you will have to equal that on the written exam to achieve the rank so you may decide to retake until the taste score is well above 90. Traditionally the Master level taste scores are low 90’s, but if you were to score 93 on the taste you would only need an 87 to achieve a Master rank so the higher the score the better.
The bottom line is you have to decide if your best efforts will result in a higher score if they will then retake, if they may not then give the seat to someone else.
