Expert tips on your advancement FMS scoring system

The fall petty officer advancement lists will be released before you have Thanksgiving turkey. Roughly 20,000 sailors, give or take, will get the word they’ve picked up a stripe. But nearly three times that number won’t be so fortunate.  

"Most ratings have more sailors competing than vacancies to fill," said Tom Updike, a retired master chief who heads the , now the division head for enlisted advancement exam execution at the Navy Education and Training Professional Development and Technology Center. "We call this quotas limitation, so we need a way to rank sailors within individual ratings to determine who advances." 

But It’s more than just who passes the test, Updike said. Depending on the sailor, where they’ve been and what they’ve done, as many as seven factors can play in to each of the what officials call a "Final Multiple Score" officials use to rack and stack the test-takers. which they say gives the best snapshot of each sailor so they can advance the best qualified into those limited quotas.

Knowing what this overall score is and what goes into it helps sailors see where they need to improve. It's also a chance to double-check your records and make sure you're getting every point you deserve — discovering missing points can put you but often commands and sailors catch missing things or miscalculations and end up advanced as points are discovered that push them over the edge. 

Your exam score is a major factor, but depending on the pay grade it may not be the largest one factor. The calculations also factor in awards, performance, seniority and more. Advancement experts explained how each factor works so you can assess your own scores.

Each of the five potential promotion recommendations come with a numeric value for advancement purposes. The top ranking, early promote, is scored as a 4.00. That drops to ropping to 3.80 for a must promote and 3.6 and 3.4 respectively for for promotable. Sailors whose recommendation shows significant problems get a score of 2.0. 

Berhalter points out that any evaluation the sailor has inside that is included window can be calculated in, whether they are regular, special or transfer evaluations could be potentially factored in. 

For E-4,  it is any evals from the last 8 to 9 months factor in. For E-5, the window grows to any in the past 14 to 15 months. 

For competing for E-6, it’s any within the last three years36 months.  

The PMA is calculated by your command. Though officials say they hope to automate this, too in the future, for now, it will continue to be calculated by the command. 

Misconceptions and urban legends abound about how the exams are scored in the fleet, Updike said, many urban legends abound about how test results are calculated for the final multiple. 

A common misconception, he said is that someone with an score of 80 "aced" the exam by getting all the questions right. Not true, Updike says. A score of 80 is still worth a congratulations though: it means you outscored 99 percent of your peers. , but  a score of 80 is simply the highest score possible, scoring better than 99 percent of your peers, he said. On the other end, scoring a 20 means you only did better than 1 percent of test-takers. Those scoring in the bottom one percent are too low to register on the scale.  A score of 50 means you were exactly in the middle of the pack.

Officially, it’s not possible to fail, Updike says. But anyone whose raw score is below 1 percent in the bottom that one percent of the group doesn’t get a standard score and technically is a failure. Around three percent of sailors, on average don’t score high enough to get a standard score, Updike said. 

Awards points are pulled directly from what awards are listed in the the Navy’s awards database. If it’s in your personnel record, but not in the Navy Department Awards Web Services database, it won’t count, initially. 

But This is probably one factor accounts for many sailors getting that gets more sailors advanced retroactively. because There’s often a lag time between awards being given and updated in the awards database. Also, Any award dated up to the day before the exam counts — so often there’s a discrepancy. 

One catch is If an award only has a month and year, the day is always considered to be the final day of that month for advancement calculations. 

"It’s important that sailors know what their awards are and ensure they show up in NDAWS, otherwise we don’t even know to count them," Berhalter said. "If a sailors or their command finds a discrepancy after the results come out, they should contact us to get the awards points recalculated."

The maximum award points for E-4 and E-5 hopefuls candidates is 10 — that goes up to 12 for those up for E-6. Over twenty different awards and commendations count and a complete list is available in the Navy Awards manual, BUPERS Instruction 1430.16F, which can be downloaded from the Navy Personnel Command Web site.

For Sailors who have served for at least 90 consecutive days in a Congressionally-designated combat zone get a two-point boost added directly as are awards points - directly to a sailors final multiple. These are added directly to a sailor's FMS. But you only get one boost, even if you've done more than one individual augmentation, where sailors are dispatched abroad on missions to war zones.

Generally, Areas that count include Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and Kuwait Guantanamo as well as Joint Task Force, 515 or the Joint Force Special Task Force Philippines, provided the service is after Oct. 24, 2001. 

But this also is a place sailors need to check to see they got proper credit, as the system can lag behind reality. 

"Let’s say a sailor completes an IA in April,"  — [it] might not show up in the system for some months," Berhalter said. "That’s something else sailors might want to check on before the exam cycle begins — it could make a big difference."

These points are calculated with the awards points — but can be don’t count against the maximum awards points ceiling. points raising it to 12 for E-4’s and E-5’s and 14 for E-6’s.  

These pass not advanced" points used to be given to every test-passer who didn't advance. sailor who simply passed the test if they didn’t advance. 

In 2014, officials tightened it in mid-2014 limiteding it to the top 25 percent of sailors who didn’t advance in the test and performance mark average categories, as a way of boosting only the top performers. Each of these sailors in the top quarter of evals or tests earns A flat 1.5 points; sailors in both areas earn three points.  are given for being in this top quarter of either test scoring or performance marks and those categories and those in the top of both areas, it’s cumulative to a maximum of 3 points for any given cycle.  

One note, is that PNA points have a shelf life: and a limit  as Only the points from the last six consecutive examination cycles count, up to a total of 15 points. Also, only PNA points earned in your current pay grade count; once you advance, that ticker starts all over again. 

Simply put, These are points for seniority in your current paygrade. 

In 2014, these were cut way back. Those competing for E-4 and E-5 can get up to two points, while E-6’s can get three. 

Points are calculated by years and months. Each year, total service is calculated for the spring cycle from July 1 of that year. For the Fall cycle, it’s as of January 1 the following year. 

Credit for documented college degrees can also help a sailor's advancement score. and  

This means, if you have both an associate's and bachelor’s degree, you only get the four bachelor’s degree points. 

But The catch here is that it has to be noted in your record, specifically your your Joint Services Transcript online, which only happens if your transcripts are sentd directly from your school to the Navy. 

And, To count on the exam cycle, the degree must be in your record as of the first day of the month the exam is given. No retroactive degree credit is given simply because it wasn’t noted in the record.