1.3 Scoring, Veterans' Preference & the One-Year Retake Rule

VEA Scoring, Veterans' Preference, and the One-Year Retake Rule

Key Fact: The VEA Candidate Guide states plainly: "You must score at least 70% to pass the VEA." Passing makes you eligible to be considered — it does not guarantee an offer. Scoring below 70% means you cannot be considered for that position or any other position in that job group, and you cannot retake that version of the VEA for one year.

Scoring is the part of the postal hiring process most distorted by third-party prep sites. This section separates the handful of rules USPS actually publishes from the elaborate scoring folklore built around them.

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What USPS Publishes — and What It Does Not

Any source that hands you a decimal cut score, a percentile table, a "score band," or a per-exercise weighting for the VEA is presenting an estimate as a fact. Prepare against the published rules, not the folklore.

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The 70% Threshold: Eligible vs. Ineligible

USPS reports assessment outcomes as eligible (passing) or ineligible (failing); some postal exams also report a numerical rating, and results are delivered through your candidate profile and a Notice of Result / Notice of Rating.

• 70% or higher — Eligible. You remain in consideration for the vacancy you applied to and, subject to profile rules, for other vacancies requiring that same VEA version.
• Below 70% — Ineligible. The Candidate Guide is specific: you "cannot be considered for the position (or any other positions in that job group)." The lockout follows automatically.

Note the scope of the failure. It is not merely the one requisition — it is the whole job group tied to that exam version.

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Eligibility Is Not an Offer: How Candidates Are Actually Reached

Two published facts do most of the work here, and neither is a secret formula.

1. Not every applicant is even invited to test. USPS states that "each job posting has a pre-determined maximum number of applicants who can be tested. If that maximum limit has been reached, you will not be invited to take the assessment." The posting itself tells you whether the cap has been hit. USPS adds that "special exceptions may be made for Veterans." Applying early to a fresh posting is therefore a genuine, documented advantage — unlike most of the score-chasing advice circulating online.

2. Among eligible candidates, veterans' preference reorders the list. EL-312 Section 435 states that eCareer "adds claimed preference points to examination ratings as required by the Veterans' Preference Act of 1944, as amended, or arranges the applicants in rank order by veterans' preference claim status." Preference claims are adjudicated "as early in the sequence of activities as possible."

What USPS does not publish is a numeric cutoff at which a hiring manager stops calling, a district-by-district "competitive band," or a timeline for how quickly a list is worked. Those numbers are invented. What is true and actionable: score as well as you honestly can, apply promptly to new postings, and claim any preference you are entitled to.

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Veterans' Preference Points: The Rules That Are Actually Written Down

Under the Veterans' Preference Act of 1944 and USPS Handbook EL-312, Section 435, eligible veterans may have 5 or 10 points added to a passing examination score or rating.

Preference Point Categories

1. 5-Point Preference (TP): Honorably discharged veterans who served on active duty during a declared war or a qualifying campaign, expedition, or period of active service. Documented with Form DD-214 (Member 4 copy).
2. 10-Point Preference (CP / CPS / XP): Documented with Form SF-15 (Application for 10-Point Veteran Preference) plus supporting VA documentation.
   • CP: Service-connected disability rating of at least 10% but less than 30%.
   • CPS: Service-connected disability rating of 30% or more.
   • XP: Purple Heart recipients, veterans with a non-compensable service-connected disability, and qualifying spouses, widows/widowers, or mothers of deceased or permanently disabled veterans.

The Rule That Trips People Up

EL-312, Section 435 (verbatim): "Veterans' preference points are not added to ineligible (non-passing) examination scores."

Preference cannot manufacture eligibility. A preference-eligible veteran who scores below 70% on the VEA stays below 70%: the points are never applied, the result is still ineligible, and the one-year lockout on that version still runs. The points change your standing among passing candidates — nothing else.

Worked examples, using the published mechanics:

• 72 passing + 5-point preference → 77
• 88 passing + 10-point preference → 98
• 68 (ineligible) + 10-point preference → 68, still ineligible — no points are added at all

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The 1-Year Retake Rule (The 12-Month Lockout)

If you score below 70% on a Virtual Entry Assessment, the Candidate Guide states you "will not be able to retake that version of the VEA for one year."

What the Lockout Means

• The lockout runs one year from your attempt. (USPS words it as "one year"; it does not publish an exact day count or a formal appeal route.)
• During that year the system will not let you retake that VEA version.
• USPS's general assessment rules explain the mechanism: if you apply for another job requiring the same assessment while a result is still inside its retest period, "your existing score will be used for that application" — so a failing result follows you onto new applications in that job group until the year is up.

Craft Isolation: The Cross-Craft Opportunity

The 1-year lockout applies strictly to the specific VEA exam code failed, not to the Postal Service as a whole.

For example:

• If you fail VEA 474 (Mail Carrier), you cannot re-test for Mail Carrier job-group positions (CCA, City Carrier, RCA, Rural Carrier) for one year.
• However, your VEA 474 failure has zero impact on your eligibility to apply for positions requiring VEA 475 (Mail Handler), VEA 476 (Mail Processing Clerk), or VEA 477 (Customer Service / Retail Clerk).
• You can immediately apply for an MHA, PSE Processing Clerk, or SSDA retail position and take their respective exams with a clean slate.

Warning: Duplicate eCareer Profiles Constitute Federal Fraud

Some disqualified applicants attempt to bypass the 1-year lockout by creating a new eCareer profile using a secondary email address. Do not do this.

Note first that USPS does provide a legitimate reason to hold more than one profile: when you are hired, your candidate profile converts to an employee profile, and USPS instructs you to "create a new candidate profile" with a different email address in order to apply for externally posted jobs. That is sanctioned.

What is not sanctioned is duplicating a profile to escape a result. The postal application collects your legal name, Social Security Number, and date of birth, and every applicant undergoes a Postal Inspection Service criminal background check that includes an FBI fingerprint check — identity is verified against federal records, not against your email address. USPS does not publish a specific penalty schedule for duplicate profiles, but it does state that it evaluates candor and that concealment surfaces during suitability screening. Separately, knowingly making a materially false statement on a federal employment document is a criminal offense under 18 U.S.C. § 1001.

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Score Reuse and Your eCareer Candidate Profile

USPS does not publish a validity period for VEA scores. (For the retired Exam 473 it published six years, and it states generally that "your score may be used until the date shown on your Notice of Rating" — read your own notice rather than trusting a number you found on a prep site.)

What USPS does publish is how score reuse works, and it is tied to your profile rather than to a clock:

• "If your score is still in an active eCareer candidate profile, then you do not need to take the examination again." Log into that profile to search and apply for additional jobs.
• If you do not have an active candidate profile, you must create a new one and take the exam again. This bites current employees especially: when you are hired, your candidate profile converts to an employee profile, which cannot be used to apply for externally posted jobs. You must build a new candidate profile — and it cannot use the same email address as your previous profile.
• "You may only take the assessment once per job application." If you already have a result inside its retest period, that existing result is attached to the new application automatically; you do not get a second attempt to improve it.
• If you submit an application after the retest period has passed, USPS gives you a choice: take the assessment again for that application, or use your existing result. Be deliberate — USPS warns that when you do retake an assessment, "your score will change to the most recent score... regardless of whether it is higher or lower than your previous score."

That last rule is the real argument for preparing properly the first time. Not a fabricated two-year clock — the simple fact that a retake replaces your result in either direction.