You’ve officially become my rival. Let’s rematch at the N3 exam.
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Haha ok I’ll see you next exam season 
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This is my N5 score, I know that I did not pass but can somebody help me interpret this? If I am reading the JLPT website correctly, I need 38/120 to pass the language knowledge section so I missed that by 1 point, and I need 19/60 to pass listening so I passed that by 2 points, yet my overall score is 22 points lower than the 80 needed to pass overall. Am I reading this incorrectly? I know I need to improve every category based on the letter grades below it, but just want to make sure I am interpreting this the right way. Thanks all
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N5 passed with 122/180! 
My lowest score was in the listening section, 36/60, I’ll try to focus more on it for N4 next July 
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For me, the listening part was harder than what I expected based on drills and mock exams (I find my 43/60 result “not great, not terrible”). I was also considering N4 in July (as I am quite pleased with the overall score and was also thinking about giving it a go already last December), but right now I am more inclined to sit for N4 in December (this is supposed to be a hobby/pastime, so I don’t need to rush things too much).
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No, you’re reading it correctly. Basically, the JLPT requires two things to be fulfilled in order to grant a pass:
- You need 80/180 points overall (this is for N5; other levels have other thresholds) to ensure that you know enough overall
- You need 19/60 per section (for N5 this is 38/120 for the first section because it’s combined; it will get split up into two in higher levels) to ensure that your knowledge is balanced to a certain extent (so you cannot just get 80 points in the first section and 0 points in Listening; you need to know a certain amount of Listening as well)
If both of these are fulfilled, it’s a pass; if either of them is not fulfilled, the exam is failed.
Does this make a bit more sense now?
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Thank you, I understand that, but what confuses me is how I could pass one section, fail the other by just 1 point, but then be 22 points away from an overall pass? Said differently, it looks like I “barely” failed based on the section scores, but then the overall score is way off a passing mark
N2 didn’t pass.
Language Knowledge 23/60
Reading 11/60
Listening 19/60
Total Score 53/180
Vocabulary B
Grammar B
My overall score actually went down since taking it in December 2023 in Japan. But I raised my grammar from a C to B so I guess I’ll take that. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Time to work on reading since I bombed that.
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It’s what NicoleIsEnough wrote:
there is the overall pass mark out of 180 - for N5 you need 80 marks.
You get your total from the Language Knowledge (max. 120) plus Listening sections (max. 60) but even if you get more than 80 overall, there is a minimum mark in the sections.
For example, if you got 18 in Listening and 120 in the rest for a total of 138, it is still a fail because you need to get at least 19 in Listening.
There is an overall pass mark and there are sectional pass marks: you need to pass both. The sectional pass marks add up to a lot less (57) than the overall pass mark (80).
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Congrats to my N4 thread people @Ahrina @Nol @PeterRoss !! So great to see that you all passed. I got by with a 101, myself! Thanks again for linking those practice tests, @Nol.
See you guys in the N3 thread for December 2025 
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Congrats everyone! and thanks for always posting fun and interesting forum content that definitely helped me pass the N5!
Looks like I gotta do a lot more listening practice for the next one though!
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Got it, so it’s possible to pass each section but still fail if you don’t pass them by wide enough margins? If so, that was my confusion. Thanks.
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Congrats all - it’s so fun to read about your successes! Genuinely made me smile as I was scrolling through this today. I know the JLPT takes some flak but it’s absolutely making me want to incorporate it as a goal… having a little bit of concrete proof that you’ve made some progress sounds very satisfying.
To those that didn’t quite make it - がんばって！You’ll get it next time.
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Yep, you got it!
Ideally, in order to pass the test, you should have around 50% per section for a well-balanced knowledge of the language, but the test designers lowered this to ~32% per section to allow for some unevenness in the skills profile (or simply for bad luck during the test), so if you score lower than ~50% in one section, you need to make up for it by getting the additional points in another section.
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FUCKED UP! I can’t believe my listening has the highest points even though its 100% guess work lol
I really thought I had more points in vocab and grammar since this was pretty much only thing I spent time on. Reading is as expected and the biggest reason for failing overall, my reading speed was just awfully slow!
I did not expect to pass anyway. I did it more for the experience and to see what the tests are like. All of this motivated me to work on an app for reading japanese ebooks with translations since this was my biggest weak point. Down the line I want to include JLPT mock tests as well, all sections of it.
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Made it just on point 
My goal was to know in my mind that I passed the test after the exam but I had a 50:50 feeling of passing and it turns out it was just that close.
I did like 6 mock ups tests which you can find on the internet and also past listening tests on Youtube. There were even two listening questions in the exam that I knew from Youtube. I panicked in the listening section because I didn’t have a good start and never imagined that it would be my best section (and reading my worst…).
In the mock up exams I had around 2/3 of the questions correct so a score of around 120 would have been nice, but it doesn’t matter, a pass is a pass.
Don’t forget to apply for the printed certificate which luckily is possible online.
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Not that surprised 
if anyone wants to know if you should do the jlpt with a 6 week old baby who wakes 3 times a night, the answer is NO
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You deserve a commendation for that alone!
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Possibly the only candidate in the world who was doing double duty as a dairy cow in the interval 
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