PMK-EE for E-7: Format, the 80% Rule and the Official App

If you are active duty or TAR and want to sit the E-7 exam on 21 January 2027, you must pass the PMK-EE by 30 November 2026, with a score of 80 or above. (SELRES sailors have their own February 2027 cycle.) NAVADMIN 241/26 says the Professional Military Knowledge Eligibility Exam “remains mandatory once per paygrade for all E7 candidates to be eligible for exam cycle participation, including early promote (EP) and limited duty officer candidates”, and that waivers “are normally not approved without extraordinary circumstances.” This page sets out the format, the 80% rule, how retakes work, where to take it, and how to check it is on your record, so that it is done well before January. The other eligibility rules still apply: verify them on your EAW with your ESO.

Independent: not affiliated with the US Navy, the Navy Advancement Center or Navy COOL. ProSyllabus is an independent study site and nothing here is official. Every date, rule and figure below is quoted or summarized from Navy documents (NAVADMINs, fact sheets, Navy Advancement Center pages and Navy COOL), read on 28 October 2026; where we could not confirm something, the page says so.

NAVADMIN 241/26; DVIDS 7 August 2020; DVIDS 4 April 2018.

Professional military knowledge (PMK) used to be a section of the Navy-wide advancement exam. In 2018 the Navy announced it would become a stand-alone, electronic eligibility exam that you pass once per paygrade, so that, in the words of the Navy’s release, “Sailors preparing for the NWAE” could “concentrate exclusively on job-specific knowledge.” The same release said the stand-alone exam would expand from the old 25 questions to 100. Today the E-7 bib on Navy COOL says PMK questions “are no longer part of the Navy-Wide Advancement Exam (NWAE)” and that PMK knowledge is measured by the PMK-EE instead. So there are now two separate tests on the road to chief: the PMK-EE, an eligibility requirement you must pass by 30 November, and the rating exam in January (the NWAE, 175 questions, or the RKE, as applicable to each candidate; the saved texts give no RKE question count, so confirm yours with your ESO).

The section names differ between the two releases. In 2018 the five areas were Leadership and Character, Career Information, Professional Conduct, Naval Heritage, and Seamanship; by 2020 the Navy listed Career Information, Leadership and Character, Naval Heritage, Professionalism, and Warfighting and Readiness, after a review that “updated exam questions and bibliographies”. Use the list the exam itself shows you.

The rule is per section, not overall. The 2018 release put it this way: “Sailors taking the PMK-EE must achieve a passing score of 80 percent or higher in each area to pass the entire exam. Failure to achieve an 80 percent score on a topic will require that topic to be retaken in order to pass.” A strong total cannot carry one weak section. The good news is the other half of the rule: you retake only the section you missed, and you can take the sections one at a time.

For the January E-7 cycle, the PMK-EE deadline sits at the end of November, ahead of everything else. In 2020 the Navy described the pattern as “January AD/FTS E7 NWAE cycle – prior to Dec. 1 of the previous year”, and the last two January NAVADMINs kept it:

The 2020 release is blunt about missing it: “Failure to complete the PMK-EE by the established deadline will result in the Sailor being ineligible to advance.” Because it is once per paygrade, you may already have passed the E7 PMK-EE for an earlier cycle; if so, check that the completion shows on your record rather than taking it again.

The 2018 release said the online exam is reached through My Navy Portal’s Learning Management System, with completion recorded in the LMS and in the Navy Training Management and Planning System (NTMPS), which can be used to check individual eligibility. There is also a PMK-EE mobile app. The Navy’s 2020 release on its update says it is “Available via the Navy App Locker”; that version included exam questions and study materials for all paygrades, saved a sailor’s progress after each module and provided completion certificates directly to the sailor’s records. The same release gave two cautions that still make sense: save your completion certificates electronically as a backup, and update to the latest version of the app; with that 2020 update, a module left unfinished was not carried over to the new version.

Study it like the eligibility gate it is: you need 80% in every section, not a high score. The 2018 release said the topics and bibliographies used for the PMK-EE would be on the Advancement and Promotion page of My Navy Portal and on Navy COOL, and that after each section the system gives the bibliography reference for every question you got wrong. Use that feedback.

One thing this page will not do is publish PMK-EE answers, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Sections are passed by knowing the material; a memorized answer list is a poor guide when questions and references are reviewed and updated, as the Navy did in 2020.

Then the exam that sets your score. The PMK-EE is an eligibility requirement: NAVADMIN 241/26 sets 30 November 2026 as the deadline, “with a passing score of 80 or above”. For E-7 Navy-wide exam candidates the Final Multiple Score is 60% RSCA PMA and 40% the exam score (DVIDS, 22 January 2020); the saved texts give no formula for an E-7 Rating Knowledge Exam. HM and MA candidates can practice that exam with the Navy E-7 HM exam simulator and the Navy E-7 MA exam simulator, each two timed 175-question exams on the January 2027 bibs. Our Navy bibs guide has a six-week plan that starts on 10 December, and our E-7 exam guide covers the rest of the eligibility rules. Both are built only from the publicly released references on the January 2027 bibs (HM: 32 of its 37 references, 15 of 20 subtopics; MA: 21 of its 41 references, 16 of 29 subtopics); the rate training manuals and controlled references are not covered, so study those from your own copies.