After the cognitive assessment: what the 60th percentile means, and what comes next

Thousands of Commission staff sat the AD5 cognitive assessment on 21 September 2026 and the assistants' round follows a week later. The question we hear most afterwards is some version of: I think I got about 15 right, is that enough? The honest answer is that the number of questions you got right is not what is being judged, and this guide explains what is.

You get a percentile rather than a mark

Every source that describes the assessment agrees on this: your result is a percentile rank against a benchmark population, and the reported line for the AD5 and AD7 competitions is the 60th percentile. Being at the 60th percentile means you scored better than 60 per cent of that benchmark group. For AST3 the staff union's briefing reports a lower line, the 40th, covered in the AST3 guide.

Who is in the benchmark group is only lightly documented. An EU Training webinar described it as university graduates with several years of professional experience. That is a single vendor source, so hold it loosely. What matters is that it is a fixed reference population, so the line does not move with the people who sat alongside you. The staff union's briefing put it well: the exercise creator sets the level rather than the other candidates.

Why your raw score tells you little

• The test is adaptive. Two candidates with the same number of correct answers can have seen very different questions, and the harder set earns the higher standing. Feeling that the questions got harder is, as our exam-day guide says, usually a good sign.
• Different candidates received different question sets. Reported by candidates from the June AD7 sitting. Comparing counts with a colleague compares two different papers.
• No negative marking is reported. A blank and a wrong answer are treated the same according to the briefing, so a guessed answer can only help.
• Time counts against everyone equally. Twenty-four questions in thirty-six minutes; many candidates report running out of time. The benchmark population sat the same clock.

When and how the result arrives

Nobody outside the process publishes the timing. What is reported: HR committed to announcing each test at least two weeks before it takes place, and the indicative AD5 timeline reported by EU Training puts the EU knowledge MCQ and written test in October, with the oral in December 2026 or January 2027. Read together, that implies cognitive assessment outcomes within weeks of the sitting. Watch the Single Candidate Portal and your invitation email rather than any third-party page, including this one.

What comes next if you clear the line

The AST3 notice is reported to carry its own marks. The staff union's briefing suggests EPSO's published EU knowledge sources cover the MCQ syllabus well, and that the written test resembles the old case study: a set of 15 to 25 pages, any topic, marked on structure, clarity and answering the assignment set.

What if you did not clear it

The result is final for this competition; below the threshold means ineligibility, with no appeal on the score itself reported. Two things are worth knowing. First, the format is the largest single reason first-time candidates underperform, and the format is trainable in days. Second, the same assessment has now been used in three 2026 competitions and further competitions are planned through 2027, covered in our guide to what is coming. Practising the interactive items now, while the experience is fresh, is the cheapest preparation you will ever do.

Sources: a Commission staff union's briefing slides for the AD5 and AST3 competitions (June and July 2026) and its analysis of the AD5 notice; EPSOHQ's stage-by-stage guide to COM/AD/108/2026 and EU Training's August 2026 rundown, read 20 and 26 September 2026; candidate feedback from the 11 June 2026 AD7 sitting; candidates who sat the September 2026 rounds. The Commission has not published the notice.