You have at my genuine sympathy since I think the first-attempt failure rate is too high on this exam. Most applicants pass on subsequent tries so what is the point, touching them up somehow? It should be as "hard" as a final exam in college and those do not require multiple tries. Since FAA can't give a score they seem to feel the only way they can show their opinion is to fail you three times. This is stupid. This amounts to negative motivation, and is hardly an objective way to test. If you wish to encourage pilots to take some pride in their position as teachers it is counterproductive. If the test were standardized like medical and law exams, and the CFI-initial failure rate was still as high I would say wow, it's a really tough discipline to teach flying, but I don't think this the case and most CFIs quit in ten months anyway.

I am not going for my CFI until I feel I have better than a 50% chance of success on the first pass, and frankly I have no reason to go and get beat up like it is now. If someone said, loan me a thousand bucks so I can gamble and I will share the profit when I win, by the way the success rate is 12%, who in their right mind would say yeah. Flying has always been fun for me and I am not into ego trips, and CFI initial smacks of that as far as the FAA is concerned.

Or maybe pink slips are nothing to be ashamed of? I've six! I've got 14...!