The New York court officer-trainee exam

What the courts publish

The written exam for court officer-trainee in the New York State courts is 70 questions in 195 minutes. The courts' sample-question guide and exam FAQ set that out, along with the five subject areas the questions come from, and the rule that a wrong answer costs nothing beyond the mark itself. Calculators are not allowed.

The five areas

• Remembering an incident. You read an account, it is taken away, and you answer from memory.
• Reading comprehension. Short passages, some with missing words to fill in.
• Applying rules. A set of procedures, then situations where you decide what an officer should do.
• Clerical checking. Comparing entries for small differences.
• Record keeping. Combining figures from tables.

How many questions each area gets is not published. Any source that gives an exact split is guessing.

How it is scored

You need a rating of 70 out of 100. That is not 70% of the questions. The number of correct answers that earns a 70 is set after the exam is given, so no one can tell you beforehand how many you need. Treat any practice score as a measure of how well you know each area, not as a pass or a fail.

Answer everything

There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a blank is simply a mark thrown away. If time is running out, put an answer on every remaining question.

Pacing

The memory section's fifteen minutes of reading and waiting sit inside the 195. Take them out and you have 180 minutes for 70 questions, a little over two and a half minutes each. That is generous, and the clerical and table questions are where it gets spent, because checking carefully is the whole skill.