The New York learner permit written test

The rule people get wrong

The Driver's Manual, Chapter 1, puts it in one sentence: you must correctly answer at least 14 of the 20 questions asked, but you must correctly answer two of the four questions about road signs. Both halves count. Score 15 out of 20 while missing three of the four sign questions and you have failed a test you passed on percentage.

Why that matters more than the 70%

Almost everything written about this test quotes a percentage and stops, and some of it names the wrong four questions. The four that carry the extra condition are the road sign questions. A candidate who revises everything except signs has left themselves a way to fail that no amount of general knowledge covers.

Twenty questions, four choices

The count is the DMV's own. Four answer choices per question, which is worth saying because the commercial tests in the same family give three, and practice written at three choices does not resemble this paper.

Chapters 4 through 11

The manual is explicit about scope. Those chapters carry the material you must know for a Class D, DJ or E learner permit, and it says of Part 1 that the information is not covered on the written test. Studying the front of the book first is a common way to spend an evening on material the test will not ask about.

It is offered in twenty languages

A detail the DMV publishes and few people repeat. If English is not your first language, the test itself is not the place that has to be difficult.

What to practice

Signs, deliberately and separately from everything else, because of the rule at the top of this page. Then intersections and right of way, which is where the rules stop being intuitive. Our permit forms follow the manual's own chapter scope, with four choices a question and twenty questions a form. Four of those twenty are road sign questions, which is the number the DMV asks, so the rule at the top of this page is one you can actually practice against rather than read about.