Police Communications Technician:
exam timing and pacing

Seconds per question, section by section

140 questions over 168 minutes averages out at about 72 seconds each, and that average describes almost none of this exam. Comfortable in one section, brutal in the next. Knowing which is which before you sit down is most of what pacing practice buys you.

Where it squeezes

Memorization is the tightest section here, at about 60 seconds a question. Deductive Reasoning is the loosest at roughly 78. Memorization is the squeeze at sixty seconds. It is also the section closest to the job, because a caller does not repeat themselves.

Memorization is where the clock runs out. The skill is not speed of reading, it is speed of committing. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer here, so a marked guess and a candidate who has moved on beats a perfect answer that cost two other questions.

What the City publishes, and what is ours

DCAS names 7 abilities for this title, in Notice of Examination 6309, 6329. What the notice does not give is a question count or a time limit, for this title or any other. Nobody outside the City has those two numbers, so a site quoting them is quoting a guess.

The 7 sections above are the City's. The 140 questions and the 168 minutes are ours. We picked them so the practice sitting feels like the real thing, and we would rather tell you that than let you assume the City set them.

How to practice the clock

Do one section, timed, before anything longer. A full sitting tells you your score. A single timed section tells you where the score came from, and here that means finding out what memorization feels like at 60 seconds a question.

Then sit all 168 minutes in one go, at least a week before the real one. Nothing in this exam is drawn and nothing is calculated. It is all words arriving faster than you would like, which is the console.