The NYC Correction Officer
exam: a complete guide

What the job is

A correction officer supervises people in custody: counts, movement, searches, and the logbook that records all of it.

Eleven abilities sounds like a wider exam than it is. Six of them are reading and reasoning about written orders, which is the bulk of a correction officer's paperwork.

What is on the exam

Eleven sections — the longest ability list in the whole line, and the only one here that names both Number Facility and Mathematical Reasoning.

Section	Questions	Time	Per question
Written Comprehension	12	16 min	80 sec
Deductive Reasoning	12	16 min	80 sec
Number Facility	12	10 min	50 sec
Inductive Reasoning	10	14 min	84 sec
Information Ordering	10	14 min	84 sec
Problem Sensitivity	10	13 min	78 sec
Memorization	10	13 min	78 sec
Mathematical Reasoning	10	14 min	84 sec
Written Expression	10	12 min	72 sec
Spatial Orientation	8	11 min	82 sec
Visualization	6	8 min	80 sec
Total	110	141 min

Spatial Orientation here is a jail map.

The pacing

Number Facility is the fastest section on any exam in this line at about fifty seconds a question, and it is straight arithmetic.

Passing does not get you the job

This is the part almost nobody explains, and for a Correction Officer candidate it matters more than anything else on this page. Answering enough of these 110 questions correctly does not hire you. It places you on an eligible list with a number on it, and that number is your position in the queue for every Correction Officer vacancy the City fills.

Hiring runs down that list under the Rule of Three: for any Correction Officer vacancy, the agency must select one of the three highest-ranking candidates who are willing to take it. The difference between a list number of 300 and one of 3,000 is not a difference of degree. It is usually the difference between being called and never being called.

Correction Officer lists have historically been worked deeply, because the Department hires in volume. That makes the list number less decisive here than on a small title, and the screening stages more decisive.

The list expires

A Correction Officer eligible list typically runs four years from the date it is established, and it can be extended. If your number has not been reached when it expires, the list is gone and your place on it goes with it. You start again with the next Correction Officer exam, which may be years away.

Correction Officer lists have historically been worked deeply enough that most candidates who file get somewhere. Most is not all, and the ones who do not are the ones whose number was still unreached in year four.

The points you have to ask for

The Correction Officer exam is an open competitive exam, so veterans are entitled to 5 additional points on it, or 10 if disabled, and New York City residents are entitled to 5 additional points on some exams. Claim veterans' credits at filing. A significant share of correction officer candidates have served, and the ones who forget to claim are competing against the ones who did not.

Here is the part that costs people the job. Those credits are not applied automatically. You claim them when you file for the Correction Officer exam and produce documentation later. Nobody looks up your service record and adds the points for you. A candidate entitled to ten points who does not claim them sits ten points lower on the Correction Officer list, permanently, and will never be told that is why the call did not come.

Filing is a deadline, not a date

You file for a specific exam number during a specific filing period -- for Correction Officer that is exam 6301–6303, and missing it means waiting for the next administration. Filing periods are published in advance and they are not long. Check the number on the Notice of Examination against the annual schedule before you pay the fee: candidates file for the wrong exam every year, and a Notice of Examination never says it is the wrong one.

What happens after you pass

Medical, psychological and background screening, then the Correction Academy. The medical standards are specific and worth reading before you file rather than after you pass.

How to prepare

Six of the eleven abilities are reading and reasoning about written orders, so treat those six as one skill and practice them together. Number Facility is straight arithmetic at fifty seconds a question, which is a speed problem rather than a mathematics problem, and speed responds to drilling.

One thing worth being clear about: you do not need to know the minimum standards, the count procedure or the layout of any facility. These exams test abilities, not job knowledge, and candidates who spend their preparation memorizing procedures are preparing for a different test.

What we found when we tested our own exam

Eleven ability sections is the widest exam in this line, and a candidate spreading preparation across all eleven has the least time to spare on a practice test that is not telling the truth.

So we measure it. Across the 38 sections of our NYC civil service exams long enough to measure (760 questions, in sections of 20 or more), the best score any length-based strategy reaches is 40%, against the 25% that guessing alone should give. Four strategies are scored: pick the longest option, pick the shortest, cross off the longest and guess, cross off the shortest and guess. Number Facility runs at about fifty seconds a question here, the fastest section on any exam in the line, and short arithmetic options leave little room for a length pattern.

Six of the eleven abilities are reading and reasoning about written orders, so treat those six as one skill and practice them together.

The figure is produced from the live bank by the same script that fails our build over 40%. The check it uses had to be rebuilt once: the original refused a section only when the correct answer was strictly the longest, which meant a key that tied with a padded distractor was invisible to it. Ties are now scored the way a guesser actually experiences them, one chance in however many are joint longest.

Where to practice

We publish two full Correction Officer practice exams with no questions shared between them, and you can sit a single section on its own when that is all the evening allows. Every wrong answer carries its own explanation saying what a student who picked it was probably thinking, which is the part that turns a score into something you can act on. There is a free sample on the samples page if you want to see the format before paying for anything.

Common questions

How many questions are on the NYC Correction Officer exam?

110 questions across 11 sections. Eleven sections — the longest ability list in the whole line, and the only one here that names both Number Facility and Mathematical Reasoning.

Does passing the civil service exam mean you get the job?

No. Passing puts you on an eligible list with a list number, and hiring runs down that list. For a Correction Officer vacancy the agency must select one of the three highest-ranking candidates on the list who will accept it, which is the Rule of Three.

How long does the Correction Officer eligible list last?

Typically four years from establishment, and it can be extended. If your number is never reached before it expires, you sit the Correction Officer exam again whenever DCAS next offers it.

How do I get veterans' or residency credits on the Correction Officer exam?

You claim them yourself. Veterans get 5 additional points on an open competitive exam, or 10 if disabled, and New York City residents get 5 on some exams. Nothing is applied automatically: claim at the point you file for Correction Officer and document it later.

What does the Correction Officer job involve?

A correction officer supervises people in custody: counts, movement, searches, and the logbook that records all of it.