Correction Officer:
exam timing and pacing

Seconds per question, section by section

110 questions over 141 minutes averages out at about 77 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

Number Facility is the tightest section here, at about 50 seconds a question. Mathematical Reasoning is the loosest at roughly 84. Number Facility is the fastest section on any exam in this line at about fifty seconds a question, and it is straight arithmetic.

Number Facility 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 11 abilities for this title, in Notice of Examination 6301–6303. 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 11 sections above are the City's. The 110 questions and the 141 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

Start with one timed section rather than a full paper. 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 number facility feels like at 50 seconds a question.

Then sit all 141 minutes in one go, at least a week before the real one. 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.