Police Officer:
exam timing and pacing

Seconds per question, section by section

110 questions over 149 minutes averages out at about 81 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

Written Expression is the tightest section here, at about 72 seconds a question. Inductive Reasoning is the loosest at roughly 90. Memorization comes with a page you get to study and then lose, which means the clock on it starts before the questions do.

If you run out of time it will be in written expression, and the answer is not to read faster. It is to decide faster. 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 10 abilities for this title, in Notice of Examination 6311–6323. 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 10 sections above are the City's. The 110 questions and the 149 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

Sit one section timed before you sit the whole thing. 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 written expression feels like at 72 seconds a question.

Then sit all 149 minutes in one go, at least a week before the real one. Almost everything on this exam is something an officer does in the first twenty minutes of a tour: read the order, work out who it applies to, notice what is off, and write it down so it holds up.