How to use an
NYC Probation Officer practice test

Case material

The NYC Probation Officer exam is 108 questions in six sections over 143 minutes, eighteen questions each. The reading is case material: intake summaries, conditions sheets, employer letters and curfew records. It looks like paperwork because the job is.

Reading it as a sentencing test

Candidates expect questions on sentencing law and conditions of release. The exam is about handling the case material in front of you, and it assumes no knowledge of the guidelines or of any court's practice.

Six sections in 143 minutes

Sit all six in one stretch. Written Comprehension, Deductive Reasoning and Information Ordering each get about eighty seconds a question, Written Expression about seventy-three.

Time Sharing runs out anyway

Time Sharing gives you about eighty-seven seconds a question, the most generous section here, and it is still the one people run out on, because attending to two streams of information at once is genuinely hard. Note how many you left unanswered there.

Using the explanations

Each of the 9,108 wrong answers in our civil service bank comes with a reason. For probation case material, the reasons often show a fact taken from the wrong document, say an employer letter instead of the curfew record.

Problem Sensitivity in a case file

Problem Sensitivity is eighteen questions at about seventy-seven seconds. In a probation file the problem is often a mismatch: a curfew record that does not fit an employer letter, or an address that changed between two forms. The skill is noticing the detail that does not fit before you are asked about it. When you review, look at the misses in this section beside the Time Sharing misses; both usually come from reading one document closely and skimming the other. Written Expression, eighteen questions at about seventy-three seconds, is the report half of the job: choosing the sentence that states the facts in the file without adding a judgment. Information Ordering asks you to put a sequence of events from the file in order, and the wrong options usually swap two steps that look interchangeable but are not.

Equal sections, equal weight

All six sections carry eighteen questions, so your weakest score is simply your weakest ability. Only three titles in the line test Time Sharing, so it is the section other titles' material cannot rehearse.

Our Probation Officer forms

Two forms that share no questions, each section available alone. A free sample is on the samples page.

More on this exam: the full Probation Officer guide.

Common questions

How long is a Probation Officer practice exam?

143 minutes for 108 questions in six sections.

Do I need to know sentencing law for the Probation Officer exam?

No. It gives you case material and tests how you read and handle it.

What is Time Sharing on the Probation Officer exam?

Keeping track of two streams of information at once. It has the most time per question and still runs out first for many people.

How many Probation Officer practice exams should I sit?

Two; our forms share no questions.