NYC civil service exams, built to the abilities the City publishes.
DCAS writes a Notice of Examination for every job title, and each one names exactly what its written test measures. None of them says how many questions there are, or how long you get. Most sites tell you anyway. We would rather show you the difference, and then give you full practice exams built to the abilities that are published. All eleven are on sale now: Police Officer, School Safety Agent, Correction Officer, Traffic Enforcement Agent, Special Officer, Motor Vehicle Operator, Environmental Police Officer and Police Communications Technician, Probation Officer, Stock Worker and the NYC Bridge Exam, which alone puts you on seven lists. Five more notices are covered by those same exams rather than by a second product: the Police Officer promotion exam, Special Officer at NYC Health + Hospitals, Motor Vehicle Operator at CUNY, and Stock Worker at CUNY and at NYC Health + Hospitals.
Eleven titles, and no two of them are the same exam.
We read every notice on its own, and they do not agree. Police Officer names ten abilities, Correction Officer eleven, School Safety Agent, Traffic Enforcement Agent and Environmental Police Officer nine each, and not the same nine, Police Communications Technician seven, and Special Officer five. Motor Vehicle Operator does not lead with abilities at all: its notice starts with the rules of the road. Assuming one framework would have been wrong for every title after the second one. Where two notices do define an ability in the same words, the worked example is still each title’s own, which is why these are six banks rather than one bank with the nouns swapped, a street grid, a school floor plan, a jail map, one intersection, a delivery route with a street posted no trucks, and a reservoir you can only cross at the bridge or the dam.
NYC Police Officer
Open competitive · Exam Nos. 6311–6323
- Two practice exams, 110 questions each, no question shared between them
- Ten sections: the City’s nine abilities, plus employee ethical conduct
- Runs roughly monthly, application fee $0
- Spatial Orientation is a street grid with one-way signs
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC School Safety Agent
Open competitive · Exam Nos. 6324–6326
- Two practice exams, 100 questions each, no question shared between them
- Nine sections, one per published ability, no ethics section, because this notice does not name one
- Minimum salary $39,206; a feeder title into the Police Officer promotion exam
- Spatial Orientation is a school floor plan; Visualization is the x-ray belt
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC Correction Officer
Open competitive · Exam Nos. 6301–6303
- Two practice exams, 110 questions each, no question shared between them
- Eleven sections, the longest ability list in the line
- The only notices here that name both Number Facility and Mathematical Reasoning
- Spatial Orientation is a facility map; Visualization is an altered object
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC Traffic Enforcement Agent
Open competitive · Exam Nos. 6310, 6330, 6331
- Two practice exams, 100 questions each, no question shared between them
- Nine sections: Number Facility in, Visualization out. Not the School Safety Agent nine
- A feeder title into the Police Officer promotion exam
- Spatial Orientation is one intersection, from where you stand in it
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC Special Officer
Open competitive · Exam No. 6327
- Two practice exams, 100 questions each, no question shared between them
- Five sections, the shortest ability list in the line
- No memory section, no map and no arithmetic, because the notice names none of them
- Peace officers in public buildings: admission, property, fire safety, daily logs
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC Motor Vehicle Operator
Open competitive · Exam No. 6306
- Two practice exams, 140 questions each, no question shared between them
- The only exam here that tests knowledge: its notice leads with task areas
- Rules of the road, defensive driving, readiness checks, loading and delivery, records
- Route planning is a drawn map, and the question is which route is legal, not which is shortest
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC Environmental Police Officer
Open competitive · Exam Nos. 6304, 6305
- Two practice exams, 110 questions each, no question shared between them
- Sworn officers of the Department of Environmental Protection, guarding the water supply
- The same nine abilities as School Safety Agent, and every worked example is different
- Spatial Orientation is a reservoir road map; Visualization is a face on file
- Minimum salary $52,333, rising to $60,038 after 26 weeks
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
NYC Police Communications Technician
Open competitive · Exam Nos. 6309, 6329
- Two practice exams, 140 questions each, no question shared between them
- The 911 console: call-takers, radio dispatchers and Text to 911
- Seven abilities, nothing drawn anywhere in this exam, and no arithmetic
- A feeder title into the Police Officer promotion exam
5 credits per exam. Try ten free.
Every notice behind the exams above states a passing score of 70% and that the test is given at a computer terminal. Not one of them publishes a question count or a time limit, so the lengths above are our design, chosen to give fair practice on every ability the notice names.
What the City publishes for Police Officer, and what it does not.
DCAS writes a separate Notice of Examination for every job title, and each one names its own abilities and its own passing score. This page is about the exam anyone may apply for, the open-competitive Police Officer series, Exam Nos. 6311–6323. It runs roughly monthly, twelve administrations were scheduled through 30 June 2026, and the application fee is $0.
Watch the exam number before you apply. There is a second Police Officer exam, Nos. 6539 and 6540, and it is a promotion exam, open only to people already working for the NYPD in titles such as Police Cadet, School Safety Agent or Traffic Enforcement Agent. Same nine abilities, different candidates, different notice. If you do not already work there, that is not your exam.
Published by DCAS, facts
- The nine abilities the test measures, each defined in the notice
- A worked example of how a Police Officer uses each one
- That 70% is the passing score on the multiple-choice test
- That the test is taken at a computer terminal
Not published anywhere, so nobody knows
- How many questions the test has
- How long you get to sit it
Every “100 questions in two and a half hours” you have read is a competitor’s guess printed as a fact. Our exam is 110 questions in 149 minutes, and that is our design decision, chosen to give fair practice on every ability. It is not the City’s number, and we will not put one in your head to plan around.
Pick an exam, then pick an ability.
Everything below belongs to NYC Police Officer: 9 published abilities, the quotation in each panel lifted from its notice word for word, and the notice’s own example of how the job uses it. Switch exam and every number changes with it, nothing here is shared between the two. Police Officer carries one extra section, Ethics and Conduct, which is ours rather than the City’s; its panel says so, and School Safety Agent does not have it.
The ten abilities are Written Comprehension, Deductive Reasoning, Inductive Reasoning, Information Ordering, Problem Sensitivity, Written Expression, Memorization, Spatial Orientation, Visualization, and Ethics and Conduct.
70% passes. Drag the sliders and see what that costs you.
Both notices state 70%, and both are silent on length. So the 110 questions are ours, which makes 77 marks a fact about our NYC Police Officer practice exam: useful for planning your practice, not a number to take into a real test center. What it does show honestly is the shape of the problem. There is no section you can write off.
At 70%, passing our 110-question practice exam takes 77 correct answers.
Answer one wrong on purpose.
That is the part worth seeing. Every incorrect option carries its own explanation naming the specific mistake behind it, not one line of feedback shared by all three. These three are written for this page. They are not taken out of either practice exam, because a question printed in public is a question you have already seen.
The map for the first question
Spatial Orientation and Visualization questions are drawn, not described. This is what one looks like in the exam.
NYC Police Officer: 110 questions, 149 minutes.
The abilities in the left column are the City’s, except any row marked as ours. Every number to the right of them is ours. You can sit one ability at a time rather than the whole exam in a single session.
| Ability | Our questions | Our minutes | Seconds each |
|---|---|---|---|
| Police Officer runs 110 questions across ten sections; School Safety Agent runs 100 across nine. | |||
Ability names and definitions are quoted from the DCAS open-competitive Notices of Examination: Police Officer, Exam Nos. 6311–6323, and School Safety Agent, Exam Nos. 6324–6326, which the City publishes free. They contain no test questions and we copy none. Ethics and Conduct appears on the Police Officer exam only; it is drawn from the notice for promotion to Police Officer, Exam No. 6539, and is marked as ours above. Confirm current requirements and filing dates with DCAS before you apply.
Eleven on sale. Here is everything else, and where it stands.
Exam numbers and sitting counts below come from the DCAS annual examination schedule through 30 June 2026. Several of these titles are written to overlapping ability lists, so the work carries over, which is a reason to expect more here, not a reason to list them as though they were finished. When one is built it gets its own ability list, its own passing score and its own question count, read off its own notice. None of the numbers on this page will be copied across.
| Exam | DCAS exam no. | Sittings scheduled | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| The NYC Police Officer open-competitive exam is on sale. School Safety Agent, Correction Officer, Traffic Enforcement Agent, Special Officer, Motor Vehicle Operator and the Police Officer promotion exam are not available yet. | |||
Try ten questions of either exam before you decide.
Both free sets are drawn straight out of Form A, so what you try is the product rather than a sample written to flatter it. The drawn sections, Spatial Orientation and Visualization, are not in either free set, because the free page shows text only; the map further up this page is what those look like. Ten questions free, no account needed, no card.
Both practice exams are 5 credits each. See what that costs. If you are also looking at enlistment, the ASVAB practice exams share several abilities with this test, reading a paragraph closely, and working at a fixed pace.
Most people taking this are adults. The account expects that.
The rest of this site is built for a parent setting an exam for a child, so the wording you will meet is about students and rosters. If you are taking a civil service exam yourself, you are not doing anything unusual, you just need to know where the button is.
Create an account, then add yourself as the test taker.
On your roster there is a link that reads “Taking an exam yourself? Add me as the test taker”. Use that rather than adding yourself as a student, it records the account as yours, and you will never be asked to confirm that you are your own parent or guardian.
The exam screen is the same one a student sits, so it shows no score at the end. Your report, with every wrong answer explained, is waiting in your account the moment you finish. See pricing.
Original questions, and a score you can act on.
Written from scratch
Every question original. Nothing licensed, scraped or adapted from another publisher, and nothing taken from a real City exam. The notice is a blueprint, not a question bank.
Every wrong answer explained
All 220 questions across the two practice exams carry a separate explanation on every incorrect option. No two options on a question ever share a reason.
An answer key you cannot guess
Marking A, B, C, D down the page scores no better than chance, and picking the longest option scores no better either. Both are checked before an exam can be published.
Two practice exams that do not repeat
Not one question is shared between Form A and Form B, so sitting the second one measures something rather than testing what you remember of the first.