RankHighCompetitive Exam Prep

How the New York Local Police Captain exam is scored

The passing grade of 70 is real, and it is not in the Department's test guide. It comes from your agency's announcement — which is also where any seniority credit lives, and two agencies that tested on the same day did that differently.

Passing grade
70, stated by the local announcements
In the Department's test guide
No passing score of any kind
Seniority credit
Ithaca publishes a 0–5 table; Rockland County states none
Oral board or assessment centre
Not stated in either announcement read
Score portability
None — each agency runs its own eligible list

Where the 70 actually comes from

Across the guide's full extracted text the tokens 70, pass, passing and score do not occur at all. The figure is carried by the two Captain announcements read here instead, and that is where we attribute it.

This is not pedantry about footnotes. A cut-off is something a candidate plans their revision around, and an examination fact filed against the wrong document is a fact nobody can check. Your own announcement states the grade that governs your sitting, and it is the one to trust.

Seniority is your agency's choice, not the Department's

The two most recent Captain announcements read here were sat on the same day in November 2024 and treat service differently. The City of Ithaca publishes a seniority table running from 0 to 5 points; the Rockland County announcement states no seniority credit at all.

Where credit exists it is added to a passing score, so long service does not rescue a failed paper, and it is fixed by your record before you sit down. Whatever your agency does with seniority, the written test is the only part of your standing you can still move.

No weighting, so no percentage — including the tempting one

It is possible to divide a published seniority cap by a maximum final score and produce a confident-looking figure for how much of your rank the written test decides. That number is an arithmetic bound on one agency's announcement, not a weighting, and it is not printed anywhere on this site.

The Department publishes no weighting between the five subject areas either. The honest statement is a count of what is prepared, never a share of what is tested.

The result does not travel

Each local agency runs the examination under its own number and builds its own eligible list from it — Ithaca under #74855010, Rockland County under #75574010. A promotional standing is a standing in your own department.

So there is no portfolio to build across agencies, and no score to present elsewhere. That is a difference worth knowing if you have prepared for an entry-level examination before, where one result can be offered to several employers.

Sources

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