RankHighCompetitive Exam Prep

Lieutenant or Sergeant — which New York State exam are you sitting?

The Department publishes two different police supervisor test guides, and they are not interchangeable. Which one your announcement points at decides what you should be preparing.

Two guides, two instruments

Sergeant sits the Police Supervisors/Investigators Series guide. Lieutenant and Captain sit the Second- and Third-Line Police Supervisors guide. These are separate documents of different lengths, and the Department publishes both.

Four of the subject-area names overlap. The fifth does not: the first-line examination covers supervision of a work unit, and this one covers planning, supervising and administering police programs and activities.

The overall time allowance differs too

The Second- and Third-Line guide states an overall allowance of six hours. The first-line series guide states five and a half. That is a small fact with a useful function: if a summary you are reading quotes five and a half hours for a Lieutenant examination, it is describing the wrong guide.

Captain sits the same guide as Lieutenant

Second- and Third-Line covers both ranks, so a Captain candidate is reading the same five subject areas. The guide does note that its subject area 3 content is set at a level appropriate for the ranks being tested, so the areas are shared and the difficulty of what is asked is not necessarily identical.

The preparation sold here is written at Lieutenant rank and is not sold as a Captain product.

And neither of them is the New York City exam

NYPD runs its own promotional examinations through New York City DCAS, scored on the Department's Patrol Guide. No New York City title sits either state guide. If your announcement names the state's test guide, you are in the state system; if it names a departmental manual or a textbook, you are not.

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