Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #967741 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-01
• Released on: 2005-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Plastic Comb

Customer Reviews

Clarification: This is for Suffolk County, NY
I'm writing this review because there is basically no info about this book anywhere on the net, and I found out just a tiny bit from the publisher.

First off: this book is for the coveted Suffolk County, Long Island, New York police officer exam given about every 4 years. Infamous for the tens of thousands who take the exam because of the extremely high salary for Suffolk cops, this book presumes to be the one that will help you get the 100 you absolutely need to even be CONSIDERED for the position. So before you buy it, rest assured it's for Suffolk, NY.

The woman at the National Learning Corp. customer service line was less than enthusiastic about my call and sounded like I'd interrupted her boring day. She was unwilling to give me any info about the book other than to say Jack Rudman is the publisher, not the author. It was compiled by various sources.

The next exam is being given on June 9, 2007 (file by April 11, $100) so you might want to consider the book. I wish I knew how many stars to actually give it. Suffolk offers a sanctioned course for the exam, but that course alone is something like $600 (compare to most departments' free course).

Now that I've taken the test, the real skinny on this book's value
Now that I have taken the Suffolk County (NY) police exam, I can write a true review of how useful this study book was. The next exam may be more than 4 years away, but at least those taking that will have some help to go by!

First off, the book is broken down into sections, and offers dozens upon dozens of partial practice exams, presumably from old police exams. There are some good things about the book and some not as good, but now you'll know.

First off, the Suffolk exam, as of 2007, contains 3 parts: cognitive abilities, work styles, and life & experiences. The good part is that this book has plenty of all of those things, and if you do all the practice exams, you WILL be quite familiar with typical scenarios in all 3 sections.

The downside is that Rudman (the publisher) includes sections from what I'm presuming are other police exams. NOW HEAR THIS: the Suffolk exam DOES NOT contain the following: word analogies (SAT style), spelling, grammar, knowledge of police procedure, mathematics, or cultural/sociological info. For some reason however, this book DOES include most of those. Here's my tip: ignore them, skip over them, etc., etc. Trust me, I'm not trying to trick you. (You won't be competing against me in the next exam, god willing!)

Basically, the cognitive abilities section contains exactly what this book says it does, so trust it and do all of those parts. There's PLENTY of matching pictures of suspects, getaway cars and weapons that you have to very meticulously match. There's plenty of lists of procedures for responding to a call, where you analyze or put them in order. There are maps where you follow road routes. There are descriptions of suspects where you pick out the one who's not the same guy. Note: if you've taken NYPD, this part of Suffolk is the same as the entirety of NYPD.

Another thing there is NOT is memorization, you will not be asked to memorize a picture and answer questions based on what was in it. NYPD does that, not Suffolk.

The second part, work styles, asks you on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) how you feel or how you'd think about something. Examples include how your bosses would describe you, how much extra work you like taking on, how successful you were in school (HS only, Suffolk as of 2007 doesn't require college, unfortunately). Basically, if you do all the practice exams in this book, they will also serve you very well. Carefully analyze which answers in the 1-5 scale are considered the most points, and you'll begin to get a picture of how Suffolk wants a police officer to think and behave (the caveat being, don't lie...hopefully you truthfully do feel the "right" way).

Finally, the life & experiences section will ask about ethics, opinions and flirtation with both good and bad activities. Be careful and try to think like a police officer would...I can't really say more...or I'd have to charge you $400 for the Suffolk Police Study Course! Just to give one example from this section, you might see a question about seeing your best friend commit a crime. Hint: always say you'd turn so-and-so in right away.

I really hope that this review will help some people do well on the Suffolk exam next time. Now that this book is out and around, you can even get it used and save a chunk (though make sure it's not written in).

The reason I even out my review at 3 stars is that there's great content for the 3 sections of the exam, but you need to filter out the stuff that's NOT tested on this exam. Pretty much follow my advice, hopefully some others will leave some reviews here as well. Best of luck!

Past Tests Good But.......
This book is comprised of past examinations Questions & Answers. The pages appear to be photocopied and set together by spiral binding and the photographs are so dark there is no way to see anything let alone details, so do not rely on it for the photo recognition and remembrance part of the test. There is no fillers to this book just tests and answers so if you looking for a "how to" book this is not the book for you. If you want a straight forward, no frills easy to use, up-to-date test prep book for the Suffolk County Police Exam [Long Island, NY] you've found your text.