Victoria Police Entrance Exam Practice (ACER)

Who runs the exam

Victoria Police states on its own recruitment page that the "Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is the examination authority for Victoria Police", and ACER confirms it from the other side: the entrance examination "is used to select recruits for Victoria Police, and for the recruitment of protective services officers (PSOs). It is administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) on behalf of Victoria Police." ACER says it has been the partner for the design and delivery of these exams for more than a decade.

Where it sits in the process

Victoria Police publishes a ten-stage recruitment process and the entrance examination is stage three, immediately after eligibility checks and before background checks, the fitness test, psychological testing and interview. It is an early hurdle rather than a final judgement, which is exactly why it is worth preparing for: it is the stage that removes the most people.

On the fee, two official sources disagree and we will not quietly pick one. ACER, which takes the payment, says $284 including GST. Victoria Police says $275. Budget for about $275 to $284 and check the ACER portal when you book.

The four components

This is the part most candidates get wrong. It is not one two-hour paper. Each component is timed separately, scored separately and passed separately, and a component you are strong at cannot rescue one you are weak at.

Note the abstract reasoning row. Forty-five questions in twenty minutes is about 27 seconds each, which is the tightest clock in the exam by a wide margin. Fire Rescue Victoria and Queensland Police run the same construct at 30 questions in 35 minutes, so preparation material aimed at those exams is pitched at less than half the pace you need.

The report is the highest bar, and we do not simulate it

Report writing carries a pass mark of 107 against 105 everywhere else. You get 35 minutes and are expected to write approximately 300 to 350 words, about three quarters of a typed page, with an onscreen word count. Spell check, grammar check, dictionary, cut and paste and all formatting functions including bold, italics, underline and bullets are disabled. Multiple sources of information are provided and you have to read all of them and include the relevant parts.

It is rated on your ability to select relevant information, write clearly, objectively and in a logical order, form paragraphs, create complex sentences, and spell and use grammar correctly. We do not offer a practice version, because a 300-word report cannot be scored the way our tests are scored and a word-count proxy would hand you a number that means nothing on the component where the bar is highest. Practise it directly instead: find a set of source documents, set a 35-minute timer, turn the spell checker off, and write 320 words.

How it is marked

You will not be given a percentile. The literacy and numeracy components are scored against the Australian Core Skills Framework as a scale score rather than a raw mark or a percentage correct, running from a minimum of about 40 to a maximum of about 170, calculated by an algorithm that accounts for the difficulty of the questions you saw as well as how many you got right. The outcome you see per component is "Standard met" or "Standard not met".

Two practical consequences. Points are not deducted for incorrect answers, so a blank is the only answer that cannot score. And you may move backwards and forwards within a component, so the right strategy is to mark something on everything and come back to the hard ones.

If you fail a component

You re-sit only what you failed. Victoria Police charges $135 for one component, $191 for two and $284 for three or more, and states that "all pass marks remain valid". So a single weak component is a specific, cheap thing to fix rather than the end of the application.

Sitting it

The exam runs in the ACER Test App, which you download onto the computer you will use at least three days before your session and cannot log into until the session starts. Remote sittings are proctored by ProctorU through the Guardian Browser with live webcam and microphone supervision. Work and school computers, iPads, tablets, phones, Chromebooks, Linux, virtual machines, Boot Camp, remote-access tools and Microsoft Edge are unsupported, and the minimum screen is 13 inches at 1366x768. There is also a venue option at Camberwell in Melbourne, one weekend a month.

Test the actual machine days ahead. A managed work laptop that refuses the installer on the morning costs you the sitting.

Practise the components

Each of these runs at the real item count and clock, with free navigation and no penalty for a wrong answer, exactly as ACER runs them.

• ACER Literacy Skills (30 questions · 35 minutes · free) - Six texts including tables, charts, maps and procedures. Victoria Police runs 30 questions in 30 minutes, five minutes tighter than the fire and Queensland versions, so practise finishing early.
• ACER Abstract Reasoning (TAR) (45 questions · 20 or 35 minutes · free) - Choose the Victoria Police preset: 45 questions in 20 minutes, about 27 seconds each. This is the fastest ACER component of the four and the one where candidates run out of paper.
• ACER Numeracy (30 questions · 35 minutes) - Applied adult maths with an onscreen calculator, 30 questions in 35 minutes. Typed answers carry units and sensible rounding is accepted.

Also available under the same publisher, though not part of this exam:

• ACER Select Verbal (34 questions · 15 minutes) - Not part of the entrance exam, but the same publisher’s verbal reasoning at a harder pace. Useful conditioning for the literacy component.
• ACER Mechanical Reasoning (MRT-2) (32 questions · 20 minutes) - Not part of the Victoria Police exam. Fire Rescue Victoria includes it; Victoria Police does not.

Full detail on how ACER builds and marks these components is on the ACER provider page, and there is a tactics guide at ACER entrance exam tips.