California Correctional Officer Exam (CDCR) Exam Guide

The written exam sits at the front of a multi-stage selection pipeline. You apply online, and CDCR emails your written-exam invitation within two business days. After the written exam come the Physical Fitness Test, vision screening, background investigation, and psychological evaluation — the department says the full hiring process generally takes about 12 months after the written exam. Age requirements bracket the process: at least 20 years old when you apply and 21 at appointment to the academy.

Candidates who clear every stage report to the Basic Correctional Officer Academy, a 13-week program in Galt, California. One scheduling note dominates current planning: CDCR temporarily closed correctional officer applications, with re-opening expected October 1, 2026. If you are reading this during the closure, you have been handed something rare in hiring pipelines — guaranteed preparation time. Use it on the written fundamentals and on training for the physical fitness course standard.

The materials we verified do not list an application or examination fee for the CDCR correctional officer written exam, and California civil-service selection steps are administered by the hiring department — so treat CDCR's official careers page and your exam invitation as the authoritative word on any cost to test. Budget instead for the practical expenses: travel to the exam location, time off work for the multiple screening stages, and fitness preparation for the physical test that follows.

The return side of the ledger is published and substantial. After completing the academy, a CDCR correctional officer earns $5,510 to $9,203 per month. Set against a hiring process that generally runs about 12 months after the written exam, the arithmetic favors treating preparation seriously: the written exam is the gate to a stable, pensioned state career, and the cost of failing it is measured mostly in time — a 30-day reapplication freeze and a restart of the pipeline.

CDCR publishes the exam's subject areas — grammar, spelling, punctuation, reading comprehension, and basic mathematics — but the materials we verified do not specify a fixed question count or session length, so rely on your invitation email for the logistics of your specific testing cycle. Expect civil-service-style multiple-choice items across the five subjects: choosing correctly written sentences, reading short institutional passages, and working arithmetic without a calculator.

Keep the written exam in perspective as one gate among several. The Physical Fitness Test that follows is fully specified: a 500-yard course over varied surfaces with a mini obstacle section and a 50-yard carry of two 45-pound kettlebells, finished in no more than 5 minutes and 35 seconds — a standard 90% of candidates meet. The written exam's own outcome figure, 79% passing, tells you the format rewards solid fundamentals rather than specialized knowledge. Prepare across all five subjects, and use the practice bank here to rehearse the institutional framing before you see it on exam day.