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The city anticipates making the results of the open competitive test for FDNY firefighter public later this month, a spokesperson for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services confirmed this week. The city said in September that it planned for list for exam 4044 to be made public in December, but the publication of results has been delayed.
Neither DCAS nor the FDNY provided a reason for the delay. The FDNY deferred comment to DCAS, the agency that administers most civil service exams in the city.
“We’re actively working to prepare the results of exam 4044 and anticipate that the established list will be made available by the end of this month,” Anessa Hodgson, a spokesperson for DCAS, said in a statement.
Applicants sat for the multiple-choice portion of the exam from Jan. 30 to May 10, 2025, a timeline that was extended by the federal monitor overseeing the FDNY as part of a 2014 settlement regarding allegations that the tests discriminated against Black and Hispanic test-takers. Ultimately, more than 22,000 people took the exam of the nearly 34,000 who signed up for it.
It was the first exam since 2017, when 46,305 people took the test.
The FDNY said last year that the large drop off in test takers was intentional and the result of a targeted recruiting campaign. “The reduction in the number of test-takers was achieved by design, with the City intentionally recruiting a smaller pool than in the past via changes made in the recruitment process,” the federal monitor, Mark Cohen, wrote U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, the judge overseeing the FDNY’s settlement with the Vulcan Society, in a status report last year.
According to department figures, the FDNY's recruitment campaign drew a record percentage of women — 6.5 percent — to take the exam. Of test takers, 28 percent were Hispanic, which exceeded the department’s goal, and 23.5 percent were Black, which fell just short of the department’s goal.
In a December status update sent to Judge Garaufis, Cohen wrote that, once the results for the multiple-choice exam are posted, the FDNY intends to start calling candidates for the candidate physical ability test (CPAT) in February.
Those that pass the CPAT will then likely join the FDNY firefighter academy in the fall.
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