adorkasherri

Just now, playtoannoy said:

Does anyone know if you start with full time?  Is the training paid?  

I'm a bit nervous transitioning jobs.  I know I'll probably end up taking a pay cut, but hope it's not too much of a difference from my current job.

Not sure if you start with full time, but I think you do. Training is paid. I did calculations and we start with about 42k a year :/

9 minutes ago, N1CKR said:

Just wanted to know how long after pre-employment did some you receive an e-mail for medical.

People who had pre-employment last week Monday, got emails last Friday, to come in for medicals on Tuesday. So looking like 4 business days later. But they might be rushing them along cause their class is so soon. Take that into consideration.

16 minutes ago, Schecter said:

Hypothetically I'll probably say please stand clear of the closing doors idk even know what to say without it potentially sounding rude lmao

Sounds good to me. You'll be fine

4 minutes ago, Schecter said:

I know you cant give answers away but for the recording part do you have go repeat a sentence or is it something else

For the second part, they'll ask you questions like "There's a man holding the doors. What do you do?" And honestly, how are we supposed to know what to do if they don't tell us or we were never trained in it. So I think you bs your way through these questions, and what they're really looking at is how quickly and clearly you respond to the question.

19 minutes ago, Schecter said:

When did you do your OPA I'm trying to give myself a timeline on how long it will take to get the pre employment since I'm taking the OPA this Tuesday coming up. And is the OPA hard because I'm getting really anxious and nervous lol.

If it makes you feel better, I haven't seen anyone say they failed the OPA, so maybe it's not that bad. It was tough for me cuz my memory is crap. And I still somehow managed to pass. The second part, I think they were recording you to see if you spoke clearly. So focus on that, and less on if you're giving the right answer.

4 minutes ago, Lovablepj said:

I just got an email to report on the 10th for medical 

Wow already. Congrats. What day was your pre-employment?

Nevermind. I see your list number is in the 70s.

High 400s here. Going in Thursday for pre-employment 

Just now, Dred said:

Does anyone know about how quickly the MTA usually takes to hire someone after they went to their pre employment date? 

Friend said it took him a month after pre-employment to get hired.

High 400s here. Got both letters yesterday but they have two different dates. So it's possible if you got the OPA letter yesterday, that you might get a pre-employment one tomorrow.

High 400s here and no letter today either. Wondering if I passed the OPA or if they got up to my number.

4 minutes ago, Smrch said:

Can anyone find the drivers license requirements for this position? Thank you

There is no requirement for a driver's license for this position.

17 minutes ago, Moody said:

I'm sorry. What does OPA stand for again? 

Oral proficiency assessment. If you can find the original pdf file for the exam, they talk about it in there.

7 hours ago, Dred said:

I would like to have some of your opinions  from people who took the OPA exam. We really need to have a serious discussion about our chances of passing this OPA exam.

Please also note that I am not trying to brag about my accomplishments, just trying to give you an understanding of where my background is help put into perspective how difficult I found this memory section to be.

I'm a native english speaker and also have an accounting degree and also a master degree, I have my CPA license, or certified public accountant certification which is a extremely difficult 4 part exam, and got 2 answers wrong on the first part of the conductor exam.  I don't consider myself to have bad memory either,   but I found the first memory part extremely difficult because they would give you so much information to remember and they would give you stuff to remember to try and trick you up.

To clarify better as an example, they would give you lots of facts and the facts were very close to each other that when it came time to answer the question you could usually narrow it down to 2 answers very easily but those two answers were so close you really had to take a guess. 

I found myself having to take an educated guess many times after narrowing it down to two questions.

To give an example of a hypothetical memory question that is made to try and trick you up, say I placed a book on the 7th row of a shelf, and this shelf in the 6th aisle of the 8th floor. There would be lots of other information in this question also you had to remember, not just these facts so there is no way you could continue thinking about these numbers in your short term memory.

Then you were asked a question a few minutes later asking "What row of the shelf did you place the book on the shelf". A) 8th B) 7th C)2nd D) 3rd shelf.

Now you kind probably easily remember that the book was placed high up on the shelf, so you can eliminate the 2nd and 3rd shelf easily.  However, you then narrow it down to two answers, was this the 7th or the 8th shelf. You remember hearing the word 8th, but you really can't remember was it the 7th shelf or the 8th shelf, or was it that the 7th aisle . You then have no choice but to take a guess because who the heck is going to remember exactly the location when so many other numbers were so close to trick you up and you had so many other facts and numbers to remember.

This is exactly why this test was so difficult, they really tricked you up and forced you to remember things that were extremely close.

That all being said I had to guess at many questions and am seriously worried that I failed this test, especially if they grade it with a 75 average.

What I would like to discuss from some of you is, do you think they are going to fail a lot of people? Personally I would be shocked if they graded this on a 75 Pass average as I would think so many people would fail including myself. 

Is it possible that they may not fail a lot of people and the only people who will fail will be non-english speakers who really couldn't remember anything well because of the language barrier and couldn't even narrow down the answers to 2 questions? This is what I'm hoping for. I found the first part of the exam was so language intensive that it seemed it was meant to weed out the non native speakers of English. 

I simply can not believe my memory can be so bad with all my accomplishments, unless of course being in your late 30's makes your memory crap compared to early 20's.

This makes me believe that they will have to score this on some kind of curve and not outright fail more than 50% of the candidates. Could you imagine if most of us failed here? Wouldn't there be lawsuits like with the FDNY for discrimination? We really should consider a lawsuit if most of us fail this OPA exam as I think it is outrageous what they expected you to remember.

 

The other topic I would like to discuss is how some people have posted on this thread that the OPA memory exam was easy. Personally, I usually have found at the university that the people who said an exam was easy did poorly on it. The reason for this is because they did not even realize they were getting tricked up big time. I just can't see how anyone could have that good of a memory unless they practiced memory tricks to learn how to remember things.  I would like to hear from some of you how people have said in this thread that the memory test was easy. Are these people just fooling themselves or is my memory just bad and I have to accept that fact?

 

Please, I don't want any fighting about what I wrote here, it always seems like anything I write leads to flaming. I really want a serious discussion about the difficulty of this OPA exam as I found it ridiculously difficult. Based on my test scores, my academic qualifications, having been able to pass the CPA exam which is considered very difficult exam, how I could find this OPA exam so difficult and am pretty sure I failed it. I also don't consider myself to have bad memory considering I always seem to remember things better than most people I know.

Please share your experience with this memory test, did anyone else find it extremely difficult and are also worried they could have failed? 

I completely agree with you. I consistently score high on city exams, but memory is not my forte. In addition, I think it was unfair. They completely made up stations and lines. If they used real ones, I would've had no problem as I'm pretty familiar with the subway. Also, if I was working a line, I would know my line. Asking me to remember all this new information was a lot imo. But I accepted that all the people who thought they did well probably just have a better memory than me. As far as the memory part goes, I feel I got 60% correct. For the second part, I'm not entirely sure what they were looking for. Was it enunciation? How quickly we answered?

Edit: I'm realizing now that if they used real lines, it would've been more unfair. The people who use those real lines every day would've had an unfair advantage :/

41 minutes ago, TrueBlu said:

That’s fine but just to make sure u said said she went in a week or so ago correct...ask her was it her first drug test? 

Yep, that was Tuesday Jan 9th. It was her first time going. She said the next step is the medical, and to wait for a letter that'll take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months to receive.

1 hour ago, TrueBlu said:

Not for nothing the whole process is confusing in my opinion. Unfortunately I have token both exams that is why I am asking about your coworker list # on previous exam. We may be in the same boat. Thanks

She said she doesn't remember exactly, sorry. Somewhere in the 10,300 range.

51 minutes ago, TrueBlu said:

 

I’m curious to know what interview your coworker went on. Is it possible to find out what their list number was and if they were informed about an upcoming class being that they were interviewed from old list. 

She said they took her urine and now she's waiting to get a letter for the medical. Sorry, when she first told me, she just said she had an interview. I'll ask her for her list #. She took the test before ours. She told me there are only 1 or 2 more classes, but that she read that on these forums. I'll ask her for her list number later.

My coworker who is on the older list just went in for an interview like a week or two ago, and she told me a woman from the new list was there. I thought she was mistaken too until I read it here as well.

I scored 98, took the OPA, and still haven't heard anything :/

3 minutes ago, Dred said:

Wow, the memory test was really difficult, I'll just say that. If they score it by 75% pass I could have failed it, I had to guess at least 25% of the time.

The speaking test didn't seem as difficult but not sure what they were looking for.

Still shocked how difficult the memory test was. 

 

 

Yeah I really struggled with the memory section. 70% is passing for the opa.

2 minutes ago, Schecter said:

I know you can't give it away but are the questions hard af like anything relevant to mta or nah 

The first part was strictly memory. Relevant to the mta, yes. They're radio communications between the dispatcher and conductor. It's not hard. I only struggled with this part because my memory is horrible. After the first set of questions, you'll probably figure out what should be relevant in the next set and focus on remembering those details.

The second part of the exam seemed relevant to the mta. I'm not sure if they really expected us to know the correct answers. They'd show us various scenarios that could happen on a train and ask you what you would do/ask what was happening in the picture. Something tells me your answers didn't have to be 100% correct. It probably just had to fit the scenario and make sense. And they were probably also checking to see how quickly you answered and how clearly you spoke.

If anyone thinks I'm giving away too much info, let me know and I'll remove all of this.

2 minutes ago, Schecter said:

I took the fdny exam today and it had the same stuff except they give you a booklet with some notes and they you play an audio and write more notes down and then answer questions 

Ah, we were not allowed to take notes when they played the audio either :/

Couldn't read the questions before hand either. Lol. So you really had no clue what to look out for or what was relevant info.

4 minutes ago, Schecter said:

Like wha kind of memory like look at a picture and then answer questions I know the nypd on their exam you had to look at a picture for 10 minutes then it goes away and then you have to answer questions based on what you saw

They would play an audio recording then ask you to recall specifics from it. This part was multiple choice.

27 minutes ago, Dred said:

What is there to be nervous about if English is your first language? I can't see them expecting you to cite Shakespeare or anything crazy.

There are so many MTA employees who are foreigners where English is their second language. I can't see this being difficult at all.

Not only that, you just need a passing grade, nothing like the first exam where you need to get at least a 95 to get called.

I have to admit though,  I was surprised how difficult they made the 1st exam. 

 

The first part tested your memory. Nothing to do with speaking.

And the second part, wasn't multiple choice. They tested how quickly you could assess a situation and make a decision I think, in addition to how clearly you spoke.

Just now, Settlon said:

Question: What is the exact titling as to who we address the $25 Money Order to?

 

"MTA NYC Transit Authority?"

 

Do not fill it out. They'll tell you what to write. 

I went this morning and the guy told us to write our home address in the pay to section. That turned out to be wrong obviously lol. I don't feel very confident about the testing today and I normally test very well :/

26 minutes ago, Dred said:

Just speculation but how soon could people called from the 6601 list be called? Assume the top scorer. 

Is this something that could happen within the next few months, or most likely over a year away?

 

Thanks, just trying to get an idea about of how soon I could be called.

 

I'm not sure but I'm speculating myself that it's soon. According to the examination notice, we're being called as vacancies occur. I'm hoping that means medical will follow soon after if you pass the opa.

44 minutes ago, Schecter said:

What does OPA stand for lol I'm still new

Oral proficiency assessment I think