Important Facts About the Postal Exam

The American postal service is an extremely attractive option for many job seekers. This has a lot to do with the broad array of benefits that the service offers to its permanent employees. Some of them include the following:

  • Post-retirement pensions
  • Paid vacations
  • Full family medical insurance
  • Bonuses and provident funds
  • Lucrative salary packages

All of these combined have served to ensure that vast numbers of applicants try to join the service every year.  However, becoming an employee of the postal service is not very easy. The prospective applicant has to pass a few key criteriabefore he will even be considered eligible for employment in the service.  The most basic criteria here is the postal exam 473.
This exam is made up of a series of tests that are combined together for the purpose of determining a person's eligibility in the service. It is very important to be successful in this exam.  If a candidate fails to clear it, his application will not be processed any further. Every candidate must score at least 70 or above in the various sections of thispostal exam. 

Postal Exam 473 and its Application

This exam is often referred to as the EntryLevel Battery 473 exam. This is a basic assessment test that is common for most USPS entry-level jobs.  You can take this online or at your nearest USPS recruitment center. Both the online as well as the offline versionsof the exam are exactly the same. They are broken down into 4 mutually exclusive sections:

  • Experience Inventory and Personal Characteristics section:  The candidate is given an estimated 90 minutes to successfully complete 236 questions.
  • Address Testing:  All test takers are given 11 minutes to go through and complete 60 questions. Or as many of them as they can complete before the test ends. There are no extensions given in case there are any unsolved questions left.
  • Form Completion: There are 30 questions in total and only 15 minutes to complete them all. I.e You will have 30 seconds per question.
  • Coding and Memory: This section deal with your ability to retain information that you have just seen. You will have 13 minutes to answer 72 questions.

This is not a true aptitude test as such. But more of a preliminary examination to see if you have what it takes to join the US postal service as a permanent employee.

Conclusion

In light of the above, it can be seen that the postal exam 473is a very tough exam and you will have to take preparatory classes if you want to pass through with flying colors.