1939 NYPD Used IQ to Choose 300 Recruits Out of 33,000 Applicants

“In 1939, a decade into the Great Depression and with unemployment still at 17 percent, the NYPD had just three hundred new slots to offer its next class and a vast pool of applicants–thirty-three thousand men,” reports US sociologist Charles Murray.  

      The IQ test made the primary selection, with a screening test for physical ability also a composite score factor.  “The NYPD decided to select exclusively on the basis of test scores, with no edge given to nephews of influential politicians and no edge for a  favorable impression in a job interview,” he says.  Excluded were all the soft criteria that dominate college admissions and job hirings today, including protected class biases of one kind or another.

    Murray reports that “The applicants with the top composite scores were offered entrance to the police academy.  In an age when few of the men had more attractive job alternatives, the three hundred slots ended up being filled by men who earned among the top 350 scores.  The best estimate is that they had a mean IQ of around 130–near the mean IQ of incoming freshman at elite schools today.  They graduated from the police academy in June 1940.”

     Looking back from the 40th anniversary of the class in 1980, Murray notes that “the results had been spectacular”:

     Its three hundred members achieved far higher average rank and suffered far fewer disciplinary penalties than the typical class of recruits.  Some of them made important contributions to police training.  Many had successful careers as lawyers, businessmen and academics after leaving the police department.  Within the department, the class produced four police chiefs, four deputy commissioners, two chiefs of personnel, one chief inspector and one commissioner of the New York City Police Department.