What is Rising Stars Philosophy?

Our philosophy is that to do well on promotional exams, you have to do the bulk of the work. No school or teacher—anywhere—is going to wave a magic wand and get you promoted Instead, it comes from a strong desire, sincere commitment, relentless dedication, and old-fashioned hard work on your part.

Our questions are not designed to replace the Department manuals or to give you a shortcut from having to read them. Rising Star questions are intended as a supplement to your self-study, or to the courses you are taking with another school.

We provide you with the most comprehensive exam-like questions available, carefully constructed and designed to teach the material.

Some of the other schools "analyze" the frequency of procedures tested from prior examinations, Why doesn't Rising Star do that?

The picking and choosing of what procedures and material to study, and which ones you don't, will result in certain "promotional suicide" — avoid this! As they say about the financial markets, "Past performance is no indication of future returns.” Everything is fair game for the test writers!

You may have a test that is straight down the middle, or you may get one that is full of curveballs (e..g, 2009 Sergeant, 2011 Lieutenant and 2015 Lieutenant).

After the amount of time and effort you invest into this commitment, do you really want to gamble on statistics? Sure, if you’re winging it, that may work. But odds are, if you’re reading this, you want that promotion, and you know you’ll have to work for it.

Rising Star suggests that you build your confidence and give yourself a fighting chance on test day by knowing that you covered everything. Our questions cover it all!

How are your questions created and formatted?

The focus of our material is on our questions. Rising Star believes you should answer questions along your journey in order to gauge how effective your studying—and what you learn from other courses—actually is.

Face it, on test day, what will you be doing to earn that promotion? Answering questions. Your destiny lies in your ability to accurately answer one hundred (100) multiple-choice questions (and maybe an additional ungraded portion).

If you are not answering questions along the way, you may not know where your weaknesses or strengths lie. We provide the most comprehensive exam-like questions to cover what you need to know.

These questions will condition you for the real test so there are no hidden surprises. They are thoughtfully designed and intended with learning in mind. How? You will find that a majority of our questions ask you to select the incorrect answer so that while reading the answers, you are absorbing correct, accurate information.

From time to time, you may also find some True-False questions in our material. Though the actual exam will not have True-False questions, these are designed for you to analyze one single statement at a time. After all, when you break down a single multiple-choice question, you are, in reality, dealing with four True-False questions.

I’ve heard that some of your questions are difficult and nit-picky. Is that true?

Yes, that is true. We will warn you upfront, some of our questions have been called "nit-picky.” However, we are sticklers for a very good reason. We’d rather you get a tough question wrong now than to get it wrong on test day!

We do not recommend continually answering questions that are easy. By doing so, all you are doing is building a dangerously false sense of confidence. So, while you may get frustrated from time to time answering our questions, be patient, do not get discouraged, and keep in mind that you are learning the hard way which will make it that much easier for you come test day.

Also remember that hopefully, on the real exam, many questions will be ground balls. However, every test will have several “left field" questions. These are the questions that separate those who have spent time properly studying from those who have not.

On test day, the ability to get the tough questions correct is the deciding factor in who will top the list. We have found that those who generally score between 70 and 80% correct with our questions consistently place at the top of their lists.

Our questions will prepare you for anything the test writers can throw at you.

What is your refund policy?

We will honor refunds only in those instances when the course has not been started, and when the request for a refund is made within 48 hours of purchase. A course is considered “started” when a set of questions has been answered. After 48 hours from purchase, no refunds will be issued.