All You Need to Know to Apply
GENERAL INFORMATION
10
Physical Requirements
Special agents are often placed in situations that
challenge their physical endurance. Strength,
exibility, and endurance are necessary for personal
safety in an arrest situation, as well as to help ensure
the safety of fellow Agents, other law enforcement
ocers and civilians. To become a special agent,
you must possess the necessary tness levels to
complete the duties assigned to you.
Once you’ve passed the ocial PFT, you will be
considered ready to complete the physical training
and defensive tactics portion of training at the FBI
Academy. You will also be prepared to effectively
respond to life-threatening situations on the job.
You must be able to pass several physical tests to be
medically cleared to attend the FBI Academy. These
include:
• Vision test
• Hearing test
• Medical/health review
Note: Applicants for the Tactical Recruitment Program (TRP) have
additional requirements. (Visit the TRP section.)
Vision Requirements
• Your distant visual acuity, corrected or
uncorrected, must meet FBI standards, which are
20/20 in one eye and no worse than 20/40 in the
other eye.
• If you have distant visual acuity greater than
or equal to 20/100, you must provide medical
documentation of successful soft contact lens
use for at least one year without signicant
problems or adverse effects.
• Applicants with recent refractive surgery involving
the creation of a corneal ap must wait six months
following surgery and complete an ophthalmology
evaluation to document complete healing prior to
applying for employment.
• If you are Color-Vision decient, you must
successfully complete a Farnsworth D-15 color
vision test administered at the eld oce to be
considered.
Hearing Requirements
Hearing is considered a critical and essential job
function for the special agent position. Special
agents must be able to detect, localize and locate
the source of sounds that may indicate danger
or risk while entering locations tactically, while
pursuing, confronting and arresting subjects and
while transporting subjects to custody. Additionally,
special agents must be able to hear and understand
the speech of subjects and witnesses during
interviews and interrogations, which are sometimes
conducted in noisy, hectic situations, as well as
communicate with team members during raids,
arrests and searches when accurate communication
without repetition is necessary. If you have an
average hearing loss greater than 25 decibels (ANSI
standards) at 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 Hertz, then
you should have no single value at 35 decibels.
Additionally, no single reading may exceed 35
decibels at 500 Hertz or 45 decibels at 4,000 Hertz.
If you fail the initial pure-tone audiometry screening,
you will be asked to complete additional audiometry
testing (at your own expense and conducted by an
audiologist of your choosing) to more accurately
assess the candidate’s hearing ability. If you fail
testing with your audiologist, using the above
standards, you will be offered the FBI Hearing
in Noise Test (HINT). Only the FBI HINT will be
accepted. This test was developed to evaluate one’s
ability to functionally hear human communication
in a noisy environment and is specically designed
to assess the hearing requirements for law
enforcement duties.
The HINT uses short sentences instead of pure
tones to establish a functional level of hearing
using both ears. Passing criteria include the Speech
Reception Threshold (SRT) in quiet (27.0 decibels)