70 minutes on the official test
GED Social Studies Practice
Social Studies is the shortest GED section at 70 minutes and the one where a small amount of targeted study goes furthest. This page gives you a 20-question practice test and drills for all four content areas.
Take Practice Test 1 — 20 questionsTopic drills
U.S. History
Founding era, Civil War, industrial growth, and the modern era.
5 questions
Civics and Government
The Constitution, branches of government, rights, and elections.
5 questions
Economics
Supply and demand, markets, labor, money, and fiscal policy.
5 questions
Geography
Maps, regions, migration, resources, and human-environment ties.
5 questions
What is on the test
Civics and government is the largest area at about 50 percent. U.S. history follows at roughly 20 percent, then economics at 15 percent and geography and the world at 15 percent. That weighting is the single most useful fact about this section: if your study time is limited, spend most of it on how American government works.
Questions are built on documents. You will read excerpts from founding texts, court decisions, speeches, political cartoons, maps, and data tables, then answer questions about what they show. Pure recall questions exist but are the minority.
The founding documents worth knowing
The Declaration of Independence set out the case for separation in 1776. The Articles of Confederation created a national government too weak to function and were replaced by the Constitution in 1787. The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, added the first ten amendments protecting individual liberties.
Beyond the documents themselves, know the structures they created: three branches with separate powers, checks and balances such as the veto and the two-thirds override, and federalism dividing authority between national and state governments. These concepts generate more questions than any specific date.
Reading charts, maps, and cartoons
Data interpretation appears throughout. You may be asked to read a population trend from a line graph, compare federal spending categories in a pie chart, or identify the point a political cartoon is making. For cartoons, identify who or what each figure represents before deciding what the artist thinks about it.
The same discipline that helps on the Science test applies here: the correct answer is the one the document supports, not the one that is generally true about the topic.
Frequently asked questions
- What score do I need to pass GED Social Studies?
- 145 out of 200 passes. 165 is reported as College Ready and 175 or higher can carry college credit.
- How long is the GED Social Studies test?
- 70 minutes with about 35 questions, making it the shortest of the four subject tests.
- Do I need to memorize dates?
- A handful of anchor dates help, such as 1776, 1787, and 1863, but most questions test understanding of ideas and documents rather than chronology.