GED Practice Test
This is a free 15-question sampler that spans all four GED subject tests: Reasoning Through Language Arts, Mathematical Reasoning, Science and Social Studies. It mixes multiple choice, select all that apply and fill in the blank, at the high school equivalency level the GED actually tests. Answer all 15 questions, then check your score and read the explanation for every one.
Read the passage, then answer the question. When the city added protected bike lanes on Third Street, the shop owners expected disaster. They assumed their customers arrived by car, and that losing parking spaces would cost them sales. Two years later, sales on Third Street were up eleven percent, while sales on similar streets without lanes rose three percent. Foot traffic had doubled. Which statement best expresses the main idea of the passage?
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All 15 questions at a glance
Prefer to read before you play? Every question in the sampler is listed below. Answers and explanations stay collapsed until you open them.
1. Read the passage, then answer the question. When the city added protected bike lanes on Third Street, the shop owners expected disaster. They assumed their customers arrived by car, and that losing parking spaces would cost them sales. Two years later, sales on Third Street were up eleven percent, while sales on similar streets without lanes rose three percent. Foot traffic had doubled. Which statement best expresses the main idea of the passage?
- A. Losing parking spaces always hurts small businesses
- B. The shop owners were wrong about how their customers got there
- C. Third Street now sells more than any other street in the city
- D. Foot traffic on Third Street doubled in two years
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The shop owners were wrong about how their customers got there
The main idea is the point the whole passage builds toward, not one fact inside it. The doubled foot traffic is a true detail, but it works as evidence for the larger point that the owners had misjudged their own customers.
2. Which version of the sentence is correct?
- A. The box of old photographs were found in the attic.
- B. The box of old photographs was found in the attic.
- C. The box of old photographs have been found in the attic.
- D. The boxes of old photographs was found in the attic.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The box of old photographs was found in the attic.
The subject is box, which is singular, so the verb has to be was. The words of old photographs form a prepositional phrase, and a noun sitting inside a prepositional phrase never controls the verb.
3. Which of these sentences are punctuated correctly?
Select all that apply.
- A. Because the bus was late, Maria missed the first ten minutes of class.
- B. The storm knocked out the power, we finished dinner by candlelight.
- C. My uncle, who lives in Denver, is flying in on Friday.
- D. She wanted to leave early; the meeting ran until six.
- E. The dog barked at the mail carrier and then, ran back inside.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Because the bus was late, Maria missed the first ten minutes of class., C. My uncle, who lives in Denver, is flying in on Friday., D. She wanted to leave early; the meeting ran until six.
Two complete sentences cannot be joined by a comma alone, which is the error in the power outage sentence. A comma also should not separate a subject from its second verb, so the sentence about the dog needs no comma before ran.
4. Complete the sentence.
Neither the coach nor the players _____ happy with the call.
Options for blank 1: was, were, is, has been
Show answer and explanation
Answer: were
When two subjects are joined by neither and nor, the verb agrees with whichever subject sits closer to it. Players is plural and stands right next to the blank, so the sentence needs were.
5. Solve for x: 2(x + 5) = 3x - 4
- A. x = 2
- B. x = 6
- C. x = 14
- D. x = 18
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. x = 14
Distribute on the left to get 2x + 10 = 3x - 4, then subtract 2x from both sides to get 10 = x - 4, so x = 14. Checking takes seconds: 2(14 + 5) is 38, and 3(14) - 4 is also 38.
6. A recipe that serves 4 people uses 6 cups of flour. At the same ratio, how much flour is needed to serve 10 people?
- A. 12 cups
- B. 13.5 cups
- C. 15 cups
- D. 18 cups
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. 15 cups
Set up the proportion 6 over 4 equals x over 10, cross multiply to get 4x = 60, and divide to get x = 15. The unit rate gets you there just as fast: 6 divided by 4 is 1.5 cups per person, and 1.5 times 10 is 15.
7. A rectangular room measures 12 feet by 9 feet. A rug covers 60 square feet of the floor. How many square feet of floor are left uncovered?
- A. 42 square feet
- B. 48 square feet
- C. 60 square feet
- D. 108 square feet
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. 48 square feet
The area of a rectangle is length times width, so the floor is 12 times 9, or 108 square feet, and 108 minus 60 leaves 48. The 42 choice is the perimeter of the room, which is the usual trap when a question mixes distance around a shape with area inside it.
8. Complete the sentence.
A jacket that normally costs $80 is marked 25 percent off, so the sale price is _____.
Options for blank 1: $20, $55, $60, $75
Show answer and explanation
Answer: $60
25 percent of 80 is 20, and that discount comes off the original price, which leaves 60. A faster route is to multiply 80 by 0.75, because paying 75 percent of the price is the same thing as taking 25 percent off.
9. Which structure in a plant cell captures light energy for photosynthesis?
- A. Ribosome
- B. Chloroplast
- C. Mitochondrion
- D. Cell membrane
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Chloroplast
Chloroplasts hold chlorophyll, the green pigment that absorbs light so the cell can build sugar out of carbon dioxide and water. Mitochondria do the opposite job, releasing energy from that sugar, and plant cells contain both.
10. Which of these are renewable energy sources?
Select all that apply.
- A. Solar
- B. Wind
- C. Coal
- D. Moving water in a river
- E. Natural gas
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Solar, B. Wind, D. Moving water in a river
A renewable source is replaced by natural processes on a human timescale, and sunlight, wind and flowing water keep arriving. Coal and natural gas are fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, so burning them draws down a supply that will not be refilled.
11. A student measured the temperature of a cup of hot water as it cooled. Time in minutes: 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 Temperature in degrees Celsius: 90, 76, 66, 60, 57 Which statement is best supported by the data?
- A. The water cooled at a steady rate of about 7 degrees every 5 minutes
- B. The water cooled quickly at first and more slowly later
- C. The water will keep cooling until it freezes
- D. The water warmed up between 10 and 20 minutes
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The water cooled quickly at first and more slowly later
Each five minute drop is smaller than the one before it, falling 14 degrees, then 10, then 6, then 3, so the cooling clearly slows down. The freezing choice reaches past what the table shows, since the water can only fall toward room temperature.
12. Which of these are powers of the United States Congress?
Select all that apply.
- A. Passing federal laws
- B. Declaring war
- C. Deciding how federal money is spent
- D. Vetoing a bill
- E. Ruling that a law violates the Constitution
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Passing federal laws, B. Declaring war, C. Deciding how federal money is spent
Congress is the legislative branch, so it writes the laws, controls federal spending and holds the power to declare war. The veto belongs to the president and striking down a law belongs to the courts, which is how the three branches check each other.
13. Complete the sentence.
The Declaration of Independence, which announced that the colonies were separating from Great Britain, was adopted in _____.
Options for blank 1: 1776, 1783, 1787, 1789
Show answer and explanation
Answer: 1776
The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776, early in the Revolutionary War rather than at its end. The other choices come later: the treaty that ended the war in 1783, the writing of the Constitution in 1787, and the start of the new federal government in 1789.
14. In a market economy, if the supply of a good falls while demand stays the same, what usually happens to its price?
- A. The price rises
- B. The price falls
- C. The price stays the same
- D. The good stops being sold
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. The price rises
When fewer units are available and buyers still want the same amount, buyers compete for the smaller supply and bid the price up. The reverse works the same way: a larger supply with unchanged demand pushes the price down.
15. Which of these best explains why many of the world's earliest cities grew up along rivers?
- A. Rivers supplied drinking water, fertile soil and a route for trade
- B. Rivers kept the temperature the same all year
- C. Rivers cut the cities off from all outside contact
- D. Rivers made farming unnecessary
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Rivers supplied drinking water, fertile soil and a route for trade
A river gave an early settlement fresh water, soil renewed by flooding and a cheap way to move goods and people. That combination is why Mesopotamia, the Nile valley and the Indus valley supported large populations long before drier regions did.
What's actually on the GED
The GED is not one long exam. It is four separate subject tests, and you take them one at a time: Reasoning Through Language Arts, Mathematical Reasoning, Science and Social Studies. Each one is scored on its own scale from 100 to 200, and 145 is the passing mark for that subject. Higher bands exist for people who want college placement or college credit, usually set at 165 and 175, but 145 is what earns the credential. Because you pass subject by subject, a low score in one area only means retaking that area, not starting over.
The tests are not the same length or the same shape. Language arts is the longest, at roughly 150 minutes, and it includes an Extended Response where you read two short arguments on the same issue and write an essay about which one is better supported by evidence. Mathematical Reasoning runs about 115 minutes and comes in two parts, a short opening section done without a calculator and a longer section where an on-screen scientific calculator and a formula sheet are available. Science is around 90 minutes and Social Studies around 70. Both of those lean hard on passages, charts, maps and tables, so a large share of the score comes from reading a source correctly rather than recalling a fact from memory.
Some things genuinely vary, and this is where people get bad information. Your state decides the fee per subject, the minimum age and any withdrawal or parental consent paperwork, how many retakes you get and how long you must wait between attempts, and whether you can test online with a remote proctor or only at a test center. A few states use a different high school equivalency test instead of the GED, or offer more than one. Check the official site for your own state before you plan around a price or a rule you read on a forum, because that person may be in a different state.
How to use this sampler
These 15 questions cover all four subjects in one sitting, which the real test never does. That makes this a spread check rather than a practice exam. It is good for finding which subject is weakest and which one you could probably schedule soon, and it is not long enough to tell you whether you would clear 145 on any single test.
Take it without notes, and try the math questions without a calculator even though the real math test allows one for most of the section. Doing that separates two different problems: not knowing how to set the problem up, and knowing the setup but slipping on the arithmetic. Those need different fixes. Afterwards read every explanation, including for the questions you answered correctly, because a lucky guess hides a gap that will show up again on test day.
Then use the misses to choose what to do next. Since the GED is passed one subject at a time, most people move faster by preparing a single subject, scheduling it, passing it and banking that result, rather than studying all four at once and sitting nothing. If your misses cluster in the reading and grammar questions here, start with language arts. If they cluster in the chart and data questions, science and social studies are likely the same weakness wearing different clothes.
How StudyPDF builds full practice tests from your own materials
Fifteen mixed questions can point you at a weak subject. They cannot get you to 145, and a generic question bank does not know which chapters your class covered or which topics you have already passed.
StudyPDF works from your own material instead. Upload your GED prep book, the handouts from your adult education program, your class notes or a chapter you keep rereading, and Bo, the study agent, builds full-length practice tests from those exact pages. Every question is grounded in what you uploaded, and every explanation points back to where the answer came from, so you can check the source when something looks wrong. You can regenerate a fresh test whenever you want, narrow it to one subject, or narrow it further to a single topic you keep missing.
You do not need a document at all. If you have nothing to upload, name a topic instead, such as linear equations, cell structure or the three branches of government, and Bo writes a practice test on it with the same explanations. Starting is free.
Written by the StudyPDF team. Last updated 2026-08-19.