GED Social Studies Sample Question
The GED® test is made up of 4 subjects, broken into separate exams. You don’t have to take all 4 tests at once - you can space them out however it suits you and go at your own pace. Here is a sample of the Social Studies test.
Here's what you need to know:
You'll need to apply social studies concepts, know how to read graphs and charts displaying social studies data and use reasoning to interpret social studies information.
The social studies test is not a memorization test! For example, you won't need to memorize the capitals of countries or dates that events occurred, but given some information about an event you might need to use that in drawing conclusions.
Try a Sample Question
This question is based on information from a government report about U.S. westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. The question based on information from a government report presents you with an inference (something that the reader can understand the author to mean even though it is not stated directly), and you are asked to decide which statement from the report provides evidence to support the inference.
Read the excerpt, and answer the question that follows.
This information is from a 2004 U.S. General Accounting Office report.
U.S. Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny
After the establishment of the U.S. government in 1789, the United States steadily acquired land. The new government promoted settlement and expansion south to Florida and west to California.
In 1845, editor John L. O'Sullivan coined the phrase "manifest destiny." This phrase described what had become a national movement to promote expansion and "civilize" persons encountered along the way. According to O'Sullivan, the claim to new territory was a right given to Americans by God. He believed that "it is a right such as that of the tree to the space of air and earth suitable for the...destiny of growth." In the years since, some people have contended that this Manifest Destiny ideology was a form of racism.
O'Sulliven called on Americans to resist any foreign power that tried to interfere with "the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence..." O'Sullivan further argued that such God-given favor gave white Americans the right to bring the benefits of democracy to what he considered more backward peoples, meaning Mexicans and [American] Indians, by force if necessary.
