without much grace time
USCIS is changing the civics test, and plans to begin giving the new test to applicants who submit their applications after October 18th. That gives us very little time to get prepared. My friend and colleague, Bill Bliss, has just posted some useful analysis of the new test, and I am reposting it here with his permission. I will keep you posted as I learn more.
--Lynne
USCIS has published a Federal Register notice announcing the implementation of a new 2025 civics exam, which is essentially a reimplementation of the withdrawn 2020 version with some changes. The number of questions will rise from 100 to 128, the number of correct answers required (previously 6 out of 10) will increase to 12 out of 20, and the so-called 65/20 exemption will remain in place.
To assist advocates, educators, and service providers in evaluating the new exam, I have prepared two documents that show the comparisons of the current 2008 and pending 2025 tests. A full analysis will follow, but I want to share these tools now to help as you begin to assess the impact on naturalization applicants. For those of you who are familiar with the previous 2020 version, you’ll find some improvements in the answers to questions 31 and 33, a long list of additional cabinet posts in question 48 (along with the new title “Secretary of War”), some lengthy birthright-citizenship-adjacent wording in questions 68 and 97 about U.S. citizenship status, and the omission of Juneteenth in the answers to question 126 about national U.S. holidays. (Let’s assume that’s a copy/paste error.)
Here are links to the 2-way comparison documents:
Comparing 2008 with 2025
Comparing 2025 with 2008
Posted: to Citizenship News on Thu, Sep 18, 2025
Updated: Thu, Sep 18, 2025