Free Practice Test: CLEP Social Sciences and History
Last updated: July 22, 2026
Start free practice exam →Last updated: July 22, 2026
Start free practice exam →The CLEP Social Sciences and History exam is one of the broadest tests the College Board offers, and that is exactly what makes it appealing: a single 90-minute exam can earn you introductory credit that would otherwise take a full history or social-science course to satisfy. Instead of going deep in one subject, it asks for a working command of many.
Sizing up the workload? see the full easiest CLEP exams ranking.
You will answer roughly 120 multiple-choice questions drawn from two domains: History, which makes up about 40 percent of the exam, and the Social Sciences, which make up the remaining 60 percent. Breadth is the whole game here. You are rarely asked for fine detail, but you are asked to recognize the big ideas, people, and turning points across nine different fields. The study guide below walks through every content area and its official weight so you can aim your preparation where the points actually are.
Because the exam rewards breadth over depth, the smartest approach is to make sure you have at least a solid foundation in every area rather than mastering one and neglecting the rest. History is the largest single block at 40 percent, and Government/Political Science is the largest of the social sciences at 13 percent, so those two deserve the most attention. The percentages below are the College Board's official approximate weights.
The single largest slice of the exam. It runs from the colonial period and the American Revolution through the early republic, the Civil War and Reconstruction, industrialization, the Progressive Era, World War I, the 1920s, the Great Depression and the New Deal, World War II, the 1950s, the Cold War, and the social conflict of the 1960s and 1970s. Expect questions on political, diplomatic, social, and economic themes: know the Constitution and its amendments, sectionalism and the compromises over slavery, Reconstruction, key New Deal programs, and the civil rights movement.
Covers ancient Western Asia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, then medieval Europe, and modern Europe including its overseas expansion. Be ready for Athenian democracy and Roman law and republic, feudalism and the medieval Church, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the two World Wars. Landmark developments such as the Magna Carta and the rise of nation-states are common targets.
A broad, thematic sweep across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America from prehistory to the present, with an emphasis on global connections rather than any single region. Focus on trade networks such as the Silk Road and the Atlantic system, the spread of major religions and empires, European colonization and its effects, and twentieth-century decolonization and globalization.
The largest social-science area. It spans comparative politics, international relations, and research methods, plus the United States system in detail: civil rights and civil liberties, the Constitution and its interpretation (judicial review, federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances), the major institutions of Congress, the presidency, and the courts, and political behavior including parties, interest groups, the media, and voting.
Tests key geographical skills such as reading maps and understanding map projections, along with cultural geography, physical geography, population and demography, regional geography, rural and urban land use, and spatial interaction. Know how projections trade off shape against area, the patterns and causes of human migration, and models of how cities and land use are organized.
Built on the core idea of scarcity, choice, and opportunity cost. Study supply and demand and how prices form in product markets and resource (factor) markets, economic measurements such as GDP, inflation, and unemployment, monetary and fiscal policy and the roles of the central bank and government, international trade and comparative advantage, and the major theorists and schools from Adam Smith to Keynes.
Draws on the same material as the Introductory Psychology exam but in lighter form: biopsychology, sensation and perception, cognition, learning, and memory, developmental psychology, personality, abnormal psychology, and social psychology (aggression, conformity, group process, and socialization), together with research methods and statistics and the field's major theorists and schools.
Examines society and group life: demography, deviance, the family, social interaction, social change, social organization, social stratification, and social theory, along with sociological methods. Be comfortable with the classic theorists Durkheim, Weber, and Marx, the concept of culture and socialization, and the difference between the major theoretical perspectives such as functionalism and conflict theory.
The smallest area, focused on the study of humankind across time and cultures. Know cultural anthropology and its signature method of ethnography, anthropological research methods, and the human past as studied through biological anthropology and archaeology. Core concepts include cultural relativism, kinship, and the work of the field's major theorists and schools.
Correct Answer: B. Henry Clay
Explanation: Henry Clay, known as “the Great Compromiser,” engineered the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise Tariff of 1833 that defused the Nullification Crisis, and the Compromise of 1850. Calhoun championed nullification and Southern interests, Webster was a great orator who supported the 1850 measures but did not author them, and Jackson was president during the tariff crisis but opposed nullification rather than crafting the compromises.
Correct Answer: B. authorized the president to take all necessary measures to repel armed attacks against U.S. forces in Southeast Asia
Explanation: Passed after reported attacks on U.S. destroyers, the resolution gave President Johnson broad authority to use military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war, effectively escalating U.S. involvement. Congress never declared war on North Vietnam, and troop withdrawal under Vietnamization came later under President Nixon.
Correct Answer: C. The accumulation of capital that helped fuel the growth of European capitalism
Explanation: The transatlantic slave trade generated large profits and a flow of raw materials such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton into European economies, helping accumulate the capital that financed commercial expansion and, later, industrialization. West Africa was destabilized rather than industrialized, and European overseas trade expanded rather than declined during this period.
Correct Answer: B. Gross domestic product
Explanation: Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period, and it is the standard headline measure of economic output. The Consumer Price Index tracks price changes (inflation), the balance of trade compares exports and imports, and tax collections measure government revenue rather than total output.
Correct Answer: C. Carl Jung
Explanation: Carl Jung, once a colleague of Freud, proposed that beneath the personal unconscious lies a collective unconscious shared by all humans and populated by archetypes, universal symbols such as the shadow and the anima. Freud stressed the personal unconscious and psychosexual drives, Maslow emphasized self-actualization, and Skinner focused strictly on observable behavior.
Correct Answer: B. judicial review
Explanation: Judicial review, established in Marbury v. Madison (1803), allows courts to strike down laws and actions that conflict with the Constitution. Federalism divides power between national and state governments, popular sovereignty locates ultimate authority in the people, and separation of powers divides government into three branches, of which judicial review is one specific judicial check.
Correct Answer: B. The Magna Carta
Explanation: The Magna Carta (1215), forced on King John by English barons, limited royal power and established that even the king was bound by law, an important step toward constitutional and representative government. The Twelve Tables were early Roman law, the Justinian Code compiled Roman law in the Byzantine Empire, and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years' War and shaped the modern state system.
Correct Answer: A. Mercator projection
Explanation: The Mercator projection is conformal, preserving local shapes and straight compass bearings, which made it valuable for navigation, but it severely distorts area at high latitudes, so Greenland can look as large as Africa though it is far smaller. The Robinson projection is a visual compromise, Gall-Peters preserves area, and azimuthal projections are centered on a single point.
Correct Answer: B. socialization
Explanation: Socialization is the process by which people internalize the culture of their society, beginning in the family and continuing through schools, peers, and the media. Stratification is the ranking of people into social layers, assimilation is the process by which a minority group adopts the dominant culture, and deviance is behavior that violates social norms.
Correct Answer: B. ethnography
Explanation: Ethnography is the signature method of cultural anthropology: the researcher lives among the people being studied, observing and taking part in daily life in order to describe the culture from the inside. Archaeology studies past cultures through their material remains, linguistics studies language, and ethnocentrism is the biased tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one's own.
With nine subjects packed into one exam, a single organized review book is worth a lot, and this is the one I lean on for Social Sciences and History. REA pairs a diagnostic exam with concise chapters on U.S. history, Western civilization, world history, government, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, plus two full-length practice tests with detailed answer explanations. It works well as the central pillar of your prep, with the Official CLEP Study Guide below serving as a final spot check.
Full disclosure: this one’s ours, so I’m about as biased as it gets. It’s the study app I always wished existed back when I was doing this: every CLEP and DSST exam in one subscription, real timed practice exams, and a live pass-readiness score so you’re not left guessing whether you’re actually ready to book the test. It’s iPhone-only for now (sorry, Android folks). But there’s a 7 day free trial, so you can judge for yourself whether I’m too biased to be trusted here.
Built by a former student, Flying Prep’s got what we need: easy to learn flashcards (with mobile-first design), full length practice exams, and complete coverage of every CLEP exam. Plus a dual guarantee including a 30 day satisfaction no-questions-asked guarantee and 6 month exam protection.
While quite short on the study side of things, the official CLEP book is the go-to final practice test. Since this is the only official practice test available, I normally use it as my final spot check before taking the test.
Though the design is now quite dated, InstantCert is one of the OGs in the space. They offer flashcards to study for the exam, but their coverage is somewhat limited and I’m not sure whether they use spaced repetition or other modern study science.
