The official name is History of the United States II: 1865 to the Present. Most people call it US History II, US History 2, or American History 2. It picks up where US History I stops and runs through Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, both World Wars, the New Deal, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and America after 1990. That is 120 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes. College Board splits the exam into five categories, and the weighting is not even: political and social history are 30% each. It also leans late. 70% of the questions cover 1915 to the present. The general breakdown is below.
| Category | Share of exam | What is in it |
|---|---|---|
| Political Institutions and Public Policy | 30% | Reconstruction governments, political parties, regulatory legislation, the welfare state, constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, liberalism and conservatism |
| Social Developments | 30% | Immigration, racial and ethnic minorities, the civil rights movement, women and the family, labor, urbanization, long-term demographic trends |
| Cultural and Intellectual Developments | 20% | Arts and letters, intellectual movements, popular culture, religion in American life |
| Economic Developments | 10% | Industrialization, agricultural change, economic policy, labor organization, economic growth and development |
| Diplomacy and International Relations | 10% | American expansionism, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, foreign policy after the Cold War |
| Questions | 120 multiple choice |
| Time | 90 minutes |
| Time periods | 30% from 1865 to 1914, 70% from 1915 to the present |
| Passing score | 50 (some schools require 60) |
| College credits | 3 semester hours (typical) |
| Exam fee | $97 |
| Retake wait after a fail | 90 days |
How do our free questions compare to the real exam?
Not closely, and you should know where the holes are before you read anything into your score. Here is the count for our 20 free questions (10 here, 10 more by email) against the real weights.
| Category | Share of real exam | Our 20 free questions |
|---|---|---|
| Political Institutions and Public Policy | 30% | 6 of 20 |
| Social Developments | 30% | 4 of 20 |
| Cultural and Intellectual Developments | 20% | 1 of 20 |
| Economic Developments | 10% | 3 of 20 |
| Diplomacy and International Relations | 10% | 6 of 20 |
TIP: Our free questions do NOT match the exam weights. Cultural and Intellectual Developments (the arts, popular culture, religion, intellectual movements) is 20% of the real exam, which is about 24 questions out of 120. It gets 1 of our 20. Social Developments is 30% of the exam and gets 4. Diplomacy is 10% of the exam and gets 6, so wars and foreign policy show up here three times as often as they will on test day. A set of 20 that matched the exam would be 6 political, 6 social, 4 cultural, 2 economic, and 2 diplomacy. Ours is 6, 4, 1, 3, and 6. The time split is closer: 7 of the 20 come from before 1915, against 30% on the exam. With that being said, nothing in our set is later than the 1980s. A good score here tells you the presidents, laws, and foreign policy are in decent shape. It tells you very little about the social and cultural half of the exam.
Where should I spend my time studying?
Five things, based on the College Board weights and what we tell every student on our study guide page:
- Start with the 20th century. 70% of the exam covers 1915 to the present, which is 84 of the 120 questions. Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era share the other 36. Learn them, but do not spend half your study time there.
- Give social history the same weight as political history. Each is 30% of the exam. It is easy to study the presidents and the laws and stop, and that leaves out immigration, civil rights, women and the family, labor, and the move to the cities.
- Do not skip culture and ideas. Arts and letters, intellectual movements, popular culture, and religion are 20% of the exam, about 24 questions. Our free questions have ONE question on all of it, so do not let a good score here talk you out of studying it.
- Go in order and learn the why. This exam rewards knowing how one era led to the next: how industrialization drove the Progressive Era, how the Cold War changed policy at home and abroad. Knowing why something happened matters as much as knowing what happened.
- Learn pacing. 45 seconds per question is enough if you keep moving, and there are 120 of them. Answer, move on, and come back to the hard ones if there is time. Do not sink 3 minutes into a court case you do not recognize.
For the full topic breakdown and pass-rate history, see the US History II CLEP study guide page.