Filed before October 20, 2025? You are on the 2008 civics test.

You answer out loud. A USCIS officer asks questions from the official list one at a time during your naturalization interview and you respond in English. Nothing gets written down and there are no answer choices to pick from.

The 2008 list has 100 questions and the officer asks up to 10 of them. Six correct answers pass. The officer stops as soon as the outcome is fixed, so once you have 6 right the civics portion is over, and once you have 5 wrong there is no way back to 6.

The questions cover American government, American history, and integrated civics, which is geography, symbols, and holidays.

A few answers move with elections or depend on your state: your senators and representative, your governor, and the current officeholders in Washington. Look those up close to your interview date.

Your Form N-400 filing date settles it and the interview date has no bearing. Everyone who filed before October 20, 2025 stays on the 2008 test. Anyone who filed on or after that date takes the newer 2025 test (128 questions, 20 asked, 12 to pass). The receipt date on your Form I-797C receipt notice is the date that counts.

One quirk worth knowing: the geography questions, the oceans, the longest rivers, which states border Canada or Mexico, belong to the 2008 list. The 2025 version dropped that section and kept only a few place facts.

Age-based accommodations may apply on top of that, each measured at the time you file. Under the 50/20 rule (50 or older with 20 years as a resident) and the 55/15 rule (55 or older with 15 years), you can take the civics test in your own language with an interpreter and skip the English reading and writing test. The 65/20 special consideration goes further and shortens the civics list itself, which is covered next.

At 65 or older when you file, with 20 or more years as a lawful permanent resident, you study 20 designated questions from this list instead of all 100. The officer asks 10 of the 20 and you still pass at 6. The 2025 test carries the same accommodation, with its own set of 20.

Read more about the 65/20 special consideration →

A hundred questions reads as a lot, but many of them are short facts you half know already, and the officer only asks 10. Study by category rather than straight down the list, so related answers reinforce each other, and keep your sessions short and frequent. What you can still recall a week later is what gets tested, and that comes from spacing the work out over time.