Do you think you could pass the U.S. citizenship test? If you just answered “yes,” that means your answer aligns with 70% of Americans who think they could get a passing grade on it, per new polling from YouGov.
Over the last decade, the U.S. had welcomed nearly 8 million new citizens from other countries who passed the test. In fiscal year 2024 alone, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services welcomed 818,500 new citizens. Most naturalized citizens come from Mexico, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Vietnam and the cities with the most naturalizations are Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Newark and San Francisco.
Pass rates for those who take the test to become citizens are typically higher than 89%. An older version of the test includes 10 questions are pulled from a bank of about 100 and applicants who take that one must get six out of 10 correct. Applicants who filed after Oct. 20 of last year will take a new version with 20 questions chosen from a bank of 128 and they must get 12 correct.
While a majority of Americans seems confident that they would pass the test, a 2018 survey by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars found that “the general public would fare much worse,” than the immigrants do, according to the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. That survey found that fewer than one in five Americans under the age of 45 would pass the citizenship test, a figure the foundation said is mirrored by the 22% of eighth graders ranked as proficient in civics in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Based on YouGov’s survey of 1,109 U.S. adults over age 18 conducted from June 18 to June 22, more men than women said they think they could pass the U.S citizenship test at 78% to 63%. Men were also more likely to believe they could survive a week alone in the wilderness (46% men vs. 21% of women), escape from a sinking car underwater (41% of men vs. 19% of women) and survive being lost at sea on a life raft for a week (23% of men vs. 8% of women).
