Free FSOT Practice Test 2026: 30 Sample Questions With Answers

Correct answer: B. Article II, Section 2 gives the President power to make treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, "provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." A simple majority is enough to pass an ordinary bill, not to approve a treaty, and the House of Representatives has no vote on treaties. Three-fifths is not the treaty rule in the Constitution.

Correct answer: D. Article I, Section 8 lists the powers of Congress, including the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." The other three are the President's powers: Article II, Section 3 says the President shall receive ambassadors, and Article II, Section 2 gives the President the power to grant pardons and to make treaties with the Senate's consent. The treaty choice is the closest trap, because the Senate takes part, but the power to make treaties belongs to the President.

Correct answer: A. The Office of the Historian says the United States purchased the territory from France in 1803 for $15 million. Spain is the common mix-up: Spain had owned Louisiana since 1762, but France acquired it from Spain in 1800 and took possession in 1802, before the sale.

Correct answer: C. The Office of the Historian says Monroe declared that the Americas were not to be considered subjects for future colonization by any European powers, and it sums up the doctrine as separate spheres of influence, non-colonization and non-intervention. Taking over existing colonies is the opposite of what he said: the United States pledged not to interfere in the European colonies already in the Americas. Joining a European alliance goes against the idea of separate spheres, and the doctrine said nothing about ending trade.

Correct answer: A. The Office of the Historian says Marshall called in June 1947 for a comprehensive program to rebuild Europe, and Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948 to fund it. The military alliance is NATO, formed in 1949, a separate step. The Marshall Plan was aimed at Europe, not Japan, and it did not create the United Nations.

Correct answer: B. The Office of the Historian says the twelve founding members agreed to consider an attack against one an attack against all, the principle of collective defense. The treaty did not merge the members' forces under one national commander, it was not a trade agreement and it did not promise membership to every European country that asked.

Correct answer: B. The Office of the Historian says the United States wanted to ship goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and it places Colon on the Atlantic side of the canal and Panama City on the Pacific side. Ships could already sail between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast without crossing Panama, and the canal does not reach the Arctic or the Great Lakes.

Correct answer: C. The Federal Reserve's page on its purpose says it conducts monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions "in pursuit of full employment and stable prices." The federal budget and taxes are fiscal policy, set by Congress and the President, not goals of monetary policy, which is why the choice that pairs stable prices with a balanced budget is wrong even though it is half right. A stronger dollar and a smaller trade deficit are not the goals the Federal Reserve names.

Correct answer: D. The Bureau of Economic Analysis says GDP measures the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States. Counting parts used to make other products would count them twice, once on their own and again inside the finished product, which is why GDP counts only final goods and services. GDP counts what is produced inside the country, whoever owns the company, and sales to other countries (exports) are only one part of it.

Correct answer: A. The seven counts add up to 98, and 98 divided by 7 is 14, the mean. For the median, put the counts in order (9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 21) and take the middle one, the fourth, which is 13. A median of 15 comes from taking the middle number without sorting the list first, and the choice with a mean of 13 and a median of 14 swaps the two values. The FSOT allows no calculator, so practice sums like this by hand.

Correct answer: C. "Ms. Ravelo and I" is the object of "asked," and therefore it needs the object pronoun: "asked Ms. Ravelo and me." A quick test is to drop the other person: "asked I to proofread" is plainly wrong, and "asked me to proofread" is right. The other parts are correct: the opening phrase is followed by a comma, the job title is lowercase because it is not used before a name, and "to proofread the press release" completes "asked."

Correct answer: D. Only one sentence spells both words correctly: "receive" (e before i after c) and "separate" (with "par" in the middle). The other sentences misspell one or both words as "recieve" or "seperate." Everything else in the four sentences is the same.

Correct answer: B. When two subjects are joined by "neither ... nor," the verb agrees with the nearer subject. Here the nearer subject is "her two assistants," which is plural, so the verb should be "were able," not "was able." "Neither ... nor" is paired correctly, the comma before "which" is right because the clause adds information about a briefing already named, and "had been moved" correctly shows that the move happened earlier.

Correct answer: A. An opening phrase such as "After reviewing the draft agreement" must be followed by the person who did the reviewing. Only the correct sentence puts "the officer" right after the phrase. In the sentence that begins "three changes were listed," the changes seem to have reviewed the agreement, and in the one about "the delegation's three changes," the changes again come right after the phrase. The last sentence scrambles the word order and is hard to follow.

Correct answer: C. The sentence joins two complete thoughts ("The power will be off from 9:00 AM to noon" and "staff should save their work before then"). A semicolon can join them. A comma alone cannot, and that mistake is called a comma splice. The comma before "therefore" makes the same mistake, because "therefore" is not a joining word like "and" or "but." With no punctuation at all, the two thoughts run together.

Correct answer: D. The notice says such students "may apply, but they will be considered only after all first-time applicants." The choice that says the student may not apply misreads that sentence, which allows the application. The notice gives no different rule on letters of reference or interviews for past participants, so every applicant still sends two letters, and nobody is promised an interview.

Correct answer: A. Sentence 2 states the problem, so it comes first. Sentence 3 begins "To fix this," which points back to the problem, and sentence 4 begins "It also," which adds a second step after the first one. Sentence 1 begins "As a result," and therefore it must follow the steps it describes. Putting sentence 3 first leaves "this" with nothing to point to, putting sentence 1 second gives the result before the fixes, and putting sentence 4 before sentence 3 makes "also" come before the first step.

Correct answer: B. Items in a series should have the same form. The best revision lists three verbs in the same tense: "tracks," "prepares" and "trains." Changing the last item to "is training" or the first to "is tracking" mixes two verb forms in one series, and the version that adds "is also her job" turns the last item into a separate, wordy clause instead of fixing the series.

Correct answer: C. The excerpt describes two changes (cold storage and a faster rail trip) and then their result: growers now ship about a third of their crop overseas. The statement about storage and transport covers all of that. The cold-storage statement is true but is only one detail. The excerpt never says why the rail line was built, and it does not say local markets stopped buying apples, and only about a third of the crop now goes overseas.

Correct answer: D. A meeting of 20 is too large for the rooms the memo gives to smaller meetings, the library cannot be booked on Fridays and the conference room is closed until May 22, so none of the rooms named in the memo is open to it. The library is the room the memo sends large meetings to, not a closed room. The memo says only where meetings of more than 12 should go and that smaller ones may use the offices; it does not bar small meetings from the library. It says nothing about the conference room's size.

Correct answer: A. The conclusion that the third-floor printer is broken holds only if the documents actually went to that printer; if they went to a different printer, the third-floor machine could be fine. Whether it worked yesterday and whether others had trouble would add support, but the argument does not need either one. A printer that is out of paper is a different explanation that would weaken the conclusion, not an assumption the assistant makes.

Correct answer: C. The officer uses Vosmere's drop in missed appointments as proof that reminders work, which makes sense only if the reminders caused the drop. If Vosmere also changed its hours or its booking system at the same time, the evidence falls apart. Reminders could still help even if not every applicant owns a cell phone, so that is not required. Cost and the two consulates' exact rates are not part of the argument.

Correct answer: B. The people surveyed chose to visit a booth of American farm goods, so they are likely to be far more interested in those goods than business owners in general. The sample is not representative. A sample of 400 can be large enough when it is chosen fairly, so its size is not the main problem. The kinds of products do not matter to the conclusion, and the conclusion is about plans, so later changes of plan do not weaken it.

Correct answer: D. The classes were optional, so the staff who took them chose to. Motivated, high-performing staff may be the ones who sign up for extra classes, which would explain the higher ratings even if the classes changed nothing. Which languages were taught does not affect the reasoning, and one year of data is a smaller concern than the missing explanation. The argument says nothing about the interests of staff who skipped the classes.

Correct answer: A. If the holidays caused the drop, the number should rise again once they end. Staying low in January and February points to the form instead. A drop every December before the form existed would point to the season and weaken the claim. Staff vacations do not explain fewer incomplete applications, and the time it takes to fill out the form says nothing about whether it caused the drop.

Correct answer: C. If the concerts moved at the same time from a hall that held only 220 people to a park with no limit, the room size alone could explain why attendance passed 200, and the videos may not be the cause. The age of the viewers does not show whether the videos brought people. Concertgoers who heard about the concerts from the videos support the claim, and the cost of the videos has nothing to do with attendance.

Correct answer: D. "Approved only if" names conditions a request must meet, not conditions that ensure approval. Request 2 was sent only one working day in advance, so it fails a required condition and cannot have been approved. Requests 1 and 3 meet both conditions, but the rule does not say that every such request is approved, so their approval cannot be concluded. Request 4's date is unknown, so the rule does not settle it either way.

Correct answer: B. There are 45 + 30 = 75 language counts among only 60 people, so at least 75 - 60 = 15 people must be counted twice, that is, speak both languages. The number could be higher (if some staff members speak neither language, or if all 30 Arabic speakers also speak French), so "exactly 15" and "at most 15" do not have to be true. Every staff member could speak at least one of the two languages, so the last statement is not certain either.

Correct answer: A. The van was inside at 6:00 AM and outside at 3:00 PM, so it left on Tuesday. The only sign-outs that day were back by noon, so whether or not the van was one of them, it went out again after noon with no entry in the log. The report does not say which vehicles were signed out, so the van may or may not have been one of the two. A different van and a late return both contradict the report or the log, which the question says are accurate.

Correct answer: C. If 150 people are booked each day and the section can interview at most 120, at least 30 booked applicants a day cannot be seen on their booked day unless something changes. The memo says nothing about hiring plans or about applicants giving up. Interviewing more than 120 in a day goes against the stated limit.