1.1 Exam Facts, Format & Scoring

What the Global II Regents Actually Is

The Regents Examination in Global History and Geography II is New York's high-school social studies Regents exam for the Grade 10 Global History and Geography II course. It is administered by the New York State Education Department (NYSED), Office of State Assessment, as a paper-based test in a single three-hour session. Understanding the structure before you study is worth real points: each of the three parts rewards a different skill, and students who treat the whole test like a memorization quiz lose credit on the constructed responses and essay, which are where the writing- and reasoning-heavy points live.

The exam assesses the New York State Social Studies Framework, specifically the Grade 10 standards numbered 10.1 through 10.10. The course begins with a snapshot of the world around 1750 and runs to the present, so unlike Global I, you are not tested on ancient or classical civilizations. Everything is industrial-era and modern: Enlightenment revolutions, industrialization, imperialism, the two World Wars, the Cold War, decolonization, modernization, globalization, and human rights.

The Three Parts

In Part I, every question is stimulus-based: you read or view a source first, then answer one or more questions tied to it. There are no free-floating recall questions. In Part II, you work through two CRQ sets, each built around a small set of related documents; across both sets you answer 7 one-credit tasks that ask for historical context, a cause/effect or similarity/difference relationship, and source analysis. Part III is a single enduring issues essay drawn from five documents.

How Scoring Works (Scale Score 65, Not 65%)

This is the single most misunderstood fact about the exam. Passing is a scale score of 65 on the 0-100 Regents scale - it is not 65 percent of the questions correct.

Here is the conversion concept. Each part produces raw credit:

• Part I: 1 point per correct MCQ (up to 28).
• Part II: up to 7 points across the one-credit CRQ items.
• Part III: the essay is scored on a 0-5 rubric, and that score is weighted (multiplied by 3) before it joins the raw total - so a 5/5 essay contributes the equivalent of about 15 raw points, far more than any single MCQ.

NYSED sums weighted raw credit into a total raw score, then looks it up on a conversion chart published for that specific administration. The chart maps each total raw score to a scale score from 0 to 100. Because the chart is re-calculated each administration, the raw score needed to reach 65 varies slightly from one exam to the next - typically you need somewhere in the low-to-mid 50s percent of raw credit to land at a scale 65, not 65% exactly. Never assume 65% correct = pass.

Why the essay weighting matters for your strategy

Because the enduring issues essay is multiplied by 3, leaving it blank or writing a one-paragraph stub can sink an otherwise passing paper. A student who aces the MCQs but skips the essay can still fail. Budget time so the essay always gets written.

What Each Framework Standard Covers

The exam draws every question from the ten Grade 10 standards. Knowing the chronological spine prevents the most common content error - placing an event in the wrong era - and tells you which periods carry the most multiple-choice weight.

• 10.1 The World in 1750 - Eurasian land empires (Ottoman, Mughal, Qing), Tokugawa Japan, African kingdoms, and early global trade.
• 10.2 Enlightenment, Revolution & Nationalism - Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, the French and Atlantic revolutions, and nationalist unification.
• 10.3 Industrial Revolution - mechanization, urbanization, capitalism, Marxism, labor reform, and Meiji Japan.
• 10.4 Imperialism - the Berlin Conference, direct/indirect rule, and resistance in Africa and China.
• 10.5 Global Conflict, 1914-1945 - World Wars I and II, total war, the Russian Revolution, and totalitarianism.
• 10.6 Cold War, 1945-1991 - containment, proxy wars, detente, glasnost, and perestroika.
• 10.7 Decolonization, 1900-2000 - Gandhi, partition, African independence, Mao, and Deng.
• 10.8 Tradition vs. Modernization - Ataturk's Turkey and Iran under the Pahlavis and Ayatollahs.
• 10.9 Globalization & Environment - the WTO, IMF, migration, and climate pressures.
• 10.10 Human Rights Violations - the Holocaust, the UDHR, apartheid, and genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur.

The weightier standards (10.2, 10.3, 10.5, 10.7, 10.9) can each contribute up to roughly nine Part I items; the narrower ones (10.1, 10.4, 10.6, 10.8, 10.10) fewer.

Logistics on Test Day

• Time: Schools are directed to end the exam exactly three hours after the actual start time. There is no separate timed break between parts - you manage all three parts within the three hours.
• Answer documents: Multiple-choice answers go on a separate scannable answer sheet; CRQs and the essay are handwritten in the answer booklet and scored by trained educators using the NYSED rubrics.
• Cost: There is no direct student exam fee for regular school-administered Regents administrations.
• Standards tested: Framework 10.1-10.10 plus cross-topical source and reasoning skills.

Knowing the format lets you pre-plan a time budget (covered in 1.2): a common plan is about 50-55 minutes on Part I, 45-50 minutes on Part II, and 60-70 minutes on Part III, leaving a buffer to review.