HiSET Practice Questions (2026) — Free Sample Questions with Answers

Answer: A

No change: Correct. Verb tense: "felt" is past tense, matching "leaned" and "spread" in the same series and the past-tense narrative. The sentence is best as written.

feeling: Incorrect. "Feeling" is not a main verb, so the series "leaned, spread, and feeling" is not parallel and the last action loses its verb.

had felt: Incorrect. The past perfect would mean the floating happened before the leaning back, which reverses the order of events.

feels: Incorrect. Present tense "feels" shifts out of the past tense used throughout the narrative.

Keep verbs in the same tense unless the time of the action changes. In a past-tense story, a series of actions uses simple past forms.

Answer: A

No change: Correct. Transitions: "In addition" signals that the family activities are one more thing the market will offer, adding to the vendor booths and volunteer program already described. The sentence is best as written.

For example,: Incorrect. The family activities are not an example of volunteering (the previous paragraph); they are a separate, additional offering.

As a result,: Incorrect. Nothing earlier causes the family activities, so a cause-and-effect transition is illogical.

Instead,: Incorrect. "Instead" signals a replacement, but the activities are offered along with the booths and volunteer program, not in place of them.

Use an addition transition (in addition, also, furthermore) when a new point adds to the ones before it.

Answer: D

Sentence 5: Incorrect. Sentence 5 explains that the service is free, a key detail about how repair cafés work.

Sentence 7: Incorrect. Sentence 7 gives the example that shows how repair cafés help the environment, the paragraph's main idea.

Sentence 8: Incorrect. Sentence 8 supports the environmental point with evidence that most items brought in are successfully fixed.

Sentence 9: Correct. Relevance: facts about Amsterdam's canals and bicycles have nothing to do with repair cafés or their benefits, so the sentence interrupts the argument.

Every sentence should support the paragraph's main idea. A sentence that shares only a word (here, "Amsterdam") with the one before it is often off-topic.

Answer: A

1. Find the growth factor: $5,400÷5,000=1.08$ and $5,832÷5,400=1.08$ (8% growth each year).
2. Model: $V=5,000(1.08{)}^t$.
3. Compute $(1.08{)}^4=1.36048896$.
4. $V=5,000\times 1.36048896=6,802.4448\approx \$6,802.44$.
5. Check year by year: $5,832\times 1.08=6,298.56$ (year 3); $6,298.56\times 1.08=6,802.44$ (year 4).

$6,802.44: Correct. The growth factor is $5,400÷5,000=1.08$, so the value is $5,000(1.08{)}^4\approx 6,802.44$ dollars.

$6,600.00: This adds $400 every year (linear growth). The yearly increase gets larger: $400, then $432, and so on.

$6,298.56: This is the value at the end of year 3, $5,000(1.08{)}^3$; one more year of growth is needed.

$7,346.64: This is $5,000(1.08{)}^5$, the value at the end of year 5. Year 0 is the starting value, so year 4 uses the exponent 4.

If a quantity is multiplied by the same factor each period, it grows exponentially: $y=a\cdot b^t$. Find $b$ by dividing consecutive values, not subtracting them.

Answer: B

1. Edge route P → Q → R: $80+60=140$ m.
2. The diagonal PR is the hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs 80 m and 60 m. Use the Pythagorean theorem (not on the HiSET formula sheet): $c^2=a^2+b^2$.
3. $c^2=80^2+60^2=6,400+3,600=10,000$, so $c=\sqrt{10,000}=100$ m.
4. Difference: $140-100=40$ m.

20 meters: This is the difference between the two sides ($80-60$), not the difference between the two routes.

40 meters: Correct. The diagonal is $\sqrt{80^2+60^2}=\sqrt{10,000}=100$ m, and the edge route is $80+60=140$ m; $140-100=40$ m.

100 meters: This is the length of the path PR itself. The question asks how much shorter it is than the edge route.

about 128.2 meters: This takes $\sqrt{80+60}\approx 11.8$ without squaring the sides first, then subtracts it from 140.

The diagonal of a rectangle is the hypotenuse of a right triangle: $c=\sqrt{a^2+b^2}$. Square the legs before adding, then take the square root.

Answer: C

Person B ate a larger meal, so more glucose entered the blood after eating.: The description says both people ate the same meal, so meal size does not explain the difference.

Person B's cells removed glucose from the blood faster than Person A's.: Faster removal would make Person B's glucose drop sooner and lower, but Person B's level stayed high for 3 hours.

Person B's insulin signal is missing or weak, so cells take in glucose slowly.: Correct. Without an effective insulin signal, glucose stays in the blood. That matches Person B's higher, longer peak, while Person A returned to normal within about 2 hours.

Person B's liver stored extra glucose, so the blood level stayed high.: Storing glucose in the liver takes it out of the blood, which would lower blood glucose, not keep it high.

Insulin lowers blood glucose by helping cells take it in; when insulin is lacking or ignored, as in diabetes, blood glucose stays high after meals.

Answer: C

To show that women had played a large part in the American Revolution: The excerpt does not discuss the Revolution or women's role in it. Borrowing the wording is about principles, not wartime history.

To argue that the United States should break away from British rule again: The convention was held in 1848, long after independence. The authors protest the treatment of women, not British rule.

To claim that the nation's founding ideals should apply to women as well: Correct. By adding "and women" to the famous line about equality, the authors argue that the rights the nation already honored belong to women too.

To praise the Founders for having protected the rights of all people equally: Opposite: the document lists "injuries and usurpations" against women, which shows the authors believed those rights had not been protected.

Reformers often borrow the language of a respected founding document so that their demands appear to be a fulfillment of shared national ideals rather than a break from them.