What Is on the Border Patrol Agent Entrance Exam

The two parts

CBP's preparation guide states it plainly: the entrance examination consists of two parts, the Experience Record and the Logical Reasoning Test. The Experience Record measures your background experience and runs to 40 minutes. The Logical Reasoning Test measures reasoning, decision-making, judgment and problem solving, and runs to 120 minutes. CBP notes that these are maximum times and that many test takers finish sooner.

You take the examination on a computer, either at a test center or at home. CBP allows roughly four hours for the sitting.

What the reasoning test looks like

Each question gives you a paragraph drawn from written material relating to CBP or government work, then asks you to complete a sentence by choosing one of five responses. CBP's instruction is that you must accept every fact in the paragraph as true, and that you are not being judged on your knowledge of facts but on your ability to reason from the facts given.

There are two phrasings. A positive lead-in — "it can be validly concluded that" — is followed by four invalid conclusions and one valid one. A negative lead-in — "it CANNOT be validly concluded that" — is followed by four valid conclusions and one that is not.

What the Artificial Language Test was, and why it is gone

Older guides and a good deal of surviving commentary describe a Spanish Language Test or an Artificial Language Test as part of this examination. Neither appears in the current preparation guide. The two parts above are what CBP publishes now, and comparing the August 2024 revision with the current one shows the format unchanged between them.

If you are reading a description of this exam that includes a language section, check its date.

Related guides

• The CBP Logical Reasoning Test, Explained
• The CBP Exam Is Adaptive: What That Changes
• CBP Exam Deadlines and the 90-Day Retest Rule