The ASBOG Fundamentals of Geology (FG) examination is the academic half of the national geology licensure examinations used by state boards: 140 multiple-choice questions in four hours, across eight content domains, delivered by computer at Prometric testing centers in spring and fall administrations. It examines knowledge typically acquired in a baccalaureate geology program, and a scaled score of 70 is the passing standard ASBOG has established. Eligibility is set by each state board, not by ASBOG itself.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
The examination at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Examination | ASBOG Fundamentals of Geology (FG) |
| Format | 140 multiple-choice questions in a single 4-hour sitting |
| Content | Eight content domains under the ASBOG FG/PG test blueprints (Candidate Handbook, updated September 2026); general and field geology carries the largest single share at 17% |
| Delivery | Computer-based testing at Prometric testing centers throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii; spring and fall administrations each year |
| Passing standard | A scaled score of 70, as established in the ASBOG Candidate Handbook; a scaled score is not a percentage of questions answered correctly |
| Eligibility | Determined by each state member board under its own law and rules; the FG is aimed at graduating seniors and recent graduates of baccalaureate geology programs |
| Licensure position | One of the two ASBOG examinations (FG and PG) that state boards use in Professional Geologist licensure; licensure itself is granted by the state board and also turns on that board’s education and experience requirements |
| Administrator | ASBOG — the National Association of State Boards of Geology. PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with ASBOG or with any state licensing board |
The Fundamentals of Geology examination exists to answer a question every licensing board needs answered before experience enters the picture: does this candidate hold the common body of geological knowledge that a baccalaureate program is supposed to deliver? ASBOG — the National Association of State Boards of Geology — builds the examination for its member state boards, and those boards use it, alongside its Practice of Geology companion, as the national examination core of Professional Geologist licensure. The FG is deliberately academic in stance. Its blueprint reads like a well-built undergraduate degree audited domain by domain: field methods and mapping, minerals and rocks and the chemistry that binds them, sedimentary sequences and the fossil record inside them, landforms and the processes still shaping them, structure and tectonics, groundwater, the geology of engineered ground, and the geology of resources.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above is stated as the administering body states it in its own publications, because candidates for the FG examination are ill-served by the approximations that circulate about it. Three reading disciplines govern this guide. First, the figures given are the administrator’s figures — the format, the content weights, and the scoring position are reproduced from the primary documents named in this file’s INTERNAL section, and where those documents do not publish a figure, this guide prints none rather than borrowing one. Second, the companion PassProfessor program this guide accompanies is in the works and unbuilt: nothing in this guide describes a question bank, a course, or an enrollment that exists today. Third, where the examination has recently changed or is announced to change, the guide teaches the current position and dates the change, so a candidate can locate their own sitting inside it.
The route, step by step
Step 1 — Start with your state board, not with ASBOG
Eligibility to sit for the FG is determined by each state member board under its own law. Contact the board for the state where you seek licensure, confirm that your degree qualifies, and follow that board’s application and pre-registration process and its cut-off dates. ASBOG supplies the examination; the board supplies the permission.
Step 2 — Register for the computer-based sitting
Approved candidates are pre-registered by their board and then schedule the examination through ASBOG’s contracted examination administrator. The examinations are delivered by computer at Prometric testing centers throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, in spring and fall administrations, each with a testing window that is typically two days.
Step 3 — Sit the FG
One sitting of 140 multiple-choice questions in four hours, distributed across the eight blueprint domains with general and field geology the largest single share. There is no separate practical or oral element: the whole assessment of academic preparation happens in this room.
Step 4 — Receive the result and carry it forward
Scoring converts performance to a scaled score; a scaled score of 70 is the passing standard ASBOG has established, and it is not a percentage. The board that approved you reports and records the outcome and tells you what the pass earns in that state — commonly progress toward a geologist-in-training credential and one of the two examinations required, with experience and the PG, toward full Professional Geologist licensure.
The examination outline in full
General and Field Geology — 17% of the FG
This is the blueprint’s anchor domain and the only one weighted identically on both ASBOG examinations. On the FG it examines the working grammar of the discipline: planning and conducting geological investigations, surface and subsurface exploration techniques, geologic mapping and section construction, photogrammetry and remote sensing, GPS and GIS, measurement and scale, documentation, and the professionalism and ethics material the handbook weaves through the domain. Expect items built on maps and graphics — the candidate who reads a geologic map fluently, constructs a section from it, and keeps orientation and scale straight under time pressure collects marks here that no amount of memorised vocabulary replaces.
In the guide’s treatment, general and field geology is studied as a set of instruments rather than a topic list: the map, the section, the log, and the image. Each knowledge-base element in the handbook — exploration techniques, mapping applications, remote-sensing interpretation, geostatistics, QA/QC — is worked as a decision: what tool answers this question, what does its output look like, and what error does it carry? Candidates are drilled to fix scale, orientation, and units before interpreting any graphic, because the blueprint’s first domain punishes interpretation built on a misread figure.
Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry — 12% of the FG
At 12% the FG weights this domain more than twice as heavily as the PG does, and that contrast is the blueprint’s clearest statement of what the FG is for. The domain examines rock and mineral identification, crystal symmetry and forms, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks and the processes that produce them, geochemical reactions and diagenesis, and the evaluation of geochemical and isotopic data. It is the hand-sample and thin-section examination inside the larger paper: candidates identify materials, read sequences and associations, and reason about genesis and alteration from the evidence a specimen presents.
The guide teaches this domain from the specimen outward. Identification is practised as a keyed sequence — properties observed, alternatives eliminated, name reached — and process questions are taught as the reverse journey, from an assemblage back to the conditions that made it. Geochemistry is handled quantitatively where the handbook expects it: reactions, diagenetic pathways, and isotopic reasoning are worked with numbers attached, not as vocabulary. The domain’s FG weight is a warning to candidates whose degree underplayed petrology: the deficit is examinable at scale here.
Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, and Paleontology — 11% of the FG
This domain examines the layered record: stratigraphic principles and nomenclature, weathering, erosion, transport and deposition, depositional environments and facies analysis, sedimentary structures, basin analysis, diagenesis, geologic time and geochronology, and the fossil record as a tool for age and environment. FG items typically hand the candidate a sequence — outcrop description, log, or fossil assemblage — and ask for correlation, environment, or relative age. It is the most narrative domain on the paper: every question is a short history of a place, and the marks go to candidates who keep superposition, facies change, and unconformity discipline straight while reading it.
The guide organises this domain around the three questions every stratigraphic item is secretly asking: what was deposited, in what environment, and in what order relative to its neighbours? Facies models are taught as environment fingerprints, fossil assemblages as combined age-and-environment evidence, and sequence stratigraphy as the grammar that joins them. Candidates practise correlation exercises across separated sections, because the examination’s favourite move in this domain is to split one history across two graphics and ask whether the candidate can rejoin it.
Geomorphology, Surficial Processes, and Quaternary Geology — 14% of the FG
The FG’s second-largest domain examines the surface of the earth as a working system: geomorphic processes and landform analysis, sea and lake level change, glaciation, weathering, sediment transport, groundwater and surface water at the surface, low-temperature geochemistry, human interaction with the land, and soil development and classification. Items are commonly landscape items — a described or pictured terrain, a drainage pattern, a glacial legacy — asking which processes built it and what it is still doing. The Quaternary emphasis means the recent past is examined as practice, not preface: terraces, tills, outwash, and loess are working vocabulary here.
In the guide this domain is taught process-first: each landform family is introduced through the process that builds it, the deposits it leaves, and the evidence that survives. Candidates learn to read drainage patterns, slope forms, and surficial deposits as process signatures, and to date landforms relatively before reaching for absolute methods. The human-land interaction material is treated seriously rather than as an afterthought, because modern surficial geology is practised on a landscape people are actively reshaping, and the blueprint says so.
Structure, Tectonics, and Seismology — 12% of the FG
Fractures, faults, and folds; rock fabric and rock mechanics; structural analysis; plate tectonics and tectonic regimes; volcanism; structural and seismic history; paleoseismology; and earthquake processes. FG structure items are spatial: a map pattern or cross-section encodes a deformation history, and the candidate must unfold it in the right order. The tectonics material frames those local problems at plate scale — the same fault system read as outcrop geometry in one item and as a convergent margin’s product in the next — while the seismology material examines how earthquakes happen and how their history is read from the ground they have broken before.
The guide teaches structure as reconstruction. Candidates practise restoring sections mentally — removing the youngest deformation first — and learn the map patterns of the standard structures cold, because recognition speed is what buys time for the genuinely hard items. Tectonic regimes are taught as a small set of stress-and-geometry stories from which local structures can be predicted, and paleoseismology is presented as applied stratigraphy: trenches, offset features, and dated horizons read as an earthquake catalogue written in sediment.
Hydrogeology — 13% of the FG
The FG hydrogeology domain covers groundwater and surface water systems, aquifer characterisation, hydrogeologic modelling, low-temperature aqueous geochemistry, contaminant transport, isotopic and tracer studies, hydraulic properties of fluids and earth materials, site investigation methods, well drilling, design and construction, remediation techniques, and water resources management. At FG level the emphasis is foundational: the candidate must command Darcy-based reasoning, aquifer types and properties, flow direction from head data, and the chemistry of natural waters before the PG re-examines the same ground as professional practice at nearly double the weight. Quantitative items appear here and reward unit discipline.
The guide builds hydrogeology on a single habit: draw the system before calculating anything. Cross-sections with water levels, flow nets in words, and aquifer geometry are established first; only then do transmissivity, storativity, and gradient calculations follow. Contaminant transport is introduced as groundwater flow plus chemistry plus time, which is how the examination builds its items, and well material is taught as design intent — why a screen sits where it sits — rather than as construction trivia.
Engineering Geology — 12% of the FG
This domain examines soil and rock mechanics, classification and engineering properties of earth materials, geologic hazards and hazard and risk analysis, site investigation methods, landform analysis for engineering purposes, earth and rock construction methods, and in-situ and laboratory testing. The FG stance is foundational rather than advisory: the candidate is examined on what earth materials do under load, how they fail, how they are tested, and how hazards are recognised and analysed — the knowledge base a graduate carries onto a first site — rather than on the recommendation-writing judgement the PG examines at 18%. Cost and benefit reasoning and QA/QC appear in the knowledge base as framing, not as the main event.
The guide treats engineering geology as materials science practised outdoors. Classification systems are taught as compressed experience — what a class name predicts about behaviour — and hazard material is organised by failure mode: sliding, falling, flowing, subsiding, liquefying. Testing methods are paired with the property each one actually measures, since examination items repeatedly test whether the candidate knows which test answers which design question, and site investigation is presented as staged uncertainty reduction.
Economic Geology and Energy Resources — 9% of the FG
The smallest FG domain examines mineralisation processes, characteristics of mineral deposits, energy resource systems, hydrocarbon traps, industrial minerals, coal and earth materials, exploration techniques including geophysics and geochemistry, petrophysical methods, geostatistical analysis, resource and reserve assessment, and exploration risk and economics. FG items test whether the candidate understands how deposits form and how they are found and evaluated — the genetic models behind an epithermal system or a stratiform deposit — more than the development economics the PG weights at 16%. It is a compact domain, but its concepts are distinctive and cheap to lose marks on if the undergraduate program treated resources briefly.
The guide organises this domain by deposit family and by exploration logic: the geological story that concentrates the commodity, the geophysical or geochemical signature that story produces, and the drilling pattern that tests it. Resource and reserve language is taught precisely, because the examination distinguishes a geological inventory from an economic one, and trap geometry for hydrocarbons is taught as structure and stratigraphy applied — which lets candidates reuse strength from two earlier domains instead of memorising a separate subject.
The sitting itself: format, scoring, and what follows
Four hours and 140 questions is a breadth examination’s bargain: no domain can be skipped, because the smallest still carries roughly one question in eleven, and the blueprint is public enough that imbalance is a choice rather than an accident. The FG’s distinctive pressure is translation — between map and ground, specimen and process, section and history — performed quickly and repeatedly. Candidates who prepared by rereading notes meet items that ask them to do geology rather than recall it, and the gap shows first in the field-geology and sedimentology items built on graphics. The examination also quietly examines stamina: the final quarter is sat by a tired candidate, and the blueprint does not weight it any lighter.
A sitting is also an administrative event, and its rules are part of the examination. Arrive under the administrator’s identification and conduct rules as published for your window, work at the pace the format’s arithmetic sets, and answer every item: across the programs in this guide’s family of examinations, unscored pretest material — where the administrator uses it — is indistinguishable from scored material, and no scoring system in this guide rewards a blank. When the result arrives, read it in the administrator’s own terms — a scaled score against an established standard, a part passed within a program’s clock, a jurisdiction’s line met or missed — and take the next step the route prescribes while the material is still warm, whether that step is the companion part, the next component of a licensure file, or a rebuilt study plan aimed at the domain weights the result exposed.
What this examination is for
That academic stance shapes how the sitting feels. Questions present a map, a cross-section, a hand-sample description, a well log, or a short field relationship and ask what follows from it — the examination rewards a candidate who can move from observation to interpretation, which is precisely the movement undergraduate training drills. Graduating seniors and recent graduates are the audience ASBOG names, and the timing matters: the FG is commonly taken in the final year of the degree or soon after, while coursework is still warm, and many boards record the pass toward a geologist-in-training style credential on the way to full licensure. The state board, not ASBOG, decides who may sit, what the pass earns immediately, and how long it remains valid toward licensure — which is why every statement on this page about eligibility points back to the board of the state where licensure is sought.
Preparation errors this guide is written to prevent
The recurring errors are structural, and they repeat across sittings. Candidates study to the wrong blueprint — a neighbouring examination’s outline, an outdated revision, a summary that rounded the weights away. Candidates study evenly across an uneven paper, giving a small domain the hours a large one needed. Candidates prepare for recognition when the examination tests application, rehearsing definitions for a paper built of described situations demanding a worked answer. And candidates neglect the route itself — the eligibility step, the window, the deadline, the corequisite — and lose a season to an administrative failure no amount of content knowledge can repair. Every section of this guide is aimed at one of those four errors: the outline is given at full weight, the route is given in order, and the sitting is described at its real pace.
After the examination
A passed FG is the first portable proof in a geologist’s licensure file. It tells an employer and a board that the holder’s academic preparation has been measured against a national standard rather than attested by one university’s transcript alone. Early-career geologists — in environmental consulting, geotechnical firms, mining and energy, water agencies, and state surveys — work under licensed professionals while their experience accrues, and the FG pass is the milestone that starts that supervised period counting in most licensure systems. The credential’s value is cumulative: it is the half of the national examination pair that never has to be taken again once passed and recorded, and it frames the later PG as a test of practice rather than a return to school.
Hold the result in the file where it belongs. A pass in this examination is a component in a larger professional record — a licensure application, a certification file, a registration — and the bodies that will ask for it later ask in their own formats and on their own timelines. Keep the administrator’s result communication, note the window and the standard you were measured against, and confirm how the receiving body wants the result evidenced. Where the examination is one of a pair or a set, the result also starts clocks the companion components run on; the route section of this guide states those clocks as the administrator publishes them.
A preparation plan that respects the outline
Build the plan on the outline’s weights, not on habit or on the order of a textbook. Open with the domain or function the outline weights most heavily for this examination, because it is where the sitting is decided; then work the remaining areas in outline order, keeping a running record, area by area, of where practice performance is thin. Convert every content area into worked items early — this examination family tests application, and reading without answering is rehearsal for a different event. Reserve complete timed sittings, at the examination’s real item count and time limit, for the plan’s final stage, and take them under examination conditions: no pauses, no references, and the administrator’s section structure observed where the format imposes one. Close the plan by returning to the heaviest area for a final pass, because sittings are most often decided there. The companion PassProfessor program page describes the preparation program itself, which is in the works; this guide stands on its own as the route and outline reference for the FG examination.
Frequently asked questions
What are the eight FG domains and their weights?
General and Field Geology 17%; Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry 12%; Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, and Paleontology 11%; Geomorphology, Surficial Processes, and Quaternary Geology 14%; Structure, Tectonics, and Seismology 12%; Hydrogeology 13%; Engineering Geology 12%; and Economic Geology and Energy Resources 9% — per Appendix 2 of the ASBOG Candidate Handbook (updated September 2026).
Why is mineralogy weighted so much higher on the FG than on the PG?
Because the two examinations certify different things. The FG audits academic formation, where specimen-level command of minerals, rocks, and geochemistry is core degree content (12% and 11% with sedimentology). The PG audits professional practice and cuts those domains to 5% each, moving the weight to hydrogeology and engineering geology, where practice risk concentrates.
How many questions should I expect per domain?
The blueprint states percentages, not fixed counts, and forms vary. As arithmetic orientation only: 17% of 140 questions is about 24 items for general and field geology, and 9% is about 13 items for economic geology. Plan study time by the percentages; do not treat the arithmetic as a promised form layout.
What kind of items does the field geology domain use?
Items built on the products of field work: geologic maps, cross-sections, logs, remote-sensing imagery, and survey and GIS data. The handbook’s knowledge base for the domain names mapping and section construction, photogrammetry, terrain measurement, and image interpretation — the examination tests whether you can extract geology from those products accurately and quickly.
Does the FG examine ethics?
Professionalism and ethics appear inside the handbook’s knowledge base, notably within general geology and geological investigations and within economic geology, rather than as a standalone domain. Treat professional conduct as examinable context woven through technical items, not as a separate paper to prepare for in isolation.
How should a candidate with a strong field school use it?
As an advantage in the largest domain. Field school trains exactly the map-section-log translation the FG rewards. The risk for such candidates is the reverse imbalance: laboratory and quantitative domains — geochemistry, hydrogeology calculations — may be comparatively undertrained and deserve deliberate plan share despite feeling less natural.
What is the best order to study the domains?
Start with general and field geology, because the handbook states that the other seven domains implicitly include its knowledge base — mapping, sections, and data handling are tools every other domain uses. Then work by blueprint weight adjusted for your own diagnostic results, and finish with complete timed sittings at 140 questions in four hours.
Are calculators and references part of the sitting?
The Candidate Handbook governs what the testing program permits in the room, including its calculator provisions, and the examination is a closed sitting in the ordinary licensure sense: you work from knowledge, not from brought references. Read the current handbook’s testing rules before your window rather than relying on any summary, including this guide.
How does FG scoring handle different forms?
Raw performance is converted to a scaled score, and a scaled score of 70 is the established passing standard. Scaling is the mechanism that keeps the standard constant across forms of differing difficulty; it is also why no percentage-correct target can be honestly quoted for this examination.
Can I take the FG and PG in the same administration?
Eligibility for each examination is a state-board decision, and the PG is usually taken after meeting state-specific work experience requirements, so the two are rarely a pair in practice. Where a board permits both, each remains its own four-hour sitting with its own scaled standard.
What happens after I pass?
Your board records the pass and advises what it earns in that state — commonly recognition toward an in-training credential — and what remains: qualifying experience and the PG examination in the usual licensure pattern. Keep the board’s result letter with your licensure file; later applications in other states will ask for the record.
What if I do not pass?
You reapply through your state board for a later spring or fall administration under that board’s re-examination rules. Treat the domain-level feedback available to you as a study diagnostic: the blueprint is public, so a retake plan can be weighted precisely rather than restarted from the beginning.
Where do this guide’s facts come from?
From ASBOG’s own publications — the examinations page at asbog.org and the ASBOG Candidate Handbook (updated September 2026), including its Appendix 2 blueprints — recorded in this file’s INTERNAL section. Facts that could not be verified from those sources were omitted.
Does this guide replace the Candidate Handbook?
No. The handbook is the governing candidate document for policies, registration, blueprints, and sample questions. This guide explains the route and the outline in study terms; where the two could ever differ, the handbook controls.