The test to become a Gettysburg battlefield guide has a 90% failure rate.
What’s been called the “hardest test in history” takes years to study for and isn’t administered at a traditional place of higher learning. The reward for those who pass is not a degree but a job: as a tour guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, the site of the bloodiest battle in American history. The test’s failure rate is nearly 90%, which is especially brutal considering how rarely the test is even offered. The most recent exam was given in December 2024, more than seven years after the one before that. Civil War buffs are a different breed, though, and the Battle of Gettysburg, as the turning point of that conflict, has been endlessly studied.
The test entails about 180 different questions and three essays. Some aspirants move to or near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in order to be better prepared, and some lawyers who’ve taken it say it’s more difficult than the bar exam. The written test is followed by interviews, a weekend at the battlefield displaying the would-be guide’s knowledge, and finally a two-hour mock tour. The National Park Service caps the number of guides at about 150 and only offers the test as needed, meaning that prospective guides don’t even know when they’ll be taking it. In 2017, only nine of the 97 applicants passed the test.
