Most Regents examinations are offered every January, June, and August. All Regents exams are three hours long except the Comprehensive English exam, which consists of two separate three-hour exam periods over two consecutive days. Also several of the language regents have oral exams which are administered before the written test and are not part of the three hour time limit.
Most Regents exams are structured in a two-part format: A multiple-choice section (Part I), which is usually between 30-50 questions, and a long-answer/essay section (Part II), which consists of either a selection of detailed questions for which the work must be shown (for math and physical sciences), or a set of essay topics, of which one or two must be written about in detail (for the social sciences). Foreign language exams include a third section on listening skills (with passages read by a proctor aloud), and the history exams include a section of short responses (a sentence or two) on primary documents. For both social science exams, two essays are now required and students do not get a choice as to which essay to answer. The English exam follows a slightly different format, given its longer essay component.