This is the 3rd part in a series of taking the Italian B1 Citizenship language exam. If you haven’t read them yet, you might want to start with the post on the Prep or the Exam.
Ah, the waiting—the hardest part (not really, but it was hard). I was fortunate that I didn’t need to pass the test. Mr Snacks was less fortunate. So, it was impossible to leave the test and set fire to your text books, forgetting everything you’ve learned. For the citizenship test, if you don’t pass any portion you will need to retake the whole test. So, after a few weeks of break, we opted to continue some lessons, but at a very reduced level—only one hour per week. Figuring he’d learn nothing new, but keep some of the existing knowledge active in case he needed to study again.
Just about every day we’d log into the website to look for results. For infuriating weeks, all of the results had zeros in them—indicating the results were not in yet. Then, slowly people who took the same day as us seemed to hear results. Anecdotally, it seems that they are graded one location at a time. Here’s some date specifics, to give you an understanding of waiting times:
- Exam date: June 8, 2023
- Philly exam received grades: July 14, 2023
- Florence (us!) exam received grades: July 27, 2023
- Austin exam received grades: August 2, 2023
After finding out he passed, there MAY have been cheering, weeping and moments of utter relief. Finally, he knew that he didn’t have to take the test again! He had completed the hardest part of the Jure Matrimonio citizenship process.
Now, you get an opportunity to wait yet again. While we got our grades on July 27, it took a few extra days for an electronic version of the completion to appear on the web site. However, for the Chicago consulate, we had heard that they were asking for original copies of this certificate. Those get mailed to your testing facility. The Florence and Austin certificates arrived the week of December 15. We needed to reach out to our exam proctors to get the certificates shipped to us.
When Mr Snacks went to his Chicago consulate appointment, he brought both the original certificate and a copy of it. The consulate did inspect the original, but keep the copy—so waiting the many months for the original seemed worth the wait.