SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Anonymous publication was a common practice for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, but approaches to this ____________ varied: for instance, while Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda were initially left unsigned, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was signed "By a Lady."

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

Mohamed Alburaki, Shayne Madella, and colleagues studied genetic diversity in US honey bee populations by identifying specimens' maternal evolutionary lineages and haplotypes (inherited DNA variants). They determined that although C1 and C2j haplotypes occur most frequently in the population overall, another haplotype, A1v, is __________ in certain Southern states, including Florida.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

Slow-cinema films such as Yang's A Brighter Summer Day and Apichatpong's Cemetery of Splendour have a measured pace. Apichatpong's statement that his slow-cinema films "put audiences to sleep" might suggest that his works are boring, but boredom does not always cause torpor: indeed, by creating tension in the absence of a place to fix attention, boredom induces not __________ but anxiety.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

The following text is from Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 novel The Namesake. Gogol, a child, is at a beach in Massachusetts with his father.

 

He watches his father raise a kite within minutes into the wind, so high that Gogol must tip his head back in order to see, a rippling speck against the sky. The wind whips around their ears, turning their faces cold.

 

As used in the text, what does the word "tip" most nearly mean?

Though John Crowley, author of Four Freedoms, is perhaps not as well known as the most commercially successful American writers of the past fifty years, his work has had several influential champions, including the poet John Hollander and the literary critic Harold Bloom. According to journalist Graeme Wood, Bloom claimed to have read Crowley's novel Little, Big at least forty-six times, and in his posthumously published afterword to a 2022 edition of the book, Bloom called himself its "lifelong enthusiast" and described it as a "masterwork."

What does the text most strongly suggest about the work of John Crowley?

By following the practices of regenerative agriculture, members of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska have improved the soil health and productivity of their reservation's farms. Formerly, Ioway farmers had followed the "monocropping" approach: growing the same uniform crop type on the same plot of land year over year. It had become evident by 2019 that such regularity exhausted a given plot's nutrients, so the loway tribe switched to a "regenerative" combination of multi-crop plots and plots that would host different crops in different years.

 

Which choice best states the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

Text 1

Norse settlers occupied part of Greenland from about 985 CE until the early 15th century, when they mysteriously abandoned the region. Many researchers cite temperature change to explain why the Norse fled. The researchers reason that the Norse settlers arrived in the region while the climate was warm and were able to remain there until temperatures declined during the Little Ice Age, which occurred between the 14th and 19th centuries.

 

 

Text 2

Elizabeth Thomas, Isla Castañeda, and colleagues analyzed sediment samples from a lake in Greenland close to the Norse settlement. This allowed them to reconstruct the area's climate history. The researchers found no evidence of substantial temperature changes during the settlement period. They argue that instead the region experienced a persistent drought, which played a more important role in forcing the Norse out of the area than did minor temperature changes.

 

 

Based on the texts, the researchers in both passages address which question?

To complete a project (a canvas in the landscape genre), a graduate student in a studio art program needs to buy a set of oil paints marketed to professional artists. This student should expect to spend ________

 

Which choice most effectively uses relevant and accurate information from the graph to complete the statement?

For example, a star with a diameter of 2 has twice the diameter of the Sun. Red giant stars make up a group of late-stage celestial objects that exhibit a few common patterns; as they age, red giant stars simultaneously expand and experience surface cooling to temperatures below that of the surface of our Sun (estimated at 5770 degrees Kelvin). Younger red giants typically exhibit relatively high surface temperatures even as other conditions follow this progression, as indicated by a comparison of ___________

 

Which choice most effectively uses relevant and accurate information from the table to complete the statement?

By 2020, trends in political polarization led James N. Druckman, Samara Klar, and colleagues to declare that distrust of those with ideological beliefs that contrast with one's own—a phenomenon that these researchers dubbed "affective polarization"— had escalated to an extent formerly unseen in US politics. This trend, measurable in terms of an increasing partisan trust gap, continued beyond 2020 and was to some extent correlated with increasing distrust of the US government as well, though other political commentators have observed there are temporary deviations from these overall tendencies.

 

Which choice most effectively uses relevant and accurate information to support the observation of political commentators other than Druckman, Klar, and colleagues?

"The Grindstone" is a 1922 poem by Robert Frost. In the text, the speaker admits that, in contemplating a grindstone, he has chosen a topic that seems irrelevant to his own life: ________

 

Which quotation from "The Grindstone" most effectively illustrates the claim?

Under most circumstances, fly ash would be considered a waste product and an environmental hazard. Fly ash itself results from burning coal in power plants, where this powdery substance accumulates in gas-bearing tubes called flues (the name "fly ash" being a slight distortion of "flue ash"). While fly ash must be disposed of and can contaminate groundwater, this substance holds surprisingly great promise for cleaning up oil spills. Researchers Sudipta Seal and Larry Hench have observed that fly ash can undergo a series of chemical modifications that transform it into a semi-solid substance and give it absorbent properties ideal for absorbing crude oil that has been released into the ocean.

Which piece of information, if true, would best support Seal and Hench's observation about fly ash?

The dogbane tiger moth, a large-bodied moth, defends itself against Allen's big-eared bat and other insect-eating bats, which use echolocation to hunt, by emitting ultrasonic clicks that can, for instance, startle the bats and thus deter their attacks. To investigate moths' defensive ultrasound—which researchers had thought was exclusive to tiger moths, hawkmoths, and one species of geometer moths—Juliette J. Rubin et al. recorded the responses of moths from 252 genera, representing most families of large-bodied moths, to audio playback of bat echolocation. The researchers found that 52 of the genera, including several genera belonging to the geometer family, produced defensive ultrasonic clicks. This result suggests that _________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The owners of small companies are often required to perform a variety of tasks. As one such entrepreneur recently joked, "I'm part CEO and part intern: both the one who writes the paychecks and the one who goes on coffee runs when nobody else will." Versatility of this sort, though, cannot always solve the knotty interpersonal problems of human relations (HR) in a relatively small workplace. Rather than "winging it," an entrepreneur should hire an experienced HR professional on a freelance basis so that _________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

After winning the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln appointed Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, and William H. Seward to his cabinet. Lincoln's decision was surprising, since each of these men had run against him, but historians have praised it, noting that Lincoln ______ his rivals' diverse talents to strengthen his administration.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

As British scientist Peter Whibberley has observed, "the Earth is not a very good timekeeper." Earth's slightly irregular rotation rate means that measurements of time must be periodically adjusted. Specifically, an extra "leap second" (the 86,401st second of the day) is ______ time based on the planet's rotation lags a full nine-tenths of a second behind time kept by precise atomic clocks.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of standard English?

Rabinal Achí is a precolonial Maya dance drama performed annually in Rabinal, a town in the Guatemalan highlands. Based on events that occurred when Rabinal was a city-state ruled by a king, ______ had once been an ally of the king but was later captured while leading an invading force against him.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of standard English?

The city of Pompeii, which was buried in ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, continues to be studied by archaeologists. Unfortunately, as ______ attest, archaeological excavations have disrupted ash deposits at the site, causing valuable information about the eruption to be lost.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

On April 5, 1977, Kitty Cone and 150 other disability rights activists entered a San Francisco federal building. After pleading for years—to no effect—for the passage of key antidiscrimination legislation, ______ until their demands were addressed. Finally, on April 28, the legislation was signed.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of standard English?

"Tulip mania"—the rapid rise and sudden fall of the price of tulip bulbs in seventeenth-century Amsterdam—is often cited as an example of the perils of rampant market speculation. However, recent research has demonstrated that the episode was neither as frenzied nor as disastrous as has been thought. The popular myth surrounding it, ______ should be regarded with some skepticism.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

When, in the 1800s, geologists first realized that much of Earth had once been covered by great sheets of ice, some theorized that the phenomenon was cyclical, occurring at regular intervals. Each Ice Age is so destructive, though, that it largely erases the geological evidence of its predecessor. ______ geologists were unable to confirm the theory of cyclical Ice Ages until the 1960s.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In response to adverse environmental conditions, many plants produce abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone. ABA triggers a slowdown in the biological processes of most plants. ______ when the mustard plant Schrenkiella parvula produces ABA in response to an environmental stressor, the hormone triggers accelerated growth.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

 

·The factors that affect clutch size (the number of eggs laid at one time) have been well studied in birds but not in lizards.

·A team led by Shai Meiri of Tel Aviv University investigated which factors influence lizard clutch size.

·Meiri's team obtained clutch-size and habitat data for over 3,900 lizard species and analyzed the data with statistical models.

·Larger clutch size was associated with environments in higher latitudes that have more seasonal change.

·Lizards in higher-latitude environments may lay larger clutches to take advantage of shorter windows of favorable conditions.

 

The student wants to emphasize the aim of the research study. which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

 

·African American women played prominent roles in the Civil Rights Movement, including at the famous 1963 March on Washington.

·Civil rights activist Anna Hedgeman, one of the march's organizers, was a political adviser who had worked for President Truman.

·Civil rights activist Daisy Bates was a well-known journalist and advocate for school desegregation.

·Hedgeman worked behind the scenes to make sure a woman was included in the lineup of speakers at the march.

·Bates was the sole woman to speak, delivering a brief but memorable address to the cheering crowd.

 

The student wants to compare the two women's contributions to the March on Washington. which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

 

·Ducklings expend up to 62.8% less energy when swimming in a line behind their mother than when swimming alone.

·The physics behind this energy savings hasn't always been well understood.

·Naval architect Zhiming Yuan used computer simulations to study the effect of the mother duck's wake.

·The study revealed that ducklings are pushed in a forward direction by the wake's waves.

·Yuan determined this push reduces the effect of wave drag on the ducklings by 158%.

 

The student wants to present the study and its methodology. which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

 

·Cambodia's Angkor Wat was built in the 1100s to honor the Hindu god Vishnu.
·It has been a Buddhist temple since the sixteenth century.
·Decorrelation stretch analysis is a novel digital imaging technique that enhances the contrast between colors in a photograph.
·Archaeologist Noel Hidalgo Tan applied decorrelation stretch analysis to photographs he had taken of Angkor Wat's plaster walls.
·Tan's analysis revealed hundreds of images unknown to researchers.

 

The student wants to present Tan's research to an audience unfamiliar with Angkor Wat. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?