SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Along with traditional Japanese forms of woodwork and weaving, sashiko embroidery was revived during the mingei (folk art) movement of the twentieth century. Sashiko's functional origins as a mending technique and its use of motifs inspired by everyday life, such as tsuru (crane), reflect the principle that folk art should ___________ its form and themes from the lives of its creators.

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

The reception of Sung J. Woo's book Everything Asian has been very good. Many reviewers, booksellers, and librarians have _________ the book, and it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.

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

Palenque, the famed Maya city located in the highlands of southeastern Mexico, was likely ___________ of achievements attained in the lesser-known polities of the Mirador Basin. As Morales-Aguilar et al. have shown, developments at those earlier Mirador sites (e. g., the eight astronomically aligned complexes at El Mirador) were a historical precondition for the sophistication exhibited by the architects of later cities.

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

The 2024 movie Mean Girls, a remake of the 2004 cult classic, earned over $28 million during its first weekend in US theaters. One reason for its popularity is that the movie's marketing team used the internet to introduce new viewers to the original story before the remake was released. The marketers uploaded the original film divided into 23 short segments to a social media site popular with teenagers. The entire film received at least 750,000 views in one day, and 100,000 people started following the "Mean Girls" social media account.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

In many parts of the world, merchants rarely label goods with exact prices like $17.31 or $203.62. Studies have shown that consumers view exact prices as reflecting merchant expertise and careful calculation, so why aren't they more common? One reason is that exact prices may create greater cognitive friction during purchase decisions than do whole-number prices or prices easily rounded to whole numbers (e. g., $5.99, which is little different from $6). Particularly if multiple goods are being considered for purchase, tracking and comparing exact prices may feel onerous to consumers.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Visiting flowers that produce high volumes of nectar allows hummingbirds, including scaly-breasted hummingbirds, to maximize their foraging efficiency. But nectar can't be seen from outside the flower, and while some studies have suggested that petal length may indicate nectar volume, Maria A. Maglianesi and team found no such association among hummingbird-visited plants at Los Cusingos Bird Sanctuary and other sites in Costa Rica. The researchers hypothesize that by driving hummingbirds to visit more plants in search of high-reward flowers, plants'lack of reliable signaling may increase chances of pollination.

 

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

Cuojun He and colleagues studied a food-delivery phone app that is popular in China. The researchers found that having "no cutlery" automatically selected influences whether customers request disposable plastic utensils with their food orders. Based on their results, the researchers concluded that this and other small changes to the app could reduce plastic waste in China by as much as 3.26 million metric tons per year.

According to the text, which choice best describes a conclusion he and colleagues drew from their study?

The ancient writing system used in the Maya kingdoms of southern Mexico and Central America had a symbol for the number zero. The earliest known example of the symbol dates to more than 2,000 years ago. At that time, almost none of the writing systems elsewhere in the world possessed a zero symbol. And the use of zero in Mexico and Central America may be even more ancient. Some historians suggest that Maya mathematicians inherited it from the Olmec civilization, which flourished in the region 2,400–3,600 years ago.

 

According to the text, what do some historians suggest about Maya civilization?

 

Researchers analyze tea production in Azerbaijan, observing shifts in how the country balances its locally grown stock versus imported and exported volumes.

 

Which choice describes data from the graph that could most reasonably explain the situation described in the text?

A marine biologist is researching four stony coral species in Caribbean and Indo-Pacific waters, focusing on sightings of these species in the shallow zone (less than 30 meters below the surface) and the mesophotic zone (30 to 150 meters below the surface). Consulting the table, she'notes that the smallest maximum depth is located in ____________.

 

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

Cane is a 1923 novel by Jean Toomer. In the novel, Toomer mentions a road in rural Georgia called Dixie Pike and describes it as having a deep connection to a faraway place, writing, __________.

Which quotation from Cane most effectively illustrates the claim?

Wayang is an art form from Java, Indonesia, that uses shadow puppets, voice actors, and music to tell stories. As long ago as the ninth century, wayang artists began to learn from and teach puppet artists from other places, including India and Persia (present-day Iran). Today, wayang performances regularly add heroes and stories from ancient Indian and Persian tales. This suggests that wayang, as it is performed today, ___________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

To determine if people's preferences for certain smells are affected by culture (as has long been posited by researchers), personal taste, or aspects of human anatomy, neuroscientist Artin Arshamian and colleagues investigated how people from ten diverse cultures—including urban dwellers from a large city in Thailand and urban dwellers from a large city in Mexico—perceived certain odors. Arshamian and colleagues observed that the few study participants who rated mushroom alcohol as more pleasant than vanillin shared no meaningful nonanatomical characteristics, suggesting that___________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

In his 1963 exhibition Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, Korean American artist Nam June Paik showed how television images could be manipulated to express an artist's perspective. Today, Paik ____________ considered the first video artist.

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

In 2022, 76 percent of Bermuda's exports, in terms of dollar value, were manufactured ___________ Bermuda relies on manufactured goods for the majority of its exports places it in a more stable economic position, generally speaking, than countries that rely primarily on raw materials, which are more sensitive to market fluctuations.

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

Diné textile artist D. Y. Begay merges geometric abstraction with realistic landscape imagery in her tapestries Palette of Cochineal (2013) and Winter in the North (2019). ____________ featured alongside forty-six other tapestries of Begay's in Sublime Light, a 2025 exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian.

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

Writing in hieroglyphs, ancient Egyptians recorded measurements using units such as the khefa, a unit of _____________ and the sa, a unit of area. The khefa, for instance, is written as a short, horizontal hieroglyph shaped like the back of a fist.

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

Scientists believe that, unlike most other species of barnacle, turtle barnacles (Chelonibia testudinari) can dissolve the cement-like secretions they use to attach ___________ to a sea turtle shell, enabling the barnacles to move short distances across the shell's surface.

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

Lucía Michel of the University of Chile observed that alkaline soils contain an insoluble form of iron that blueberry plants cannot absorb, thus inhibiting blueberry growth. If these plants were grown in alkaline soil alongside grasses that aid in iron solubilization, ____________ Michel was determined to find out.

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

Before the 1847 introduction of the US postage stamp, the cost of postage was usually paid by the recipient of a letter rather than the sender, and recipients were not always able or willing to pay promptly. ___________ collecting this fee could be slow and arduous, and heaps of unpaid-for, undeliverable mail piled up in post offices.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Among its thousands of portraits of well-known figures from British history, London's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) includes self-portraits by noteworthy British artists, including one of Rachel Strachey. ___________ the subjects of most NPG portraits are different from (and more famous than) the artists who painted them.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

During winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the fast-moving river of air called the polar jet stream often shifts south, bringing cold arctic air to places that are normally warmer. __________ summer brings a northward shift of this jet stream, allowing warmer air to spread across much of North America and Europe.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Arkansas aviator Louise Thaden was already a record breaker when she won the inaugural National Women's Air Derby, a race from California to Ohio, in August of 1929. ___________ in December of 1928, Thaden had set an aviation record when she reached an altitude of 20,269 feet in a Travel Air biplane.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

· Scientists have developed a "freeze-thaw" battery that can retain 92% of its charge after twelve weeks.

· The battery contains molten salt (a type of salt that liquifies when heated and solidifies at room temperature).

· When the salt is in a liquid state, energy flows through the battery.

· When the salt is in a solid state, energy stops flowing and is stored in the battery.

· The stored (frozen) energy can be used by reheating (thawing) the battery.

The student wants to specify how the salt enables energy storage. 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:

· The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) keeps a list of all at-risk species.

· Species on the list are classified as either endangered or threatened.

· A species that is in danger of extinction throughout most or all of its range is classified as endangered.

· A species that is likely to soon become endangered is classified as threatened.

· The California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii) is likely to soon become endangered, according to the FWS.

The student wants to indicate the California red-legged frog's FWS classification category. 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:

· In a 2021 study, researchers showed participants sets of images.

· Each set contained an unaltered image of a different character or logo alongside two slightly altered versions.

· Participants were asked to identify the correct version in each set.

· In the set containing Pikachu, 26.8% of participants selected the correct version, and 73.2% selected an altered version.

· In the set containing Scooby-Doo, 80.6% of participants identified the correct version, and 19.4% selected an altered version.

The student wants to explain how participants performed on the set with Scooby-Doo. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?