SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

More than fifty years ago, caiman lizards were brought from the tropical wetlands of Latin America to the United States. Caimans now thrive in southern Florida, where they are negatively affecting native species, from crowding out alligators and crocodiles to preying on turtles and snakes that are already __________ to ongoing stressors like habitat loss.

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

Plumbing manuals outline standard repair protocols for common scenarios, but aging buildings, unusual pipe configurations, and unique materials necessitate the application of considerable ___________ on the part of plumbers. Indeed, knowing when to deviate from standard approaches based on situational factors is part of what distinguishes experts from novices.

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

It is tempting to treat the clustering of information technology firms in Northern California as representative of industrial agglomeration generally, but Guilia Faggio et al. caution against _________this one example: the potential for knowledge spillovers, a dominant driver of collocation in this industry, was largely absent from the paint manufacturing industry.

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

The following text is adapted from William Wordsworth's 1798 poem "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey."

 

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.

 

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

The following text is from Hope Jahren's 2016 memoir Lab Girl. The author, a scientist, discusses her childhood in a rural part of the United States.

 

My strongest memory of our garden is not how it smelled, or even looked, but how it sounded. It might strike you as fantastic, but you really can hear plants growing in the Midwest. At its peak, sweet corn grows a whole inch every single day and as the layers of husk shift slightly to accommodate this expansion, you can hear it as a low continuous rustle if you stand inside the rows of a cornfield on a perfectly still August day.

 

Which choice best describes the main purpose of the text?

A microgenre is a specialized genre consisting of a comparatively small number of stylistically similar artists. The microgenre of electronic music known as hyperpop emerged in the 2010s, with American musician Laura Les as an early exponent. Her combination of dense synthesizer arrangements and metallic percussion with vocals electronically shifted in pitch above her natural range exemplifies the hyperpop sound. More recently, Venezuelan recording artist Arca has contributed to the microgenre by incorporating Latin rhythms into hyperpop songs.

 

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

Some climate models predict that the habitat ranges of North American trees will expand northward as average temperatures warm. However some tree species like sand post oaks and limber pines, haven't expanded. This is called "migration lag" —when species fail to expand their range, even when conditions seem right. Scientists have proposed several possible explanations: fewer species of soil fungi available at the northern edges of the trees' habitat, physical barriers blocking seed dispersal, or deer overgrazing preventing new trees from establishing.

According to the text, what unexpected phenomenon are scientists observing with North American tree species?

Text 1

Urban preservation policies should prioritize the strict material restoration of historic buildings to their original architectural state. Altering historic structures to accommodate modern commercial enterprises compromises their authentic character and severs the tangible link between a community and its architectural heritage. Municipalities must therefore enact protective covenants that prohibit substantial modifications to original interior floorplans, facade materials, and decorative detailing.

 

 

Text 2

Urban theorist Jane Jacobs argued that cities need old buildings to cultivate vibrant, diverse economic activity, but preserving structures purely as frozen museum pieces is unsustainable. When historic buildings undergo adaptive reuse—repurposing industrial warehouses or nineteenth-century storefronts into housing, creative studios, or local businesses—they remain active contributors to neighborhood life while avoiding the high capital costs and carbon expenditure of new demolition and construction.

 

 

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the preservation approach advocated in Text 1?

For a course paper on contemporary trends in media and marketing, a college student has researched usage trends for major social media platforms in the US, including the percentage of all US adults with some presence on the platform and the daily active usage (the percent of all users who log in at least once per day). Surveying this information, the student argues that nearly half of all users of some platforms are not daily active users.

 

Which choice most effectively uses accurate information from the table to support the student's argument?

To the extent to which a given treatment inhibits the growth of bacteria, biomedical researchers resort to a test known as the disk diffusion method. A small disk laced with an antibacterial compound will be placed on a base of nutrient agar, a growth medium for a bacterial strain that will then be cultivated on the same disk. The potency of the antibacterial compound is determined by the zone of inhibition (or area where bacteria fail to propagate) around the disk, and the radius of this zone can signal the efficacy of an antibiotic, as in one recent experiment indicating _________

 

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

Community art is a collaborative process that involves residents working together, frequently with professional artists, to complete a project. These projects often greatly benefit the local economy, drawing residents and visitors to shop at businesses in the community. An example of such an initiative is the East Side Gallery in Berlin, Germany—an open-air gallery of 105 paintings on a remaining section of the Berlin Wall—which has the added benefit of addressing local issues.

 

Which quotation from a town mayor would best support the underlined claim?

Ants and aphids enter into a mutualistic relationship that initially appears to be beneficial primarily to ants: aphids, which normally represent the smaller of the two insect types, have been found to be raised in pen-like enclosures by ants for the sake of a protein-rich substance secreted by the aphids and consumed by ants for sustenance. However, Aniek Ivens and Daniel Kronauer claimed, in research published in 2022, that this "herding"or "farming" arrangement imparts benefits to the aphids as well.

Which fact about ants and aphids, if true, would best support the claim by Ivens and Kronauer?

The broadnose sevengill shark and the Pacific halibut are ectothermic (cold-blooded) fish, whereas the salmon shark and the Albacore tuna are regional endotherms—they retain metabolic heat resulting in body temperatures above the ambient water temperature. Modeling the effect of falling ambient temperatures on ectotherms indicated to researchers Haley R. Dolton and colleagues that ectotherms' body temperatures inexorably decrease toward the ambient temperature. Data from wild basking sharks show that even though their body temperature consistently remains 1.0 to 1.5°C above ambient, it also declines as the ambient temperature falls. This suggests that the body temperatures of the _________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Because a cycle of lunar phases ______ 29.5 days to complete, it's possible to observe two full moons in a single month, one at the beginning and one at the end.

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

The violins handmade in the seventeenth century by Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari have been celebrated as some of the finest in the world. In close collaboration with musicians, Stradivari introduced changes to the shape of a traditional violin, flattening some of the instrument's curves and making ______ lighter overall.

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

Slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo's debut novel The Poet X, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, is composed of ______ protagonist, fifteen-year-old Xiomara Batista.

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

Far from being modern inventions, ______ more than 5,000 years ago.

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

Seneca sculptor Marie Watt's blanket art comes in a range of shapes and sizes. In 2004, Watt sewed strips of blankets together to craft a 10-by-13-inch ______ in 2014, she arranged folded blankets into two large stacks and then cast them in bronze, creating two curving 18-foot-tall blue-bronze pillars.

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

It is generally true that technological change is a linear process, in which once-useful technologies are replaced by new and better ______ the reawakening of interest in the steam engine (from advocates of carbon-neutral rail travel) reminds us that ostensibly obsolete technologies may be brought back into service to address society's changing needs.

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

Although those who migrated to California in 1849 dreamed of finding gold nuggets in streambeds, the state's richest deposits were buried deeply in rock, beyond the reach of individual prospectors. ______ by 1852, many had given up their fortune-hunting dreams and gone to work for one of the large companies capable of managing California's complex mining operations.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Researchers Helena Mihaljević-Brandt, Lucía Santamaría, and Marco Tullney report that while mathematicians may have traditionally worked alone, evidence points to a shift in the opposite direction. ______ mathematicians are choosing to collaborate with their peers—a trend illustrated by a rise in the number of mathematics publications credited to multiple authors.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

With her room-sized installation The Interstitium, Iranian American artist Laleh Mehran succeeded in creating a space that felt, as intended, both "familiar and distant." ______ with a video screen placed at the far end of the coal slag-encrusted room, her installation was reminiscent of a typical movie theater—albeit one found in a subterranean coal mine.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A firefly uses specialized muscles to draw oxygen into its lower abdomen through narrow tubes, triggering a chemical reaction whereby the oxygen combines with chemicals in the firefly's abdomen to produce a glow. ______ when the firefly stops drawing in oxygen, the reaction—and the glow—cease.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

 

·Las sergas de Esplandián was a novel popular in sixteenth-century Spain.

·The novel featured a fictional island inhabited solely by Black women and known as California.

·That same century, Spanish explorers learned of an "island" off the west coast of Mexico.

·They called it California after the island in the novel.

·The "island" was actually the peninsula now known as Baja California ("Lower California"), which lies to the south of the US state of California.

 

The student wants to emphasize the role a misconception played in the naming of a place. 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 the late 1890s, over 14,000 unique varieties of apples were grown in the US.

·The rise of industrial agriculture in the mid-1900s narrowed the range of commercially grown crops.

·Thousands of apple varieties considered less suitable for commercial growth were lost.

·Today, only 15 apple varieties dominate the market, making up 90% of apples purchased in the US.

·The Lost Apple Project, based in Washington State, attempts to find and grow lost apple varieties.

 

The student wants to emphasize the decline in unique apple varieties in the US and specify why this decline occurred. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish these goals?

 

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

 

·Ancient Native American and Australian Aboriginal cultures described the Pleiades star cluster as having seven stars.
·It was referred to as the Seven Sisters in the mythology of ancient Greece.
·Today, the cluster appears to have only six stars.
·Two of the stars have moved so close together that they now appear as one.

 

The student wants to specify the reason the Pleiades appearance changed. which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?