SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The criminal remained__________throughout the entire trial, and his silence seemed to confirm his guiltiness.

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

A___________society, a society whose civilization is shaped by market transactions, is always likely to reflect the appetites and preferences of common men and women. Each may not have much money, but there are so many of them that their tastes are decisive.

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

This text is from Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, copyright ©1998by Anne Fadiman.

 

I call the "to each his own" quandary the His'er Problem, after a solution originally proposed by Chicago school superintendent Ella Young in 1912:"To each his'er own." I'm sorry. I just can't. My reactionary self has aesthetic as well as grammatical standards, and his'er is hideous. Unlike Ms., his'er could never become reflexive.

(I might interject here that when I posed the His'er Problem to my brother, who was raised in the same grammatical hothouse as I, he surprised me by saying, "I won't say his'er. That would be a capitulation to barbarism. But I would be willing to consider a more rhythmically acceptable neologism such as hyr or hes, which would be preferable to having to avoid his by plotting each sentence in advance like a military campaign.")

 

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

Tomi Adeyemi's first published work, the inventive West African-inspired fantasy novel Children of Blood and Bone, has intriguing things to say about the relationship between identity and power. Adeyemi works in a decades-long tradition going back to writers such as Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, who wove cultural elements of the Black diaspora into their science fiction and fantasy in a movement known as Afrofuturism. At its core, the movement is characterized by speculation, not just about distant futures or other planets but also about alterate versions of our shared past. Afrofuturism's meditations on authority reinvigorate the creative potential of fiction.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Most Native languages belong to language families, or groups of languages whose structural and lexical correspondence likely derives from their descent from a single language spoken long ago. A minority—such as Zuni, which is spoken in New Mexico, and Haida, which is spoken in Alaska—are isolates, having no demonstrable genealogical relationship to other languages. Yet Zuni and Haida, like all isolates, are potentially remnants of families whose other members vanished before the historical record could attest to them, perhaps through the geographical expansion of extant families.

 

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

The following text is adapted from Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Aunt Polly is having dinner with Tom, her mischievous young nephew.

Aunt Polly asked [Tom] questions that were full of guile, and very deep—for she wanted to trap him into

damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was

endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most

transparent devices as marvels of low cunning.

Which choice best describes how Aunt Polly is presented in the text?

Text 1

Good art often challenges and disrupts social and aesthetic norms, but the creation of public art-paintings, sculptures, and performance pieces displayed in nonmuseum or nontheatrical public settings—typically requires broad agreement among artists, civic officials, and community members about the works' message and artistic goals. Public art that fails to appease everyone by being sufficiently aesthetically and conceptually bland almost inevitably provokes backlash.

 

Text 2

Public art is commonly displayed in spaces intended for purposes other than meaningful aesthetic engagement. Some critics of public art therefore note that norm-defying pieces that aren't effectively integrated within their surroundings in a manner that primes passersby to appreciate the pieces'merits (as is often the case) tend to be regarded more unfavorably than similarly provocative art encountered in museums is.

 

Based on the texts, how would the critics mentioned in Text 2 most likely respond to the underlined claim in Text 1?

Barchester Towers is an 1857 novel by Anthony Trollope. In the novel, Trollope's portrayal of Dr. Proudie underscores the character's exaggerated sense of his own abilities: ______.

Which quotation from Barchester Towers most effectively illustrates the claim?

The largest tyrannosaurids—the family of carnivorous dinosaurs that includes Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, and, most famously, Tyrannosaurus rex—are thought to have had the strongest bites of any land animals in Earth's history. Determining the bite force of extinct animals can be difficult, however, and paleontologists Paul Barrett and Emily Rayfield have suggested that an estimate of dinosaur bite force may be significantly influenced by the methodology used in generating that estimate.

 

Which choice best describes data from the table that support Barrett and Rayfield's suggestion?

A student is writing a paper on the global rise of the home video game industry during the 1980s. The student is researching the relative popularity of various genres of console and computer games. Looking at the information in the table, the student finds that the games in the genres of___________.

 

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

Variously, researchers have closely examined obsidian artifacts to understand ancient social and economic structures, as in Raymond V. Sidrys's 1976 study, or to glean aspects of cultural identity, as in M. Steven Shackley's 2002 study. Studies of the Malia archaeological site on the Mediterranean island of Crete have shown that significant changes to building styles—changes consistent with an influx of people from another culture elsewhere in the Mediterranean—occurred from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age. In a 2022 study, however, Tristan Carter and Vassilis Kilikoglou found that obsidian-object production methods at Malia stayed remarkably consistent during this architectural transition, which they interpret as indicative of local cultural continuity in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken Carter and Kilikoglou's argument?

The presence of other individuals of the same species has been observed to mitigate stress in highly social mammals. To investigate whether this phenomenon, known as social buffering, also occurs in reptiles, researchers led by Chelsea E. Martin monitored stress responses in wild southern Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus helleri) in three experimental treatments: when alone, with a rope, and with a companion C. helleri. The researchers compared the percent change between baseline and peak heart rate in response to a (harmless) disturbance, with higher values indicating higher stress levels.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the idea that social buffering occurs among C. helleri?

Pablo Picasso famously subverted the norms of traditional painting: in his cubist paintings he refused to let his expression be constrained, fragmenting objects and figures to present multiple perspectives simultaneously. Though less widely known, Picasso—who once lamented that writers of his time had "limited themselves to moving around words somewhat while respecting the syntax"—also wrote poetry that defied conventional grammar, semantic relationships, and text structure. Thus, the paintings and poems are linked in that___________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

From steel production to fuel for residential heating, hydrogen has many applications. Currently, producing hydrogen is carbon intensive, but Rebecca R. Beswick is one of many scholars investigating the feasibility of large-scale production of hydrogen through electrolysis, a process that emits no carbon when renewable energy is used. Beswick suggests that although some obstacles may prevent electrolytic hydrogen from dominating energy systems, there is utility in its ability to decarbonize the steel and heating industries, where reducing carbon emissions is especially challenging.

Which statement about the use of hydrogen in the steel and heating industries is most strongly supported by the text?

In 2001, the US state of Oklahoma enacted rate stability regulations (RSRs), constraining insurance companies'latitude to raise premiums (the recurring fees policyholders pay to maintain insurance policies) once policies are in effect. Although RSRs are intended to benefit consumers, Naoki Aizawa and Ami Ko note that RSRs could curtail insurers' profits to such a degree that insurers abandon the market, thereby reducing the competitive pressure that typically restrains premium prices for newly issued policies. To determine whether this occurred in Oklahoma, students first collect data on the number of insurers in the state for a few years leading up to and following 2001 and the premium prices for new policies offered by those insurers.

Based on the text, what would be the most reasonable next step for the students to take to accomplish their goal?

In the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, known as a hub for silk manufacturing, a unique tradition of embroidery___________back over two thousand years—one that includes iconic double-sided stitching with different images on each side—remains popular with modern audiences, preserving the city's cultural

heritage.

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

The exoplanet Kapteyn c was discovered using an indirect approach to planetary detection, the radial velocity method. Compared to that of the direct imaging method, _________the effect these exoplanets have on nearby stars.

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

Many works of the Greek poet Nicander (2nd century BCE) are_________ his Theriaca, a poem about venomous animals, is an extant work: it can still be read.

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

On Guard is a 1997 photograph by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat. Like many of Neshat's photos, the work features a pair of hands. Clasping a microphone, one hand_________covered in Persian script, the hands imply an out-of-frame figure on the edge of speaking.

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

Nineteenth-century Modernista architects championed nature in their designs. Granted, the domed rooftop and painted floral designs of Casa Estape, a Modernista private home designed by Bernardi Martorell i Rius, couldn't exactly grow in a forest. __________one sees natural influences in Martorell i Rius's

penchant for curves (rather than right angles) and plant-and animal-inspired flourishes.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

The Republic of Pisa, a sea power based in the Mediterranean port city of Pisa that reached its height around 1100 CE, is considered a thalassocracy—a geopolitical entity whose hegemony resulted from control of the sea rather than of land. Historians classify thalassocracies as distinct from tellurocracies, or land-based powers._________the British Empire (1600s-1900s CE) is known for both land and sea supremacy.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Though its onboard laboratory allowed it to analyze rock samples on-site, the 2011 Mars Curiosity rover was unable to preserve samples for future analysis. ________ when creating the 2020 Mars Perseverance rover, electrical engineer Dania Lazo and other members of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sought to implement a mechanism that could do exactly that.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received 1,691 reports of malaria among persons in the United States, representing a 14%6 increase from the 1,484 cases reported with onset of symptoms in 2009. _________ the number of cases reported in 2010 are the largest number of malaria cases that have been

reported in the United States since 1980.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

· The farm-size transition hypothesis predicts that economic pressures associated with modernization result in smaller farms amalgamating into larger-scale commercial farms.

· Masters et al. (2013): The average farm size in Asia "already has or will soon begin to rise."

· Promkhambut et al. (2023) argue that small rice farms in Thailand have adopted modern farming methods without a significant scaling-up of farm size.

· Promkhambut et al.: "The persistence of [small] rice farms [in Thailand] does not represent a 'failure' to modernize... or a 'truncated' transition—it is a response to modernization."

The student wants to make and support a claim regarding the applicability of the farm-size transition hypothesis to Thailand. 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:

· Melissa Cody is a Dine (Navajo) textile artist known for blending traditional Dine designs (stripes, zigzags, and diamond patterns) with nontraditional elements.

· Cody's work incorporates arrangements of shapes or text inspired by video game graphics and pop culture references.

· Cody: "I'm a child of '80s video game culture. I grew up with this world of pixelization."

· Cody: "The things we consider tradition now weren't considered tradition when they first came about."

· Her tapestry Rainbow Road features words in a blocky digital font surrounded by a pattern of colored diamonds.

· Her tapestry Lightning Storm features a blank column of undyed wool next to a blue zigzag stripe.

The student wants to connect a quotation to a particular nontraditional design element in Cody's work. 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 Electoral College system that determines the outcome of US presidential elections, the winner of Minnesota's popular vote receives all 10 of Minnesota's electoral votes.

· A 2001 article written by law professors Akhil and Vikram Amar proposed that states could instead agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.

· The Amars' idea is the basis of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).

· If states holding a majority of electoral college votes (270) adopt the NPVIC, the compact will take effect and adopters will award their electoral votes accordingly.

· Minnesota adopted the NPVIC in 2023.

The student wants to explain the significance of Minnesota's NPVIC adoption. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?