SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Studying advertisements for defunct amusement parks, postcards from vanished tourist destinations, and handbills promoting long-forgotten political candidates may seem like a frivolous pursuit, but ephemeral objects like these are useful as            cultural change, revealing shifts in norms, values, and concerns that traditional objects of historical inquiry may not.

 

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

Castanopsis chrysophylla (giant chinquapin tree) has reticulated venation, in which intersecting leaf veins form netlike structures. Though the             inherent to this venation pattern makes hydraulic conductance less efficient than in plants with simpler branching veins, it also serves a crucial function: if any veins are damaged, alternative pathways reduce disruptions to fluid circulation.

 

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

Danza Azteca arose in the 1500s when the traditions of the Pame people               those of other tribes in Central Mexico, creating a hybrid dance form that spread across Mexico and later to Mexican communities in the US. Pame influences can still be seen in the performances by groups like Danza Azteca Taxcayolot1, which is based in Houston.

 

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

The Reckoning and Resilience (2022) exhibition at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina, was curated to feature the work of thirty North Carolina artists. The included artists represent a wide variety of artistic disciplines, from painters such as Jessica Clark to the sculptor Meg Stein. In its inclusion of many borrowed works, the exhibition is atypical for the Nasher Museum, which tends to curate its exhibitions around the permanent collection of contemporary art that it owns.

 

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Considering a large sample of companies, economics experts Maria Guadalupe, Julie Wulf, and Raghuram Rajan assessed the number of managers and leaders from different departments who reported directly to a chief executive officer (CEO). According to the researchers, the findings suggest that across the years analyzed, there was a growing interest among CEOs in connecting with more departments in their companies.

 

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the researchers'conclusion?

A tariff is a tax on imported goods intended to protect domestic producers of similar goods from international competition. Eliminating tariffs can lead to an influx of cheaper imported goods, lowering prices; in a place where domestic production is relatively expensive, this influx can suppress domestic production, as the country’ s consumers favor more cheaply produced imported goods over domestically produced ones. A student consults a table showing projected changes in production and average market prices of agricultural commodities in four countries in a tariff-elimination scenario. Based on the data, the student claims that compared with Mexico and Japan, agricultural production in Brazil and Canada is likely relatively inexpensive.

 

Which choice most effectively uses information from the text and data from the table to support the student's claim?

Scholars cite Hombres de maíz, the 1949 novel by Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which anti-realistic plot devices— often borrowed from the spiritual and narrative traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas—are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on African authors, including Ngugi wa Thiong’o, whose 2006 novel Wizard of the Crow resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with long-established cultural traditions—in this case, those of Kenya.

 

Which quotation from a literary scholar would most directly support the claim in the underlined portion of the text?

Text 1

The Iowa Writers' Workshop, an influential graduate program in creative writing, has been faulted for almost exclusively promoting fiction that is conventional in structure. Yet the works of program graduate Justin Torres, for example, are hardly conventional. His novel Blackouts lacks a cohesive storyline and is instead largely structured as a play interspersed with photos and excerpts from other texts.

 

Text 2

Works by Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduates show more diversity than many critics acknowledge. Rafael Frumkin opts for a conventional structure in The Comedown, while Justin Torres chooses an experimental structure in Blackouts. Both approaches to storytelling serve as vehicles for rigorous investigations of traditional gender roles, which suggests that the workshop encourages thought-provoking content in addition to stylistic freedom.

 

The author of Text 1 and the author of Text 2 would most likely agree with which statement?

Text 1

The island of Grande Terre split from the former supercontinent Gondwana around 80 million years ago, carrying Gondwanan species from a variety of clades with it. The island was periodically submerged until 37 million years ago, but some researchers suggest that its current biota includes species from clades predating the split that took refuge on islands near Grande Terre during submergence events and then returned.

 

Text 2

Astrid Cruaud et al. found that the crown age-the age of the most recent common ancestor of all species in the clade (i.e., the clade’ s founder)-of Grande Terre’ s clade of fig wasps is 40.3 million years, which is among the oldest clade crown ages of species inhabiting the island today. Nearly all of Grande Terre’ s living species belong to clades that originated much more recently: for example, the crown age of the island's clade of Geissois trees is 7.3 million years.

 

Based on the texts, the author of Text 2 would most likely agree with which statement about the "Gondwanan species" discussed in Text 1?

Callie W. Babbitt, Hema Madaka, and colleagues assembled a database of materials used in consumer electronics by studying products in the lab and by gathering data from other similar product studies. The team rated each study on its level of detail (with a higher rating for reported data with more detail) and on its category consistency (with a higher rating for using materials categories more closely aligned with the categories in the team' $s$ database). Based on these ratings, a second research team concluded that the data in a study by Jaco Huisman and colleagues would need less adjustment to fit the classifications in the database than the data in a study by Perrine Chancerel and Susanne Rotter did.

 

Which finding, if true, would most directly challenge the second research team's conclusion?

The broadnose sevengill shark and the plaice are ectothermic (coldblooded) fish, whereas the shortfin mako shark and the Pacific bluefin 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 their body temperatures also decline as the ambient temperature falls, but consistently remain 1.0 to 1.5°C above ambient. This suggests that given a constant ambient water temperature, the basking shark will typically have ______

 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Technological discontinuance—when a technological advance, such as the use of many mid-Holocene hunting and fishing tools in Tasmania, is abandoned after sustained adoption—can result when difficulty in accessing resources increases. A dataset of over 4,500 rings, pendants, and other gold objects from the Caucasus dating to 4000– 500 BCE revealed a drop in the number of gold artifacts from sites in the Middle Kura zone circa 1500 BCE. No such drop occurred in the nearby Middle Araxes zone, but modeling suggests that walking times to the nearest gold are deposits were comparable in the two regions. Yet, concluding that the abandonment of gold metallurgy in the Middle Kura can't therefore be attributed to proximity to gold deposits depends on the assumption that ______

 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Rudolf Cesaretti et al. conducted an analysis of historical urban scaling trends circa 1300 CE in Western Europe, focusing on agglomeration patterns within medieval settlements. They examined settlements in urban systems across Western Europe, with groupings based on regionally distinct political structures, economic focuses, and spatial constraints—including the aristocratically controlled city-state of Rimini in northern Italy, merchant controlled citystates like Bautzen in Germany, the wool-trading centers of Norwich and Salisbury in England, and prime trade-fair towns like Troyes in France. A prevalent trend emerged: as a city's total settled area increased, so did population density in its core urban areas. This finding implies that ______

 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

An assistant professor at Stanford University, Chelsea Finn works on developing artificial intelligence technology, with a specific focus on deep ______ learning involves teaching computers to process data in the same way a human brain would.

 

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

A great discovery for any art historian is finding a connective thread linking seemingly disparate artists—Romanian impressionist painter Ion Theodorescu-Sion of the early twentieth century and Italian Renaissance painter Sebastiano del Piombo of the fifteenth century, for ______ across continents, genres, and time.

 

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

The terms included in Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney’ s Home Ground: A Guide to the American ______ such as "cape", which refers to a piece of land that juts out into a body of water—illustrate the rich vocabulary used to describe the landforms of North America.

 

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

Latvia has the world’s 4th shortest constitution (4,917 words). In their 2016 analysis, political ______ presented statistical evidence that shorter constitutions correlate with higher GDPs (gross domestic products); less detailed constitutions, the scientists posit, have fewer provisions that could restrict necessary legislation during periods of economic volatility.

 

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

As part of his Today series, Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara spent nearly fifty years—with near daily consistency—writing the date in simple white strokes on a monochrome background, resulting in pieces such as 27 DEC. 1978. Such meticulous documentation of mundane ______ artworks that "resonate with existential, psychological and scientific implications about the time-space continuum", according to the New York Times, became Kawara’ s life’s work.

 

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

The Indian Ocean trade network, spanning from East Africa to East Asia, was facilitated by sophisticated financial infrastructures that transcended political boundaries. Take ______ were monetary instruments that permitted trust-based financial exchanges across political boundaries through honor codes and agent networks, so that merchants seeking textiles in Mogadishu or cloves in Tidore could enjoy equally smooth trades.

 

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

In a 2024 study, researchers investigating the biodiversity of trees in Amsterdam counted and classified the city’s trees. They found notable variation in the percentage of native trees in different areas of the city. ______ more than half of the trees in administrative unit GE05 (54%) were native species, but only 13% of the trees in administrative unit GM17 were native species.

 

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 1801, Great Britain joined with Ireland to form the United Kingdom (UK). Writers from every part of the UK, not just England, deserve credit for the literary outpouring that followed, with Scottish novelist William Alexander (Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk, 1869), Irish novelist Charles Lever (The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, 1839), and Welsh novelist Anne Puddicombe (A Welsh Singer, 1896) all ______

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

For several centuries after the birth of opera in sixteenth-century Florence, Italian remained the default language in which most opera scores were written. ______ opera singers today, such as the soprano Ana María Martínez, encounter a wide range of Italian terms— from giocoso (playfully) to lento (at a slow tempo)—when following many eighteenth-century opera scores.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In a given rock formation, Norian rock from 227 million years ago might directly abut Fortunian rock from 538.8 million years ago. But how could this happen? Time did not actually stand still during the intervening 311.8 million years; ______ this geologic unconformity likely resulted from natural processes removing sedimentary material from the strati graphic record.

 

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• Snow hydrologist Zoe Wellschlager helps maintain automated snow measurement stations.

• They are called SNOTEL sites.

• There are around 90 stations throughout Wyoming.

• One is at Granite Creek.

• The data collected can help researchers make downstream water supply predictions.

 

Which choice most effectively uses information from the given sentences to provide an example of a SNOTEL site?

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

• Ansel Hall is an Ancestral Puebloan dwelling site located in southwestern Colorado.

• The construction of Ansel Hall began around 1050 CE, during the Pueblo II period (900–1150 CE).

• Escalante is an Ancestral Puebloan dwelling site located in southwestern Colorado.

• The construction of Escalante began around 1120 CE, during the Pueblo II period.

• Each site contains remnants of the multistory adobe and stone dwellings built by the Ancestral Puebloan civilization.

• The Ancestral Puebloan civilization (approximately 1200 BCE– 1600 CE) was the forerunner of modern Pueblo tribal nations.

 

The student wants to emphasize a historical similarity between Ansel Hall and Escalante. 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:

• According to researcher Muhammad Rayyan Fazal, "geothermal electric energy...[is] capable of producing more energy per megawatt per year as compared to similar capacity solar and wind power systems."

• Geothermal power plants typically employ dry steam systems, flash steam systems, or binary cycle systems to produce electricity from high-temperature geothermal fluid.

• The Efeler geothermal power plant in Turkey uses a binary cycle system.

• Fazal says that binary cycle systems "pump 100% geothermal fluid back to the injection well, hence offering the least environmental impact with little or no emissions."

 

The student wants to use a quotation from Fazal to explain an advantage of the geothermal system at the Efeler plant. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?