SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Researcher Haesung Jung led a 2020 study showing that individual acts of kindness can ______ prosocial behavior across a larger group. Jung and her team found that bystanders who witness a helpful act become more likely to offer help to someone else, and in doing so, can inspire still others to act.

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

Some foraging models predict that the distance bees travel when foraging will decline as floral density increases, but biologists Shalene Jha and Claire Kremen showed that bees' behavior is inconsistent with this prediction if flowers in dense patches are ______: bees will forage beyond patches of low species richness to acquire multiple resource types. 

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

The following text is from Billie Jean King's 2021 autobiography All In.

 

[P]eople on both sides of my family had repeatedly demonstrated an independent streak. In the end, that was the temperament I gravitated toward, too. Both the Moffitts and the members of my mother's clan, the Jermans, came from mining and oil-geyser towns on the western frontier. They kept their heads down and worked, worked, worked. But they also bucked convention.

 

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

The mimosa tree evolved in East Asia, where the beetle Bruchidius terrenus preys on its seeds. In 1785, mimosa trees were introduced to North America, far from any B. terrenus. But evolutionary links between predators and their prey can persist across centuries and continents. Around 2001, B. terrenus was introduced in southeastern North America near where botanist Shu-Mei Chang and colleagues had been monitoring mimosa trees. Within a year, 93 percent of the trees had been attacked by the beetles. 

 

Which choice best describes the function of the third sentence in the overall structure of the text?

A team investigating frugivorous (fruit-eating) birds found that their feeding patterns vary depending on where they live within their habitat range. At the geographic boundaries of their natural range, these birds become highly selective, choosing fruits that closely match their beak size to maximize energy intake while minimizing effort. However, this fruit-selection strategy doesn't occur at elevation boundaries (the highest and lowest altitudes of their range). In these areas, other factors, such as territorial competition among species, have a stronger influence on feeding patterns.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Text 1

Despite its beautiful prose, The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman's 1962 analysis of the start of World War I, has certain weaknesses as a work of history. It fails to address events in Eastern Europe just before the outbreak of hostilities, thereby giving the impression that Germany was the war's principal instigator. Had Tuchman consulted secondary works available to her by scholars such as Luigi Albertini, she would not have neglected the influence of events in Eastern Europe on Germany's actions.

Text 2

Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August is an engrossing if dated introduction to World War I. Tuchman's analysis of primary documents is laudable, but her main thesis that European powers committed themselves to a catastrophic outcome by refusing to deviate from military plans developed prior to the conflict is implausibly reductive.

Which choice best describes a difference in how the authors of Text 1 and Text 2 view Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August?

New York-based artist Uman is no stranger to crossing borders: born in Somalia, she lived in Kenya and Denmark before moving to the United States. Her art, too, straddles multiple boundaries. Drawing on knowledge of everything from East African fabrics to Arabic calligraphy, Uman's kaleidoscopic paintings often combine abstract shapes with anthropomorphic elements, like eyes, mouths, and gestures. Moreover, she seeks to cultivate a practice of "constant evolution" untethered from any prescriptive agenda, so that her art navigates a liminal space between tradition and autobiography, community and itinerancy, and activism and contemplation.

Which statement about Uman's art is most strongly supported by the text?

Ecologist Veronika Bókony and colleagues investigated within-species competition among common toads (Bufo bufo), a species that secretes various unpleasant-tasting toxins called bufadienolides in response to threats. The researchers tested B. bufo tadpoles' responses to different levels of competition by creating ponds with different tadpole population densities but a fixed amount of food. Based on analysis of the tadpoles after three weeks, the researchers concluded that increased competition drove bufadienolide production at the expense of growth.

 

Which choice uses data from the table to most effectively support the researchers' conclusion?

Swahili is estimated to be the first language of up to 15 million people worldwide. It's also an officially recognized language in Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which means these countries use Swahili in government documents and proceedings. But even in countries where almost everyone speaks Swahili, for many it isn't their first language but is instead their second, third, or even fourth language.

 

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to support the underlined claim?

One challenge when researching whether holding elected office changes a person's behavior is the problem of ensuring that the experiment has an appropriate control group. To reveal the effect of holding office, researchers must compare people who hold elected office with people who do not hold office but who are otherwise similar to the office-holders. Since researchers are unable to control which politicians win elections, they therefore ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Algae living within the tissues of corals play a critical role in keeping corals, and the marine ecosystems they are part of, thriving. Some coral species appear brown in color when healthy due to the algae colonies living in their tissues. In the event of an environmental stressor, the algae can die or be expelled, causing the corals to appear white. To recover the algae, the bleached corals then begin to produce bright colors, which block intense sunlight, encouraging the light sensitive algae to recolonize the corals.

What does the text most strongly suggest about corals that produce bright colors?

Among social animals that care for their young, such as chickens, macaque monkeys, and humans, newborns appear to show an innate attraction to faces and face-like stimuli. Elisabetta Versace and her colleagues used an image of three black dots arranged in the shape of eyes and a nose or mouth to test whether this trait also occurs in Testudo tortoises, which live alone and do not engage in parental care. They found that tortoise hatchlings showed a significant preference for the image, suggesting that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Across brown bears—omnivores with high dietary plasticity—there is wide variety in dietary mix, which may reflect genetics, local resource availability, or social learning (cubs stay with their mothers for two years or more). Evaluating these possibilities, Anne Hertel et al. analyzed 30 years of data on trophic position (indicative of dietary mix) for female brown bears. After separation, daughters, who tended to settle near their mothers, occupied the same trophic positions as their mothers for two years, but the correlation disappeared by year five. Trophic correlation with unrelated individuals in similar habitats was modest, while habitat-independent correlation with nonmaternal relatives (e.g., cousins) was no different than with unrelated individuals. These findings suggest that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Wakening was first released in 2013. This short ______is about a woman attempting to solicit help from an ancient creature, was directed by Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet.

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

On June 30, 1908, a 160-foot-wide space rock hurtling toward Earth exploded in a remote forested area of Siberia. Known as the Tunguska event, after a river that ran through the region, ______ June 30 has been officially denoted International Asteroid Day.

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

Researchers recently theorized that Copper Age (3500 BCE to 2750 BCE) owl-shaped carvings collected from Iberian archaeological sites were likely toys created by children. This hypothesis, based on comparative analyses of owl drawings made by modern children, is supported by the objects predominantly being crafted from slate—a material that, because of its ______be easily carved by small hands using rudimentary tools.

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

In the 1970s, Janaki Ammal, a prominent botanist, emerged as a powerful voice in India's environmental conservation movement. Her exhaustive chromosomal survey of plants in Silent Valley, a pristine tropical forest in Kerala, India, that is home to nearly 1,000 species of native flora (many of which are endangered), ______ instrumental in the government's decision to preserve the forest.

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

In addition to advocating for South America's independence in two political treatises, the Cartagena Manifesto and the Letter from Jamaica, Simón Bolívar personally led armies against the Spanish, liberating three South American territories—New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama), Venezuela, and Quito (present-day ______ from colonial rule.

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

In a 2016 study, Eastern Washington University psychologist Amani El-Alayli found that, among the study participants who experienced frisson (a physiological response akin to goosebumps or getting the chills) while listening to music, there was one personality trait that they scored particularly ______ openness to experience.

 

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

The artistic talents of Barbara Chase-Riboud, most known for her 1979 historical novel Sally Hemings and the conversation it inspired, ______ limited to the realm of prose: she first excelled in sculpture, where her affinity for bronze—a material she described as "timeless" due to its use across eras and cultures—became part of her artistic identity.

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

Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), in which artificial workers overthrow their masters, left an indelible mark on the science fiction genre, and the English language, by introducing the term "robot"(derived from the Czech word robota, meaning "indentured labor" or "drudgery"). ______ Čapek's play also contributed to a venerable literary and mythological tradition: using artificial beings as mirrors and foils for humanity.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Unlike standard Western maps, which privileged static features like coastlines, the Marshallese stick charts used by Pacific Islands navigators for centuries depicted fluctuating ocean dynamics, such as ocean swells, through intricate lattice-like constructions of wood, fibers, and shells. ______these stick charts were memorized prior to a voyage rather than consulted at sea.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

When one looks at the dark craggy vistas in Hitoshi Fugo's evocative photo series, one's mind might wander off to the cratered surfaces of faraway planets.__________it's the series' title, Flying Frying Pan, that brings one back to Earth, reminding the viewer that each photo is actually a close-up view of a familiar household object: a frying pan.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

·Artistic works made readily accessible to the general public are categorized as public art.

·Artist Marco Cianfanelli's metal sculpture Release is on display at a public memorial in Howick, South Africa.

·This work of public art depicts the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.

·Artist Claes Oldenburg's forty-five-foot-tall steel sculpture Clothespin is on display in a public square in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

·This work of public art depicts a giant clothespin standing on its end.

The student wants to contrast the two sculptures. 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 music theory, the term "key" refers to the set of musical notes that forms the foundation of a piece of music.

·In Ideas Toward an Aesthetic of Music (1806), German poet and composer Christian Schubart describes the mood of various musical keys.

·He describes the key of C minor as expressing "longing."

·"Don't Speak" (1996) by No Doubt is a song written in C minor.

The student wants to explain how Schubart describes C minor. 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:

·Mary Gaitskill is an acclaimed writer.

·Her first published work of fiction was a short story.

·It was called "Something Better Than This."

·It first appeared in Branching Out in 1978.

The student wants to identify the title of Mary Gaitskill's first published short story. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?