SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The______of leaf-vein architectures—the branching venation of Pteris cretica, the hierarchical netlike venation of Diospyros mespiliformis, and others—likely resulted from competing selective pressures to maximize fluid transport, photosynthesis, and robustness against herbivory. The associated trade-offs may account for the range of adaptations in different lineages.

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

As a work of scholarship, Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship (2020) is notable for its______. Featuring contributions from Zulema Valdez, Robert W. Fairlie, and others, it explores contemporary issues while also providing context dating all the way back to the sixteenth century on Latino populations and their experiences with business and commerce.

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

The following text is adapted from John Matheus's 1926 short story, "Mr. Bradford Teaches Sunday School." Mr. Bradford is driving through the countryside in Florida.

 

The moss in the towering water oaks had become enlivened with a verdant sheen of silver and hung like festoons of carnival or like funeral decorations for the mourning of the dead. The pine green was resplendent. The bald cypresses spread themselves along the water courses while the willows wept as they always did. Mr. Bradford was conscious of this gorgeous display of nature.

 

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

Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth's research into the debt defaults of Philip II (who ruled an empire including Spain and much of Luxembourg from 1556 to 1598) relates to other work on European early modern state finance, including Reinhardt, Rogoff, and Savastano's research on the history of debts and defaults since 1500. But Drelichman and Voth's unique contribution to the field is their reconstruction of the earliest extant set of annual fiscal records for any sovereign state, demonstrating in turn that Philip's defaults were caused by short-term cash shortages, not long-term unsustainable debts.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

The metal featured in both the structure of the Koka House by Hearth Architects and the hardware in the House in Takamatsu by FujiwaraMuro Architects is representative of a trend in contemporary Japanese interior design to juxtapose sleek, modern accents with traditional organic materials such as cypress. The proent featuring of metal stems from the post-World War II emphasis on technological progress, while more traditional natural materials help preserve longstanding architectural and aesthetic approaches.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

The bird species Corapipo gutturalis (the white-throated manakin) practices a foraging strategy known as sallying (catching insects in flight and returning to a perch to eat them), enabling it to scan for prey and predators simultaneously. Conversely, Philydor pyrrhodes (the cinnamon-rumped foliage-gleaner), with which C. gutturalis shares territory in French Guiana, practices foliage gleaning (picking insects off leaves), substantially limiting the bird's field of vision while foraging. Biologist Ari Martínez and colleagues hypothesized that the greater vulnerability inherent in the latter strategy is reflected in greater sensitivity to predator warning signals from neighboring species.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Martínez and colleagues' hypothesis?

Text 1

In separate studies, Marine Fernandez and colleagues and Xinhua He and colleagues examined whether plants transfer nutrients to one another using a common mycorrhizal network (CMN)—a lattice of fungal strands in the soil. Fernandez and colleagues excluded all pathways other than the CMN by using barriers to keep the plants' root systems separate while allowing mycorrhizal strands through—an essential step He and colleagues' study did not take.

Text 2

Fernandez and colleagues took the necessary precaution of separating the plants' root systems (thereby excluding root-to-root transmission). However, any barrier used must allow the thread-like hyphae of a CMN to pass through, and this permeability would also allow liquids through. Thus, the researchers' experimental design cannot ensure that any nutrient transfer observed can be attributed to a CMN and not to some other pathway.

Based on the texts, the author of Text 1 and the author of Text 2 would most likely agree with which statement?

The following text is Emily Dickinson's circa 1859 poem "Setting Sail."

Exultation is the going

Of an inland soul to sea, —

Past the houses, past the headlands,

Into deep eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains,

Can the sailor understand

The divine intoxication

Of the first league out from land?

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

 

Male orangutans typically disperse from the territory in which they were born when they reach maturity, whereas females typically do not. Beatrice Ehmann and her colleagues hypothesized that this difference in life trajectory should be reflected in the diets of immature orangutans: males should share fewer of their mothers' dietary preferences than females do since those preferences tend to be particular to the food resources available in the local area and may be of relatively low utility beyond it. The researchers calculated the percent of mother orangutans' diets shared with their offspring's diets and the percent of immature orangutans' diets not shared with their mothers' diets.

 

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support Ehmann and colleagues' hypothesis?

While observing birds for a biology class, a group of students noticed an African oystercatcher (Haematopus moquini), a bird of the order Charadriiformes (shorebirds), slowly move away, make loud noises, and feign an injured wing as the group approached the bird's ground nest. Researching this behavior, the students learned that this phenomenon is commonly referred to as "broken-wing display" and is meant to lure predators away from the nesting site and toward a seemingly vulnerable adult bird. Upon learning of other birds that also exhibit the behavior they had observed, the students hypothesized that the phenomenon is exclusive to shorebirds.

 

Which choice best describes data from the table that weaken the students' claim?

Estonia, which, according to international indices, has relatively strong democratic institutions and low intranational income inequality, experienced an inflation rate of 3.43% in 2018, whereas Senegal, which shows the opposite pattern on such indices, had an inflation rate of only 0.46% that year. Such a comparison may seem consistent with the theoretical critique that by diluting control over the economy, democratic institutions inhibit states' ability to counteract inflationary pressures, but when Raj Desai et al. Examined democratic strength, intranational inequality, and inflation in more than 100 countries, they found that democratic strength, if associated with low inequality, restrains inflationary pressures, which would suggest that______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The subscription economy has rapidly expanded to include a wide range of products—from children's toys to video gaming services—in part because consumers appreciate the convenience of automatic payments. But as a study by Liran Einav and team shows, consumers are typically inattentive to automatic payments and remain subscribed to services long after their value has worn off. The study also found that subscribers were much more likely to discontinue a service when they had to make an active renewal decision (for example, when they need to update payment information to remain subscribed) than at other times. The researchers therefore concluded that a regulation requiring all subscribers to complete payments manually would likely_______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Habitat management areas and other types of protected areas (PAs) are established to promote conservation, but because they restrict certain economic activities, it is widely believed that they hinder local economic development. However, a study by Heng Zhu and team investigating five PAs, including South Luangwa National Park (a terrestrial PA in Zambia) and Abrolhos Marine Park (a marine PA in Brazil), estimated the impact of tourism on these regions and concluded that tourism likely results in increased household incomes in local communities. But whereas terrestrial PAs were in remote places with few alternative amenities to attract tourists, marine PAs were close to additional amenities not part of the PA. Thus, the researchers conceded that although ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Maureen Mahon of New York University, along with researchers Alison Martin of Dartmouth College and Tammy Kernodle of Miami University, ______ on the advisory team for the Timeline of African American Music, an interactive digital resource that explores African American musical history from the 1600s to the present day.

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

Located on the Ilmenau River in Germany, the city of Lüneburg was a member of a powerful mercantile alliance that dominated northern European trade between the 13th and 17th _____________ Hanseatic League, a loose confederation of cities from eleven modern-day countries that has been described as a precursor to today's European Union.

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

Some places that were once part of the Spanish Empire, such as Sardinia, reveal few traces of a past connection to Spain, linguistic or otherwise. In contrast, Costa Rica broke free from the Spanish Empire in the nineteenth century yet still bears its imperial history in its language, Spanish ______spoken by most current residents of Costa Rica.

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

Breaking ties with Serbia and Montenegro in 2006 catalyzed a host of infrastructural changes for the newly independent Montenegro, among them a new country dialing code from the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee ______ incoming international telephone calls to reach the country.

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

Now seen as a mechanical precursor to the e-reader, Spanish educator and inventor Ángela Ruiz Robles's Enciclopedia Mecánica eschewed pages in favor of three horizontal paper scrolls that could be easily swapped out to accommodate a range of subjects. Though Ruiz Robles's prototype had limited functionality, interactive features described in her 1949 patent—such as a button labeled "verb" that would illuminate relevant text when pressed— ______an impressive early vision of hypertext.

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

Should the Czech Republic cut taxes? As of 2017, the Czech Republic's top tax rate (46%) was lower than the highest point on the country's Laffer curve. A theoretical relationship between tax rates and revenues, the curve can be used to determine whether tax cuts will ultimately increase a country's tax revenue, according to some ______ 2017 data suggested that the Czech Republic was below the threshold for a tax cut.

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

For her 2010 installation "Dubling," Brazilian artist Elida Tessler extracted every gerund from James Joyce's novel ______capped empty wine bottles and creating 4,311 postcards featuring images of Dublin's River Liffey, she forged a visual connection between the flowing waters so central to Joyce's narrative and the novel's stream-of-consciousness style.

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

Every US state has an associated state soil, which is typically selected by a group of experts, then passed through the state legislature to receive its official designation. For example, Vermont's Tunbridge soil was formally designated in 1985, and Oregon's Jory soil in 2011. ______years pass between a soil's selection and official designation, as the legislative process can be notoriously slow.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Although the Indo-European language of Bislama has only about 10,000 living speakers, most in Vanuatu, the New York City—based Endangered Language Alliance has identified a group of Bislama speakers in the city's borough of Manhattan. ______in the borough's Midtown East neighborhood, these speakers are both helping to ensure Bislama's survival and contributing to the city's unmatched linguistic diversity.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Seismologists Kaiqing Yuan and Barbara Romanowicz have proposed that the magma fueling Iceland's more than 30 active volcano systems emerges from deep within Earth. The great depths involved—nearly 3,000 km—mark Iceland's volcanoes as extreme outliers; ______ many of Earth's volcanoes are fed by shallow pockets of magma found less than 15 km below the surface.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

·Angelino Dulcert was a fourteenth-century Majorcan cartographer of portolan charts.

·Francesco Pizigano was a fourteenth-century Venetian cartographer of portolan charts.

·Portolan charts were early nautical charts that mapped the waterways of the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

·Portolan charts in the Venetian tradition tended to be sparse in illustrations.

·Those in the Majorcan tradition tended to be richly illustrated.

·In Majorcan charts, the Tagus River is depicted as a shepherd's crook, and the Atlas Mountains are depicted as a palm tree.

The student wants to make a distinction between the two portolan traditions. 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:

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

·Artist Zenos Frudakis's twenty-foot-long bronze sculpture Freedom Sculpture is on display along a public sidewalk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

·This work of public art depicts a group of people emerging from the side of a building.

·Artist Louise Bourgeois's thirty-foot-tall metal sculpture Maman is displayed on the grounds of a public art museum in Bilbao, Spain.

·This work of public art depicts a spider standing near a walkway.

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 North America, woodlands have expanded into areas that were once grasslands.

·Thomas Rogers and F. Leland Russell of Wichita State University investigated whether woodland expansion is related to changes in climate.

·Rogers and Russell analyzed core samples from oak trees on a site that was not wooded in the past and indexed the age of the trees with historical climate data to see if tree populations and climate were correlated.

·Tree population growth was associated with dry intervals.

·Droughts may have played a role in woodland expansion.

The student wants to emphasize the aim of the research study. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?