SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

While scholars believe many Mesoamerican cities influenced each other, direct evidence of such influence is difficult to ascertain. However, recent excavations in a sector of Tikal (Guatemala) unearthed a citadel that shows _________Teotihuacán (Mexico) architecture—including a near replica of a famed Teotihuacán temple—providing tangible evidence of outside influence in portions of Tikal.

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

Whether the reign of a French monarch such as Hugh Capet or Henry I was historically consequential or relatively uneventful, its trajectory was shaped by questions of legitimacy and therefore cannot be understood without a corollary understanding of the factors that allowed the monarch to ______ his right to hold the throne.

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

Critics have asserted that fine art and fashion rarely ______ in a world where artists create timeless works for exhibition and designers periodically produce new styles for the public to buy. Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock beadwork artist and designer Jamie Okuma challenges this view: her work can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and purchased through her online boutique.

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

Vancouver is one of many cities that have installed breakwalls or other hardening structures to protect their shorelines against coastal hazards. To assess how birds respond to shoreline hardening and other landscape alterations, Diann Prosser et al. used a tool known as the Index of Waterbird Community Integrity to survey bird communities consisting of sixty-four species, including the wood duck and the mallard, in the Chesapeake Bay on the US East Coast. The researchers concluded that shoreline hardening more negatively affects birds than does land development for uses such as housing.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

According to historian Vicki L. Ruiz, Mexican American women made crucial contributions to the labor movement during World War II. At the time, food processing companies entered into contracts to supply United States armed forces with canned goods. Increased production quotas conferred greater bargaining power on the companies' employees, many of whom were Mexican American women: employees insisted on more favorable benefits, and employers, who were anxious to fulfill the contracts, complied. Thus, labor activism became a platform for Mexican American women to assert their agency.

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

The following text is from Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Jane, the narrator, works as a governess at Thornfield Hall.

I went on with my day's business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Text 1

Africa's Sahara region—once a lush ecosystem—began to dry out about 8,000 years ago. A change in Earth's orbit that affected climate has been posited as a cause of desertification, but archaeologist David Wright also attributes the shift to Neolithic peoples. He cites their adoption of pastoralism as a factor in the region drying out: the pastoralists' livestock depleted vegetation, prompting the events that created the Sahara Desert.

 

Text 2

Research by Chris Brierley et al. challenges the idea that Neolithic peoples contributed to the Sahara's desertification. Using a climate-vegetation model, the team concluded that the end of the region's humid period occurred 500 years earlier than previously assumed. The timing suggests that Neolithic peoples didn't exacerbate aridity in the region but, in fact, may have helped delay environmental changes with practices (e.g., selective grazing) that preserved vegetation.

 

Based on the texts, how would Chris Brierley (Text 2) most likely respond to the discussion in Text 1?

Geographer Adebayo Oluwole Eludoyin and his colleagues surveyed small-scale farmers in three locations in Ondo State, Nigeria—which has mountainous terrain in the north, an urbanized center, and coastal terrain in the south—to learn more about their practices, like the types of crops they mainly cultivated. In some regions, female farmers were found to be especially prominent in the cultivation of specific types of crops and even constituted the majority of farmers who cultivated those crops; for instance, ______.

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

Employing high-performance liquid chromatography—a process that uses pressurized water to separate material into its component molecules—astrochemist Yashiro Oba and colleagues analyzed two samples of the Murchison meteorite that landed in Australia as well as soil from the landing zone of the meteorite to determine the concentrations of various organic molecules. By comparing the relative concentrations of types of molecules known as nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite with those in the soil, the team concluded that there is evidence that the nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite formed in space and are not the result of contamination on Earth.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support the team's conclusion?

While attending school in New York City in the 1980s, Okwui Enwezor encountered few works by African artists in exhibitions, despite New York's reputation as one of the best places to view contemporary art from around the world. According to an arts journalist, later in his career as a renowned curator and art historian, Enwezor sought to remedy this deficiency, not by focusing solely on modern African artists, but by showing how their work fits into the larger context of global modern art and art history.

 

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the journalist's claim?

Carcinization, or the evolution of a crablike body form, has taken place in crustaceans many times over the last 250 million years. Decarcinization has occurred several times as well, even though it involves the loss of traits such as sideways walking that seem to have helped carcinized groups persist in a variety of ecosystems. In a 2021 paper, Joanna Wolfe and team note that many decarcinized groups are extinct and have very few living relatives—signs that decarcinization might be an "evolutionary dead-end." But the team also discusses frog crabs, a living decarcinized group with traits suited to dwelling in sediment; fossils show that the group had decarcinized members as far back as the Early Cretaceous. This example suggests that________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

High-reward flowers that produce nectar with relatively high sugar concentrations are thought to be especially attractive to stripe-throated hermits and other hummingbird species. But when Maria A. Maglianesi and team monitored hummingbird visits to flowering plants, including Palicourea tomentosa, at Los Cusingos Bird Sanctuary and other sites in Costa Rica, they found that visit frequencies weren't influenced by nectar traits. Rather, physical compatibility of flower corollas (collections of petals) and hummingbird bills more strongly predicted hummingbird-plant interaction patterns.

Which statement about hummingbird preferences is most strongly supported by the text?

Because they penetrate the visible surface of a painting, ultraviolet and other nonvisible spectra of light enable the detection of otherwise imperceptible features of the work. Beneath the surface of Claude Monet's Wisteria (1917-20), art historians found that Monet had initially included water lilies but ultimately painted over them. Furthermore, nonvisible spectra can be used for chemical analysis to identify specific pigments and thus, in some cases, reveal forgeries: if, for example, titanium oxide—which wasn't developed until the 20th century—is evident throughout the layers of a painting attributed to an 18th-century artist, that work can only be a forgery.

What does the text most strongly suggest about how analyzing a painting with nonvisible light can inform a judgment about who that painting is attributed to?

The state of Washington has classified the American bullfrog as an invasive species that could harm some of the state's native species. But researchers Alejandro Camacho and Jason McLachlan have pointed out that "invasive" and "native" are labels that describe temporary circumstances. Changes in Earth's climate may force animals from their current ranges. Climate changes may also create good habitats in areas where a species couldn't live previously. These observations suggest that__________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Pollination syndromes are suites of floral traits that have independently evolved as a result of selection pressure exerted by pollinators; ornithophilous (bird-pollinated) flowers, for example, frequently exhibit red, orange, or yellow coloring. In a review of previous studies covering 417 plant species, Victor Rosas-Guerrero et al. concluded that the syndromes reliably predict angiosperms' most effective pollinators. However, in a response paper, Jeff Ollerton et al. note that Rosas-Guerrero et al. may have inadvertently excluded studies published before the term "pollinator effectiveness" came into common use.

What does the text most strongly suggest about the study conducted by Rosas-Guerrero et al.?

At the beginning of her career, Nigerian American author Nnedi Okorafor tried to embrace the term Afrofuturism to describe the speculative worlds she ________ as her career has progressed, she realized that this term did not fully capture what she was doing and coined the term Africanfuturism to describe her work that centers the history and culture of Africa in her world building rather than that of the African American community.

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

As an object-oriented computer programming language, Java is used by coders like Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant to create computer programs by manipulating "objects"(that is, specifically defined variables or combinations of variables) into interacting with each other. Conversely, languages like C, used in software development,__________object oriented.

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

In 2017, a group of researchers at MIT conducted a study of rhythm preferences in music. The study, which focused on college students at MIT or nearby institutions, found that the participants strongly preferred rhythms based on integer ratios, such as 4:4 and 3:4 time signatures. Subsequently, a larger study that included 39 groups of participants across five ________ did not find widespread acceptance of integer ratios, suggesting that rhythm preferences are not universal and are culturally dependent.

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

As the exoplanet 24 Sextantis b orbits a star 235 light-years from Earth, the gas giant's gravity causes the star to wobble. In 2010, astronomers observing the wobble—indicated by redshifts and blueshifts in the star's spectral wavelengths—eventually attributed____________to the gravitational influence of the previously undetected exoplanet.

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

Produced water is a term used to describe a waste byproduct of oil and gas production, and is considered a pollutant. After analyzing a sample of produced water, Dr. Hamidreza Samouei discovered significant levels of valuable minerals. Samouei proposes that more research is needed into "brine ________ the process of extracting and reusing minerals from produced water—and hopes that it can not only reduce the contamination of water tables but also provide raw materials for other industrial applications.

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 wavy staircase and ornate floral tilework of Hospital de Sant Pau, a Modernista hospital designed by Lluis Domènech i Montaner, couldn't exactly grow in a forest.__________one sees natural influences in Domènech i Montaner's penchant for curves (rather than right angles) and plant- and animal-inspired flourishes.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 2009, the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles hosted a special exhibition, Sueños/Yume, showcasing the works of local sculptor Dora de Larios. As suggested by the show's title (sueños and yume mean "dreams" in Spanish and Japanese, respectively), de Larios's art reflects a mix of cultural influences. ______ her work is grounded in the artistic traditions of both Mexico and Japan.

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:

·One of history's greatest libraries was the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, Iraq.

·It was founded in the eighth century with the goal of preserving all the world's knowledge.

·Scholars at the House of Wisdom collected ancient and contemporary texts from Greece, India, and elsewhere and translated them into Arabic.

·Writings included those of the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the Indian mathematician Aryabhata.

·The House of Wisdom used Chinese papermaking technology to create paper versions to be studied and shared.

The student wants to explain how the House of Wisdom preserved the world's knowledge. 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 1971, experimental musician Pauline Oliveros created Sonic Meditations.

·Sonic Meditations is not music but rather a series of sound-based exercises called meditations.

·Each meditation consists of instructions for participants to make, imagine, listen to, or remember sounds.

·The instructions for Meditation V state, "walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears."

·Those for Meditation XVIII state, "listen to a sound until you no longer recognize it."

The student wants to provide an explanation and an example of Oliveros's Sonic Meditations. 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:

·British musicians John Lennon and Paul McCartney shared writing credit for numerous Beatles songs.

·Many Lennon-McCartney songs were actually written by either Lennon or McCartney, not by both.

·The exact authorship of specific parts of many Beatles songs, such as the verse for "In My Life," is disputed.

·Mark Glickman, Jason Brown, and Ryan Song used statistical methods to analyze the musical content of Beatles songs.

·They concluded that there is 18.9% probability that McCartney wrote the verse for "In My Life," stating that the verse is "consistent with Lennon's songwriting style."

The student wants to make a generalization about the kind of study conducted by Glickman, Brown, and Song. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?