SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The sloping tile roots and picturesque tapade of Mission San Carlos Bornomeo de Carmelo in Carmel, Californix, are enduring symbols of the Spanish contribution to Californian architecture. Elements of this style have been reproduced throughout the state—the design of Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, for example, is considered to_________the style of the Spanish missions.

 

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

Certain features are almost always included in the designs of mosques, like the minaret (or tower), which is considered to be a__________of mosque architecture. Even mosques that exhibit elements of multiple architectural syles, such as the Shah Jahan Mosque, which incorporates elements trom the Mughal, safavid, and Timurid styles, will also include several of these standard features.

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

In a garden,__________the spread of unwelcome weeds such as mutgrass can be difficult because weeds usually spread easily and quickly become unmanageable, making it hand to remove them completely.

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

Text 1

Uisdean Nicholson and his team have discovered evidence in seismic data of a 40 -kilometer-wide subsurface crater beneath nearly a kilometer of water off the coast of West Africa that is consistent with a 400 -meter-wide asteroid striking the seafloor. This structure, which the team named Nadir, exhibits all the telltale signs of a high-velocity impact crater: an elevated rim, a circular shape, a terraced floor, and a pronounced area of uplift at its center.

Text 2

Both carbonate dissolution and subsurface salt withdrawal can cause craterlike depressions without the need for a high-velocity impact. However, carbonate dissolution is very unlikely to have occurred in the vicinity of Nadir, and although subsurface salt withdrawal could have plausibly occurred in this area and would result in a depression with a terraced floor or a circular shape, it would not exhibit the area of central uplift seen at Nadir.

Which choice best describes a difference between the approach of Text 1 and the approach of Text 2?

Benjamin Prud'homme and colleagues have explored how convergent evolution—a phenomenon that occurs when the same trait evolves independently in two reproductively separate lineages—can result from a genetic mechanism shared by both lineages. Meanwhile, Patricia J. Wittkopp and colleagues have investigated how convergence occurs through different genetic mechanisms, but the relative prevalence of convergence through shared and different genetic processes is still poorly understood. This motivated biologists Delbert A.Green II and Cassandra G. Extavour to evaluate both types of convergence in a single study for their 2012 paper.

 

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

In Ojibwe, an Indigenous language from the Great Lakes region of what are now the United States and Canada, wasa means "far," whereas wa-wasa means "far apart." This phenomenon, in which an element of a root word is repeated, sometimes with modification, within another word that is related to the root word, is called reduplication. In this case, the element "wa." in wasa gets repeated in wa-wasa. There are many examples of this type of reduplication in Ojibwe.

 

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Vancouver has high pedestrian traffic, but other cities cannot increase their pedestrian traffic simply by replicating a single feature of Vancouver—e.g., its high number of pedestrian amenities—that is associated with walkability. As urbanist Mariela Alfonzo argues, many factors influence people's decision-making about whether to walk: some studies have shown the importance of demographic characteristics, others have shown the importance of average commuting distance, and so on, and it is clear that none of these factors in isolation fully explains pedestrian habits in a given city.

 

Based on the text, the author would most likely agree with which statement about Vancouver's "high number of pedestrian amenities"?

Poems is an 1895 collection of poetry by Frances E.W. Harper. In one of Harper's poems, the speaker criticizes activists who champion humanitarian causes in other countries while overlooking local concerns, saying,__________

Which quotation from Poems most effectively illustrates the claim?

Elisabeth Potzelsberger and colleagues gathered data on 23 non-native tree species grown in Europe. They analyzed reports from Great Britain, Switzerland, and Hungary about the number of these species grown in those countries as well as the numbers of insect and fungus species that damage those trees. The researchers concluded that Great Britain had a greater number of damaging fungus species than either of the other countries did.

 

Which choice best describes data from the table that support Potzelsberger and colleagues' conclusion?

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salome. The narrator and her sister, daughters of a famous poet, are being tutored by Alejandro Román.

Our tutor, Alejandro Román, brought his younger brother, Miguel, to class one day. By now I was eighteen and had learned everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad for a new face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he had heard from his brother that the Ureña girls were none other than the daughters of Nicolás Ureña, and they were smart as clockwork. Miguel was hoping not only to meet us but to make the acquaintance of the poet himself at Mama's house.

Based on the text, why does Miguel accompany his brother to the sisters' house one day?

Motivated to sell as many paintings as possible, Alfred Hair, an influential figure among the landscape artists known as the Florida Highwaymen, pioneered "fast painting," which in part involved working across multiple canvasses at once. That many of Hair's acolytes, including Isaac Knight, imitated the technique accounts in part for the impressionistic qualities that are now synonymous with the group's shared aesthetic. But not all Highwaymen fully embraced this approach; for instance, though Willie Reagan was also prolific, his paintings were executed with greater attention to detail.

What does the text most strongly suggest about paintings by Knight?

Many plants have leaves that are larger on one side of their long central axis than the other, a phenomenon known as asymmetrical orientation. University of California, Berkeley biologist Clera Martinez and colleagues examined several species of grapevines and closely related plants, which have leaves that grow in pairs, to see if both leaves in a pair tend to be oriented toward the same side (that is, have more tissue on the same side) or not. They found that opposite-side orientation was much more common than same-side orientation; in the Amur grape, for example, approximately_________

 

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

Northeastern Kansas's Jefferson County is among the most rural counties in the United States: the US Census Bureau classified it as 98.8% rural in 2010. Researchers studying populations of counties like Jefferson often struggle to recruit and retain participants. Melissa Valerio and colleagues tested whether a method called snowball sampling could improve recruitment and retention. Working in two rural counties, the researchers identified a small number of people who had the characteristics desired for a proposed study and asked them to recruit additional participants from their social networks. Valerio and colleagues found that participants recruited via snowball sampling showed a much higher retention rate than did people recruited by strangers, suggesting that____________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Mooseberry (Viburnum edule) plants are native to Alaska, where harsh conditions have historically impeded potential invasive species. As the boreal climate has warmed in recent decades, however, common knotgrass (Polygonum aviculare) plants have established themselves in Alaska. It has been suggested that warming-induced delays in the onset of subfreezing temperatures in autumn can benefit invasives more than native species; to evaluate this possibility, biologists Christa Mulder and Katie Spellman tracked V. edule and P. aviculare, along with other native and invasive species, over several years, concluding that invasives are advantaged by delays in subfreezing temperature onset in Alaska.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Mulder and Spellman's conclusion?

Louisiana resident Oscar James Dunn, one of the nearly two thousand African Americans elected to public office during the decade that followed the Civil War,________his term as lieutenant governor in 1868.

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

Miniature Self-Portrait (1556) is one of dozens of remaining works by Sofonisba Anguissola. Currently, her painting________at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where visitors can view the Italian Renaissance artist's work on display.

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

The human foot contains a variety of skeletal muscles, each playing an important role in the foot's healthy movement. The extensor digitorum brevis, which is attached to the calcaneus,________responsibility for extending the middle toes.

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

After finding information about Blanche Kelso Bruce, who represented Mississippi in the United States Senate, the student discovered biographical sketches of two other Black Americans who served in________Ralph Harold Metcalfe of Illinois and Alton R. Waldon Jr. of New York.

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

The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) known as D-23, located in the United States, was one of the oldest known trees in the world, at 3,075 years old. With over three millennia of climate data in its tree_______single tree like this, claims dendrochronologist Valerie Trouet, can tell the history of the world.

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

John Thomson employed the pseudonym "Gracchus"—the name of an ancient Roman politician—in political essays he wrote in 1795, a choice that accomplished far more than simply concealing his authorship.__________it wasn't an arbitrary pen name but rather a complex rhetorical strategy through which Thomson aligned his political views with the venerated republican ideals of the ancient world, thereby bolstering the authority of his writing.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—where, early on, the author marvels at a single goldfish's delicate fins but later winces when imagining a horde of goldfish laying and eating their own eggs—Dillard struggles to reconcile the complicated juxtapositions of the natural world.__________nature's mesmerizing intricacy and pitiless harshness prove inextricably linked for Dillard, like "two branches of the same creek."

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

·Save Me is a 2018 sculpture by American artist Olivia Steele.

·It is a pink neon sign that spells out the title phrase.

·Neon signs became popular with advertisers in the 1920s and began to decline in popularity in the 1960s.

·Neon signs became popular with artists in the 1960s and continue to be popular today.

·Writer Sarah Archer says, "[Neon signs] must be made by hand because there's no cost-effective way to mass-produce them."

The student wants to connect the sculpture to the history of neon in art. 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:

·Body positions are a fundamental aspect of dance.

·In Vaganova method ballet, there is a position for the dancer's arms called first position.

·In the position, both arms are rounded to roughly align the fingers with the navel.

·In Royal Academy of Dance ballet, there is a position for the dancer's arms called demi-seconde position.

·In this position, both arms are out to the sides but angled downward.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two positions. 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:

·The Galapagos penguin is a species of bird that can be found on the Galapagos Island of Floreana.

·It has an average weight of 2.5 kilograms.

·The grey warbler finch is a species of bird that can be found on the Galapagos Island of Floreana.

·It has an average weight of 9 grams.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the Galapagos penguin and the grey warbler finch. 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:

·The Mohs scale of mineral hardness is a ten-point scale that orders minerals by hardness based on their ability to scratch other minerals.

·Minerals with larger numbers are harder than minerals with smaller numbers and can leave visible scratches on them.

·Minerals with smaller numbers are softer than minerals with larger numbers and cannot leave visible scratches on them.

·The mineral fluorite has a Mohs scale number of 4.

·The mineral orthoclase has a Mohs scale number of 6.

·The mineral corundum has a Mohs scale number of 9.

The student wants to emphasize orthoclase's Mohs scale number. 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:

·Zora Neale Hurston was an acclaimed writer.

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

·It was called "John Redding Goes to Sea."

·It first appeared in Stylus in 1921.

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