SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The genus and species names that scientists assign to organisms sometimes involve __________ allusions, even for organisms with seemingly mundane traits. One recently discovered crustacean, Gnathia jimmybuffetti, was named to commemorate Jimmy Buffett, a vibrant musician who himself had an offbeat sense of humor; for its part, G. jimmybuffetti is a tiny parasite that feeds on the blood of fish.

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

The idea that the schematic figures of medieval art represent a haphazard "loss" of realistic techniques in anatomic modeling and representation of perspective has been __________ by art historians who specialize in the Middle Ages. Such figures, these specialists argue, achieve new expressive and decorative potential through intentional departures from realism.

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

In his 1981 tract From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe argued that a spirit of__________ had overwhelmed architecture in the United States: where the 1800s and the early 1900s accommodated an array of styles, the mid 1900s were increasingly dominated by predictable "glass boxes," in Wolfe's view.

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

The following text is adapted from Herman Melville's 1846 novel Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Here, the speaker is a low-ranking crew member on a ship in the Pacific Ocean.

 

Having fully resolved to leave the vessel clandestinely, and having acquired all the knowledge concerning the bay that I could obtain under the circumstances in which I was placed, I now deliberately turned over in my mind every plan to escape that suggested itself, being determined to act with all possible prudence in an attempt where failure would be attended with so many disagreeable consequences. The idea of being taken and brought back ignominiously to the ship was so inexpressibly repulsive to me, that I was determined by no hasty and imprudent measures to render such an event probable.

 

Which choice best states the purpose of the text?

The following text is from George Eliot's 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss. The narrator is describing the fictional town of St. Ogg's, located in a part of Great Britain that was occupied by Romans and subsequently by Vikings in the ancient past.

 

It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.

 

Which choice best captures St. Ogg's as it is presented by the narrator in the text?

Text 1

The term "Sun Belt" describes a considerable portion of the contiguous US, namely a southern grouping of states and regions that have shifted from agricultural production to increasingly knowledge- and services-based industries. One impediment to the otherwise breathtaking twentieth into twenty-first century growth of the Sun Belt was the dearth of industrial production, which resulted in an absence of existing large buildings (i. e., former factories,warehouses, and apartment blocks) that could be repurposed into office space, as frequently happened in northern states.

 

Text 2

Deficiencies in available buildings susceptible to repurposing have, at best, posed only a minor obstacle to the economic growth of the Sun Belt. In fact, rather than inhibiting the formation of companies or the migration of "knowledge workers" to Sun Belt states, the relative scarcity of such structures has fueled a combination of new construction to meet the most exigent of company real estate needs and business models based on flexibility rather than centralization on corporate hubs.

 

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 1 respond to the comments about "knowledge workers" (Text 2) in the Sun Belt?

Researchers Luis Gomez-Nava, Richard Bon, and Fernando Peruani have determined that flocks of sheep rely on leadership of a dynamic, decentralized sort. No one sheep will remain in a leadership position for long, since the alternation of "leader" and "follower" roles among individual animals allows sheep to achieve (in the researchers' terms) a "collective intelligence" of a radical sort. Mouflons, the still-living ancestors of today's domesticated sheep, exhibit similar collective patterns with important variations. Yet for both sheep and mouflons, seemingly inchoate hierarchies appear to ensure the survival of relatively large flocks.

 

Which finding, if true, would best support the underlined claim?

Paleontologists have arrived at estimates of the maximum running speeds attained by various carnivorous dinosaurs. The modeling used to attain these speeds has resulted in high and low estimates, though one student in a university seminar observes that the models establish the maximum speeds within relatively small ranges for some species.

 

Which choice best describes statistics from the graph that support the student's observation?

Now regarded as classics, jazz recordings by musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane drew upon the talents of soloists—including the talent of creating long, improvised sequences that could dominate an entire titled track. Surveying this information, one music critic argues that a jazz solo, rather than merely being understood as an interlude, can constitute more of a given track than any other movement within the music.

 

Which choice most effectively uses information from the table to support the music critic's argument?

Over the past hundred years or so, books on leadership have constituted a popular subgenre of advice books generally. Several of these, including titles by authors Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, and Robert Greene, have become runaway bestsellers, though the current prominence of titles by these authors does not rule out the possibility that other books exerted a more profound influence on the genre. In fact, Machiavelli's The Prince could possess an influence vastly exceeding that of any title produced by any of these later authors.

 

Which choice most effectively uses information from the table to support the underlined statement?

A student is writing an essay about how writers of the late 1700s responded to the French Revolution and wants to include two pieces of textual evidence that show closely aligned attitudes toward the revolution. The student has selected the following quotation, adapted from Helen Maria Williams's 1791 poem "A Farewell, for Two Years, to England":________.

 

In new-born majesty [France] seems to rise,

While sudden from the land oppression flies.

So, at the solemn hour of Nature's birth,

When brooding darkness veil'd the beauteous earth,

Heaven's awful mandate pierc'd the solid night,

"Let there be light,"it said, "and there was light!"

 

Which quotation from another prominent writer of the same period would be most effective for the student to include along with the quotation from Williams's poem?

Deemed antagonistic to thoughtful aesthetics by some critics, though seen by other commentators as opening new creative possibilities, artificial intelligence (AI) could, indeed, shape artistic responses in yet another manner entirely. For Turkish-Hawaiian artist Serife Wong, AI can be used in artistic creation in a manner that is self-aware and satirical, as evinced by her project "Al Life Coach,"which Wong describes as "designed to challenge mainstream narratives" about AI and its applicability to current societal problems.

Which fact, if true, would best support Wong's description of the "AI Life Coach" project?

Around 1000 BCE, architects within the Persian Empire devised infrastructure capable of carrying and cooling considerable quantities of water without necessitating daily intervention on the part of builders or workers. These structures—the ancient qanats—transported water from underground aquifers to settlements that, sometimes, were kilometers away from the water's source, operating entirely through the force of gravity to regulate water flow. Qanats survive today, continuing to fulfill aspects of their original design; this fact is indicated by the work of supervisory groups known as qanat councils, which __________.

Which choice mostlogically completes the text?

Prior to the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776), economics existed not as a coherent academic discipline but as a loose body of thought about production, finance, trade, and relevant issues in social ethics. Those who studied economics consulted a miscellany of texts, including Aristotle's Politics (circa 350 BCE) and Thomas Mun's England's Treasure by Foreign Trade (1664). In the early 1800s, however, economics began to mature into a field that considered the influence of population growth on the provision of natural resources and the extent to which sociopolitical forces determine prices and wages. This progression is suggestive of __________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Materials that are themselves organic _______ in next-generation solar panels to facilitate both plant growth and efficient energy production, as scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles have discovered. Researchers have constructed a greenhouse with a roof formed partially of transparent organic solar cells that convert some sunlight to solar energy while allowing a portion of the sun's rays to pass through and nurture the plants below.

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

An interdisciplinary field of criticism pioneered in the 1950s, _______ often through analysis of sources—graphic novels, political posters, and television dramas among them—neglected in traditional coursework.

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

Infrequently performed, perhaps in part due to the simultaneously elaborate and haphazard nature of its plot, _______ the serene song "Fear No More the Heat of the Sun," which introduces a calm, contemplative moment in an often confusing drama.

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

Many sectors of the economy consist of multiple companies that compete to provide roughly similar services. Semiconductor manufacturing is _______ in some cases, a single firm produces virtually all of a single equipment type and could not be replaced by another firm, as is true of ASML, a Netherlands-based company that produces almost all of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines in the world.

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

During the Meiji Restoration—a period of both return to tradition and rapid societal change—Japanese painter Uemura Shōen composed scenes that accord a new prominence to realistic female figures while revisiting time-honored techniques in sourcing paints and pigments. _____ her works embody contrasts evident within the Restoration generally.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

René Treviño's collage series Sunspots by Day, Asteroids by Night (2023) draws upon star charts devised by C.H.F. Peters, an astronomer active in the 1700s. _____ the collages also allude to significantly older sources—the astronomical diagrams of the Mayans and the Aztecs, whose civilizations came to an end in the 1500s.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Dominican-American author Elizabeth Acevedo has famously fused narrative and poetic forms—the coming of age novel, prose poetry, and spoken word poetry among them. Other of her influences, though somewhat less evident to the casual reader, have been cited as guiding forces in her writing. _______ commentators note that the bolero, a traditional fast-paced dance prevalent in the Caribbean, exerts a subtle yet guiding force on some of Acevedo's poetic rhythms.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Long thought to be sessile (immobile), adult Chthamalus fissusdarum, barnacles that adhere to sea turtle shells, have been observed to shift slightly in position over time-a phenomenon that has been attributed to the barnacles' passive displacement by water currents. __________a research team found that adult C. fissusdarum moved toward the heads of their sea turtle hosts and thus against the prevailing water flow, behavior consistent with self-initiated locomotion.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

 

·Primates native to forested areas in western Africa, mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) are notable for the expanses of vibrantly colored skin on the faces of male mandrills.

·A male mandrill often has vibrant pink or red nostrils and skin of the same color on the top of its snout.

·Skin on each side of a male mandrill's snout is often bright blue in color.

·Bettina Sallé, Marie J. E. Charpentier, and colleagues published research (2011) into the way that these colors signal dominance among mandrill groups.

·According to the researchers, strong red and blue hues work together to form a "multicomponent signal" that conveys dominant status more efficiently than isolated colors would.

 

The student wants to explain the concept of a "multicomponent signal" using an example. 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:

 

·Prominent twentieth-century thinkers developed theories of laughter.

·Psychologist Sigmund Freud published the book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious in 1905.

·Freud theorized that jokes help people to express deep-seated emotions in a socially enjoyable manner.

·Social critic Mikhail Bakhtin published the book Rabelais and His World in 1965.

·Bakhtin theorized that laughter draws people together while challenging existing social norms, a process exemplified by the satires of Renaissance writer Francois Rabelais.

 

The student wants to make a generalization about Freud's and Bakhtin's ideas. 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:

 

·Kota Kitano, Atsuhito Yamagishi, and colleagues wanted to examine the extent to which prairie voles (small North American rodents) exhibit empathy.

·The researchers placed multiple voles in nearby transparent compartments.

·One vole (the "helper vole") was meant to open the door to assist the other vole.

·The "helper voles" often assisted the other voles, both when these other voles were soaked in water and when these other voles did not face any apparent problems.

·Introducing "helper voles" with an inhibited or "knocked out" oxytocin receptor gene caused a decrease in these empathetic responses.

 

The student wants to provide an overview of the study's findings. 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:

 

·Kagome is a traditional Japanese pattern that consists of perfectly interlocking small triangles and large hexagons.

·Basket weavers can use this pattern when working with strips of wood or bamboo, though the hexagons create considerable openings.

·Inspired by kagome, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a crystalline structure of iron and tin atoms.

·The kagome structure accounts for the anomalous behavior of the crystal, which deflects electric charges rather than acting as a typical metal conductor.

·Researcher Linda Ye notes that the "big empty spaces" of the crystalline structure could be filled with another "type of atom" to change the structure's behavior.

 

The student wants to explain how the structure of the kagome crystal accounts for a specific behavior. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?