SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Companies are providing consumers with more opportunities to purchase customized products than ever before. Whether buying customized sneakers, jewelry, or clothing, consumers can participate in the design of products to meet their specific needs and tastes. In turn, companies profit too: studies have shown that consumers are willing to pay more and wait longer for a customized product. Still, it can be difficult for companies to offer customization while keeping costs low, as the standard methods of mass production may not be able to accommodate making a unique product each time.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Possessing an outstanding collection of public art, Chicago has everything from monumental sculptures like Jean Dubuffet's Monument with Standing Beast at sites like James R. Thompson Center to innovative street art like Justus Roe's mural Alpha Omega located on North Ashland Avenue. The ________ public art on display in the city can thus satisfy any art lover.

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

In a 2018 article about films depicting the experiences of Black Americans, critics for the New York Times praise William Greaves's 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Take One as "a vital artifact of its time" and Gordon Parks's 1969 film The Learning Tree as "richly textured." Fans of the two films hope that such ________ will attract new audiences to these works.

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

Optimal foraging theory (OFT) holds that animals' foraging behaviors reflect cost benefit trade-offs that vary by species and with dynamic ecological circumstances. One such circumstance is lunar intensity, which Joel Brown and colleagues found to be negatively associated with foraging by Arizona pocket mice but Deborah J. Curtis and colleagues found to be positively associated with foraging by mongoose lemurs. This discrepancy is explicable in terms of OFT: the lemurs' greater reliance on vision means that higher lunar intensity benefits them more than it benefits the mice.

Which choice best describes the finding made by Curtis and colleagues, as presented in the text?

The bird species Hypocnemis cantator (the Guianan warbling antbird) shares some territory in French Guiana with Thamnomanes caesius (the cinereous antshrike), which emits a loud alarm call when it detects predators. Biologist Ari Martinez and colleagues recorded T. caesius alarm calls and played them in the vicinity of wild cantator. Finding that the birds often froze in place or scattered into vegetation upon hearing the calls, they concluded that cantator associates T. caesius alarm calls with danger.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Martinez and colleagues' conclusion?

The Hundred Days, first published in 1998, is a novel in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, which includes twenty completed books. Some critics have found fault with the abrupt endings of The Hundred Days and other books in the series, saying that they do not finish conclusively but arbitrarily stop. But other critics argue that the books should not be thought of as discrete texts with traditional beginnings and endings but as a single incredibly long work, similar to other multivolume stories, such as Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

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

Text 1

In separate studies, Stephen Meding and Robert J. Zasoski and Sanâa Wahbi and colleagues examined whether plants transfer nutrients to one another using a common mycorrhizal network (CMN)-a lattice of fungal strands in the soil. Meding and Zasoski excluded all pathways other than the CMN by using barriers to keep the plants' root systems separate while allowing mycorrhizal strands through-a crucial step Wahbi and colleagues' study did not take.

Text 2

Meding and Zasoski 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 Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, Azuela makes a comparison using natural imagery to convey the mental state of the protagonist, Demetrio: ________

Which quotation from a translation of The Underdogs most effectively illustrates the claim?

The linguistic niche hypothesis (LNH) posits that the exotericity of languages (how prevalent non-native speakers are) and grammatical complexity are inversely related, which the LNH ascribes to attrition of complex grammatical rules as more non-native speakers adopt the language but fail to acquire those rules. Focusing on two characteristics that are positive indices of grammatical complexity, fusion (when new phonemes arise from the merger of previously distinct ones) and informativity (languages' capacity for meaningful variation), Olena Shcherbakova and colleagues conducted a quantitative analysis for more than 1,300 languages and claim the outcome is inconsistent with the LNH.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Shcherbakova and colleagues' claim?

The following text is adapted from Indian Boyhood, a 1902 memoir by Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman), a Santee Dakota writer. In the text, Ohiyesa recalls how the women in his tribe harvested maple syrup during his childhood.

Now the women began to test the trees-moving leisurely among them, axe in hand, and striking a single quick blow, to see if the sap would appear. The trees, like people, have their individual characters; some were ready to yield up their life-blood, while others were more reluctant. Now one of the birchen basins was set under each tree, and a hardwood chip driven deep into the cut which the axe had made. From the corners of this chip-at first drop by drop, then more freely-the sap trickled into the little dishes.

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

Mountain summits are often described in terms of their elevation, or height above sea level. But a summit's elevation may not be as good an indication of how high the mountain appears to observers as is the summit's prominence, or its height above its surroundings, and these values can differ significantly. For example, the Indian mountain of ________

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

Prolonged exposure to anthropogenic noise (sounds from human sources like traffic or mining) can affect animals, as Kirsty Elizabeth McLaughlin and Hansjoerg P. Kunc found in a 2015 study of zebra cichlids. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of studies of how such noise affects animals and found that, for every study, relevant traits or behaviors of the animals were observably different between the exposed group and the otherwise similar but unexposed group. Although, on average, studies of fish showed larger differences than studies of birds did, for every class of animals examined, there were individual studies showing differences well above the average for fish. Therefore, the results of the meta-analysis suggest that ________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The term "retroflex" derives from Latin and means "bent back," an apt descriptor for the branch of consonants-retroflex consonants-pronounced with the tongue curling up and back in the mouth. In many languages, including English, these consonants are ________ in some dialects of Mandarin, however, four such consonants ("ch," "sh," "zh," and "r") are relatively common.

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

Psychologist Wang Xiaohua and colleagues developed a computational model to predict individual preferences for different types of music, using a scale from 1 (not at all liked) to 5 (very much liked). They recruited participants to rate several sets of music in various styles and calculated the correlation between the ratings predicted by the model and those reported by the participants. Assuming participant P8 gave equal ratings to both pop music and classical music, the data in the graph suggests that the model predicted that ______.

Which option most effectively uses the data to complete the statement?

Arthurian legends (tales related to the character of King Arthur) derive from many often contradictory sources, such as Annales Cambriae, composed around 970, and Tom a Lincoln from around 1607. Sir Thomas Malory's 15th-century text Le Morte d'Arthur was an attempt to compile these stories into a coherent narrative. Many of Malory's sources derive from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, written in the 1130s. While neither History nor any works that predate it mention Arthur's famous Round Table at which his knights assembled, Le Morte d'Arthur does, suggesting that ________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Though he would go on to work with many respected musicians, including Paul Hanson on his album Frolic in the Land of Plenty, American ________ may be best known for his time with Sugar Hill Records, where he helped craft the sound of early hip-hop music.

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

Stephen Graham Jones's short essay on "hueco," a word referring to a water retaining depression in a rock face, is included in the collection Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book wasn't written solely by ________ other authors, such as Pamela Frierson and Barry Lopez, also contributed essays.

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

Along with carbon dioxide concentration and temperature, light intensity affects the chemical reaction rate of ________ as light intensity increases, so does the rate at which the reactants (water and carbon dioxide) are converted into their products (glucose and oxygen).

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

The fungus Scleroderma citrinum, commonly referred to as common earthball, is known to establish ectomycorrhizal bonds with certain oak tree species; in many cases, such symbiotic relationships, wherein fungal hyphae make contact with the oak's root system, ________ extensive networks, which can be used to transport nutrients between trees.

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

On March 8, 1971, the Apollo 14 crew received a ticker-tape parade in New York City in recognition of their mission to the Moon. Of the 206 ticker-tape parades held between 1886 and 2022, a number were for the US space program. ________ the Apollo 14 parade was just one of 10 honoring astronauts.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 2015, geologist Peter Rogerson recalculated the geographic center of Colorado, which had previously been determined in 1920 by the US Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS, Rogerson contended, had omitted important considerations, not least the curvature of the earth. ________ the state's USGS-determined center-a point 40 miles west of the municipality of Colorado Springs-was inaccurate.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In his painting At the Cycle-Race Track, Jean Metzinger aims to depict a bike race in four-dimensional space. Of course, Metzinger's painting doesn't technically represent a fourth dimension; humans can only see in three dimensions. ________ by depicting the race through multiple, simultaneous perspectives, Metzinger offers a fascinating glimpse at what this other universe might look like.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tracks comparative price list data for its thirty-eight member countries. According to this data, in July 2021, a "basket" of goods and services priced at 100 US dollars (USD) in the United States would have cost 72 USD in fellow OECD member ________ of Standard English?

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions

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

• The Bauhaus was an influential German art and design school founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius.

• Gropius was the school's director from 1919 to 1928.

• Hannes Meyer was its director from 1928 to 1930.

• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was its director from 1930 to 1933.

• Stefan Wolpe was a composer who began attending the Bauhaus in 1923.

• Iwao Yamawaki was a photographer and architect who began attending the Bauhaus in 1930.

The student wants to emphasize the order in which the two students attended the Bauhaus. 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:

• Generally, an object will heat up when twisted.

• The twisting of an object is known as torsion.

• A 2019 study led by Zunfeng Liu and Ray Baughman tested the torsional heating of various fibers.

• When a 1-millimeter-thick sample of dimethicone fiber was twisted, its average surface temperature increased by 21.3℃.

• When a 4 -millimeter-thick sample of styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS) rubber fiber was twisted, its average surface temperature increased by 12℃.

The student wants to contrast the two samples. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?