SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The following text is adapted from Yone Noguchi's 1914 memoir The Story of Yone Noguchi. Noguchi is returning home after eleven years abroad. I reached Tsushima, my native town, at evening. I frightened my old father at the station, who was actually trying to find me among some other people. There is no wonder that he could not recognise me; I must have changed a great deal.

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

Though few critics consider Vasily Grossman's novel Stalingrad-which focuses on the experience of the Soviet Union in the early years of World War II-to be as well written as his later book Everything Flows, some compliment it despite the damage ________ Soviet censors: Gary Saul Morson in The New York Review of Books called the novel "remarkably bold."

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

Drivers who strongly believe that the toll they must pay to use the San Luis PassVacek Toll Bridge, which spans the San Luis Pass in Texas, is currently too high are likely to be ________ arguments for increasing the toll. Advocates for a higher toll are likely to have more success if they instead direct their arguments toward a more persuadable segment of the population.

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

The following text is from Armando Palacio Valdes's short story "The Love of Clotllde," originally published in Spanish in 1884. In the story, Don Jeronimo is a financial supporter of artists in the theater.

Any youth from the provinces who arrived in Madrid with a drama in his pocket could take no surer road to seeing it produced than that which led to the home of Don Jeronimo. One and all, he received them with open arms, the good and the bad alike. There is no denying that, since he was rather brusque in his ways, he never spared the young authors who asked his advice and read him their productions, but criticized vigorously, even to the verge of insult.

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

In the early days of television in the 1940s, many people thought that US television programs would rely on the financial support of ad agencies and commercial sponsors, much like radio did. But advertisers hesitated to jump into a new space, particularly at a time when the manufacturing of new television sets was stalled due to the US's involvement in World War.II. Broadcasters, like the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), needed to persuade advertisers to support their programming despite not knowing whether there would be a robust television audience to begin with.

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

Mexican textile artist Victoria Villasana weaves stories of triumph, using her unique method of applying colorful yarn to photographs of people. In some works, villasana focuses on celebrating cultural icons who are people of color, as she does in her depiction of musician and composer Miles Davis. However, in other works, Villasana honors ordinary people, as she does in her captivating portrayal of a young girl sitting on a sidewalk. Villasana sees both of these approaches as ways of depicting the power and interconnectedness of all people.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Dubautia raillardioides is a species in a family of plants known collectively as the silvensword alliance, all of which grow only on the Hawaiian Islands. Members of this alliance exhibit an extraordinary range of phenotypes, with some species maturing into vines and others into shrubs and trees. All species in the alliance descended from a single ancestral tarweed plant that arrived on the islands around 5 million years ago. The tarveed's descendants diversified into distinct species as they adapted to live in the wide variety of habitats found on the Hawailan Islands.

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

A study of commercial airline routes that carried the greatest number of passengers in 2017 and 2018 shows that, in general, domestic routes (routes within a single country) carried many more passengers than international routes. However, a few international routes were so popular that they carried more travelers than some of the most highly traveled domestic routes, as can be seen when comparing the ________ 

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

Community science involves professional scientists collaborating with members of the public to study a topic. This approach to research can promote community engagement by offering insight into the daily life of a scientist. It's also very effective because it greatly increases the amount of data that can be collected, such as when biologist Abbigail Merrill and colleagues studied butterfly wing patterns and their relation to behavior and used findings reported by hundreds of students and community members in
northwestern Arkansas.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Among the most visited art museums in the world, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney had approximately one million visitors in 2019. The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia also offers virtual tours that art lovers can view online for free. Although there were initial concerns that people who viewed the virtual tours would then consider an in-person visit unnecessary, museum administrators claim that their surveys of in-person visitors show that those concerns were unjustified.

Which statement, if true, would most directly support the administrators' claim?

Biologists Christina Zdenek, Chris Hay, and their team exposed various snakes to airborne sound and recorded whether they moved toward or away from the sound. The table shows the results for three of the snakes observed in the study. Based on the table, a student concludes that Glory and Lumpy behaved similarly in the sound trials.

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

The musical Hadestown was produced off-Broadway in New York in 2016.A revised version of the musical premiered on Broadway in 2019, in a larger production. In a review of the Broadway production, theater critic Jesse Green enthusiastically praised the musical's storytelling. However, Green also explained that he had seen the earlier version of Hadestown in 2016 and had found the storytelling to be very confusing. This suggests that in Green's view, _____________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught customers rhetorical techniques to use in public speaking, along with providing instruction in other subjects. In the play, Aristophanes satirizes sophists as teaching people to speak dishonestly, as seen when the character ________
Which choice most effectively uses a quotation from a translation of The Clouds to illustrate the claim?

A team of biologists led by Jae-Hoon Jung, Antonio D. Barbosa, and Stephanie Hutin investigated the mechanism that allows Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) plants to accelerate flowering at high temperatures. They replaced the protein ELF3 in the plants with a similar protein found in another species (stiff brome) that, unlike A. thaliana, displays no acceleration in flowering with increased temperature. A comparison of unmodified A. thaliana plants with the altered plants showed no difference in flowering at 22°Celsius, but at 27°Celsius, the unmodified plants exhibited accelerated flowering while the altered ones did not, which suggests that _______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Biochemists I. Sam Saguy and Eli J. Pinthus studied the mass and heat transfer processes that occur when foods, such as the Indian snacks banana chips and shankarpali, are fried in oil. During frying, water in the crust evaporates, leaving voids that oil can fill, thereby increasing the food's fat content. As the process continues, water from the food's center moves to the crust as long as the crust remains permeable. Therefore, the less moisture a food loses during frying, ________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

If some artifacts recovered from excavations of the settlement of Kuulo Kataa, in modern Ghana, date from the thirteenth century CE, that may lend credence to claims that the settlement was founded before or around that time. There is other evidence, however, strongly supporting a fourteenth century CE founding date for Kuulo Kataa. If both the artifact dates and the fourteenth century CE founding date are correct, that would imply that _______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A member of the Cherokee Nation, Mary Golda Ross is renowned for her contributions to NASA's Planetary Flight Handbook, which _______ detailed mathematical guidance for missions to Mars and Venus.

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

Given that stars and planets initially form from the same gas and dust in space, some astronomers have posited that host stars (such as the Sun) and their planets (such as those in our solar system) are composed of the same materials, with the planets containing equal or smaller quantities of the materials that make up the host star. This idea is also supported by evidence that rocky planets in our solar system are composed of some of the same materials as the Sun.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the astronomers' claim?

Working with equipment designed for a billionths of a meter scale, _________

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

Most conifers (trees belonging to the phylum Coniferophyta) are evergreen. That is, they keep their green leaves or needles year-round. However, not all conifer species are evergreen. Larch trees, _______ lose their needles every fall.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Astronomers are confident that the star Betelgeuse will eventually consume all the helium in its core and explode in a supernova. They are much less confident, however, about when this will happen, since that depends on internal characteristics of Betelgeuse that are largely unknown. Astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance and colleagues recently investigated whether acoustic waves in the star could be used to determine internal stellar states but concluded that this method could not sufficiently reveal Betelgeuse's internal characteristics to allow its evolutionary state to be firmly fixed.

Which choice best describes the function of the second sentence in the overall structure of the text?

Bengali author Toru Dutt's A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), a volume of English translations of French poems, _______ scholars' understanding of the transnational and multilingual contexts in which Dutt lived and worked.

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

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

• The Chacoan peccary is a mammal species.

• It was believed to be extinct until a living Chacoan peccary was identified in Argentina in 1974.

• The jellyfish tree is a tree species.

• It was believed to he extinct until a living jellyfish tree was identified in the Seychelles in 1978.

• They are considered Lazarus species.

• "Lazarus species" is a term for living species of organisms that were once believed to be extinct.

The student wants to specify when the Chacoan peccary was identified. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

• Researchers in a 2021 study wanted to determine the rate at which 17
  languages conveyed both information and syllables.

• They calculated the bits of information conveyed per second (the IR
  or information rate).

• The IR was found to be approximately consistent across the 17
  languages (an average of 39 bits per second).

• They calculated the number of syllables spoken per second (the SR,
  or syllable rate).

• Spanish had the second-fastest SR (7.7 syllables per second).

• Vietnamese had the sixteenth fastest SR ( 5.3 syllables per second),

The student wants to present 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:

· Dinosaur fossil specimens can be found at science museums all over the world.

· A dinosaur fossil specimen nicknamed Stan is housed at the Black Hills Institute in Hill City, South Dakota.

· Stan, a Tyrannosauras, lived in the Late Cretaceous period.

· A dinosaur fossil specimen nicknamed Cliff is housed at the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts.

· Cliff, a Triceratops, lived in the Late Cretaceous period.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two dinosaur fossil specimens. 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:

• Grimanesa Amoros is a Peruvian American artist well known for her LED Light sculptures.

• Her sculprure Uros House is made of smooth multicolored LED domes.

• It occupies 250 cubic feet of space.

• Her sculpture Ocupante is made of entangled blue and white LED tubes.

• It occupies 80,000 cubic feet of space.

• 26 Mark for Review

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between Uros House and Ocupante. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?