SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The Niaux Cave paintings—paintings of animal figures found in what is now France and dating from 11,000-17,000 years ago—are sometimes said to be emotionally powerful despite their age, but in fact the paintings are __________ precisely because of their age. It is the link of shared humanity with the artists across so many centuries that makes the Niaux Cave paintings so meaningful.

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

By eliminating middlemen, direct-to-consumer sales channels allow small farms to capture retail prices rather than accept lower wholesale rates. The pricing advantages that come with adopting this model, combined with the customer loyalty that comes from forging personal connections, can__________ the financial outlook for many small agricultural producers.

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

The following text is adapted from Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Aunt Polly is having dinner with Tom, her mischievous young nephew.

Aunt Polly asked [Tom] questions that were full of guile, and very deep—for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning.

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

Whatever the general attitude toward William Greaves's 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X when they were initially released, both films now tend to be regarded quite__________. In 2018, for example, critics for the New York Times praised the former as "a vital artifact of its time" and the latter as "electrifying."

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

Some psychologists such as Elena Park are conducting projects that are meant to foster intellectual humility (the ability to realize that one is wrong and to publicly admit it) among scientific researchers. This is important: the scientific process is ideally self-correcting as new research either confirms or contradicts prior findings, but that process is slowed when researchers are unwilling to acknowledge that disputed work of theirs might have flaws. If embraced by scientists, intellectual humility therefore has the potential to increase the efficiency of scientific research.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Before refrigeration, food was preserved using salt, smoking, or ice harvested from frozen lakes. The invention of the electric refrigerator changed how some people stored and preserved their food. In some countries, this new technology became more commonly available in homes during the 1920s and 1930s. People in these places were now able to keep food cold and fresh for extended periods. As a result, they were able to shop for certain foods and drinks less frequently.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

The following text is adapted from J. M. Barrie's 1911 novel Peter Pan.

[Children] soon know that they will grow up, and the way Clara knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Vale put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Clara knew that she must grow up.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

The following text is adapted from Rupa Bajwa's 2004 novel The Sari Shop. Ramchand works as an assistant in a shop in Amritsar, India.

Even at ten in the morning, the bazaar was throbbing with activity. The halwai [baker] was already installed in front of the Mishthan Sweet Shop, pressing jalabi batter into squiggly shapes that floated and simmered in the oil in a big iron cauldron. All the shops had opened for the day and, Ramchand noted guiltily, all the shop assistants were already in place, trying to sell things with fixed, attentive smiles on their shiny, bathed faces.

Based on the text, what can most reasonably be inferred about Ramchand?

Humans aren't the only ones who use tools. Other animals also find tools helpful. Boxer crabs use stinging anemones to defend against attack. And despite sometimes being thought of as simple, many birds make clever use of tools as well. Striated herons have been observed using breaderumbs and other lures to attract fish to the water's surface, making it easier for the herons to catch them.

 

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence?

The US Department of Agriculture's Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook is a document that covers a variety of subjects, from the causes of reductions in grapefruit supply to the number of avocados that are imported from abroad. A student studying agricultural economics is consulting a graph in the document that shows the prices for which several types of nuts have been sold by growers in the United States over four growing seasons from 2016 to 2020. The student wishes to know which of four varieties of nuts sold for the lowest price in the 2018/2019 season. According to the graph, the lowest-priced nuts were_________.

 

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

TRAPPIST-1is a planetary system with a central red dwarf star and several Earth-sized exoplanets. Each planet in this system is so close in orbit to the star that the gravitational forces acting between the planet and the star cause the planet's rotational period around its axis and orbital period around the star to be equal. For example, the orbital period of TRAPPIST-1e is ________.

 

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

Boston-based artist Nura is no stranger to crossing borders: born in Eritrea, she lived in Ethiopia and Norway before moving to the United States. Her art, too, straddles multiple boundaries. Drawing on knowledge of everything from East African fabrics to Arabic calligraphy, Nura's kaleidoscopic paintings often combine abstract shapes with anthropomorphic elements, like eyes, mouths, and gestures. Moreover, she seeks to cultivate a practice of "constant evolution" untethered from any prescriptive agenda, so that her art navigates a liminal space between tradition and autobiography, community and itinerancy, and activism and contemplation.

Which statement about Nura's art is most strongly supported by the text?

Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 novel Journey to the End of the Night is regularly described as autobiographical. That characterization is apt—there are many parallels between the experiences of the novel's protagonist, Ferdinand Bardamu, and those of Céline—but it should not be taken to mean that every person or event depicted ind Journey to the End of the Night has a real-life analogue. Much of the novel is pure invention, and readers who neglect this fact and instead focus excessively on correspondences between the novel and Céline's life can thus________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Humans are overwhelmingly right-hand dominant (85-90%) and can thus be said to exhibit strong population-level right handedness (PLRH). Among studies of nonhuman primates, R. A. Chen-Wilson and M. T. Harrigan's 1992 study of captive bonobos purported to show PLRH, while Nora K. Alvarez and Petra Klein's 1996 study of wild gorillas did not. Overall, the studies claiming PLRH in nonhuman primates find much lower incidences of right-handedness than humans exhibit, but it's worth noting that studies of captive primates tend to show significantly greater incidences of right-handedness than studies of wild primates do, therefore raising the possibility that________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

While improvising, a guitarist may add expression without causing dissonance by swapping the bII7 chord for its opposite, the VII6 chord. This concept of harmonic opposites originated in the music theory text A Theory of Harmony (1985) by Ernst Levy. British musician Jacob Collier ______ Levy's concept and, in a 2017 YouTube interview that went viral among music theory enthusiasts, gave it the name "negative harmony."

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

In 1840, Rowland Hill's penny postage system revolutionized mail in Britain, rendering obsolete previous systems in which senders paid variable rates based on distance traveled and recipients often refused delivery to avoid owing postage. Following ________ lead came similar systems implemented by reformers in other nations, such as Wilhelm Naff in Switzerland and josé Clemente Pereira in Brazil.

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

To experience both the multi-instrument groove of contemporary blues music and the stripped-down Delta blues of Houston Stackhouse and other blues forebears _______ the rich history of the genre.

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

In their 2019 study of butterfly diversity at Rupa Lake in Nepal, researcher Bijaya Neupane and his colleagues counted one bluetail jester ______ to the Nymphalidae family, the bluetail jester (Symbrenthia niphanda) is known to be very rare.

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

South Carolina resident Alonzo J. Ransier, sworn in as a member of the US House of Representatives in 1873, was one of the nearly two thousand African ______ during the decade following the Civil War.

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

Meteorologists use various specialized tools to measure atmospheric conditions. ____________ barometers detect changes in air pressure that often signal approaching weather systems, while anemometers measure wind speed and direction.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 1965, Morrie Turner's comic strip Wee Pals became the first serial comic by a Black cartoonist to be syndicated, appearing in papers nationwide. ___________ many other strips by Black cartoonists were syndicated, including Barbara Brandon-Croft's Where I'm Coming From in 1991 and Jerry Craft's Mama's Boyz in 1995.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

The ancient Inca built a massive network of roads connecting all parts of their mountain empire. ____________ messengers could quickly travel to even the most distant villages in just a few days.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

 

·The A.M. Turing Award is a prestigious award given for "major contributions of lasting importance to computing."

·Shafi Goldwasser won the award in 2012 for transformative work that laid the foundations for digital cryptography.

·Maurice Wilkes won the award in 1967 for creating the first computer with an internally stored program.

 

 

The student wants to emphasize the order in which Shafi Goldwasser and Maurice Wilkes won the A.M. Turing Award. 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:

 

·Louis Ballard was a classical composer and citizen of the Quapaw Tribe.

·His compositions synthesize Western classical music with elements of various Native musical traditions.

·Ballard's classical piece The Gods Will Hear features a traditional Zuni melody.

·Ballard's classical piece Cacega Ayuwipi incorporates a Haida gourd rattle, a traditional Native instrument.

 

 

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two classical compositions. 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 Clovis First hypothesis proposes that ancient humans known as Clovis were the first to populate North America.

·The Clovis arrived around 13,000 years ago.

·Charred baskets found at the Meadowcroft site in Pennsylvania date to approximately 14,500 years ago.

·Stone tools found at the Sand Creek site in Texas date to approximately 16,540 years ago.

·These items support the idea that humans were present in North America before the Clovis population arrived.

 

 

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the items found at Meadowcroft and those found at Sand Creek. 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:

 

·Since 1931, the New York Times (NYT) Best Sellers list has been a measure of the most successful books in the US.

· Margot Lee and Tayari Jones are Black authors who have reached the NYT Best Sellers list.

·Hidden Figures is a nonfiction book by Margot Lee.

·It reached the NYT Best Sellers list on January 29, 2017

·An American Marriage is a novel by Tayari Jones

· It reached the NYT Best Sellers list on February 6, 2018.

 

 

Which choice most effectively uses information from the given sentences to emphasize the different years in which the books reached the NYT Best Sellers list?