SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

British painter Peter Edwards has a __ painting portraits of notable figures from a variety of different fields. These characteristic works include his esteemed portraits of writer Maud Sulter and soccer player Bobby Charlton.

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

Though it does not guarantee a book's commercial success,___can play a big role in that success---a well-executed marketing campaign helped to make Richard Bachman's novel The Regulators the fifth-best-selling novel of 1996

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

A unique dialect, or regional variety, of Spanish is spoken in Puerto Rico. It contains many words borrowed from the language of the Tainos, the Indigenous people of Puerto Rico. African languages also made important contributions to the Puerto Rican dialect. For example, the way certain vowel sounds are pronounced in it can be _____ to how they are pronounced in Yoruba, a West African language.

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

Though most hoaxes perpetrated as jokes by mischievous users of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that almost anyone can freely edit, have quickly been detected and removed, a few fictitious entries, such as those for the town of Stone Ridge, Maryland, and the 18th-centuryforestry magnate Guillermo Garcia, persisted on the site for many years before they were finally recognized as ___ and deleted.

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

Humans aren't the only ones who use tools. Other animals also find tools helpful. Octopuses use two halves of a seashell to provide protection or a place to hide. And despite sometimes being thought of as simple, many birds make clever use of tools as well. Striated herons have been observed using breadcrumbs 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?

President Richard Nixon is most famous for his participation in the 1970s Watergate political scandal, a convoluted tale of criminality and eroded ethics involving a constellation of associates such as Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and Republican Party official Robert Mardian. But Nixon's legacy is complex: he has been praised for his role in opening relations between the United States and China, and he once made an attempt at reforming United States health care policy that is arguably a precursor to the Affordable Care Act, which became law during the Barack Obama administration.

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

Text 1
Attempts to automate classification of music into genres have not been very successful. It is also unclear whether categorizing music by genre is useful, since genre categories are ambiguous, subjective, and simplistic. As Jin Ha Lee and Anh Thu Nguyen argue in their study of the South Korean band BTS, relationships between pieces of music may be best understood with concepts other than genre.
Text 2
Forro is a genre of music originally from Brazil that shares some harmonic and rhythmic similarities with the bolero genre. Automated genre classification systems typically struggle to draw distinctions in situations like this, but Yandre Costa and colleagues solved that problem by converting sound to images and having computers compare features of those images. Their approach could improve genre classification, which could have many benefits for users.

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 1 most likely respond to the claim about the potential benefits of Costa and colleagues' research in Text 2?

Archaeologists have discovered a runestone in Norway that may contain the earliest example of written words in Scandinavia. Carbon dating at the discovery site revealed that the stone was likely carved between 1 and 250 CE. Runologist Kristel Zilmer believes the stone will be helpful in learning more about the use of runic alphabets in early Iron Age Scandinavia.

Which choice best states the main topic of the text?

Members of the Girl Scouts of America, by Age Category, 1992-1995 (in thousands)

The Girl Scouts of America is a youth organization that had just over 1 million members in 2021. A student is writing an essay on the history of the organization and wishes to determine the number of members from 14 to 17 years old who were in the Girl Scouts in 1995.According to the table, the number (in thousands) is `_`

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

Life Among the Paiutes is an 1882 autobiographical narrative by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. In the work, Winnemucca creates suspense by emphasizing her physical response to an event, writing           

Which quotation from Life Among the Paiutes most effectively illustrates the claim?

A student is writing an essay on the subject of cultured meat, which is grown in a laboratory and is intended to help reduce the number of livestock harvested for food. The student wishes to make the case that people have mixed feelings about cultured meat that may be a barrier to its worldwide adoption.

Which quotation from a publication by a researcher would most effectively support the student's claim?

Evan MacLean and colleagues evaluated behavioral and genetic data from over 14,000 dogs, representing more than 100 breeds, and found that certain similarities in behavior between breeds correspond to genetic similarities between those breeds, suggesting a genetic basis for breed differences in behavior. This was the case for both dog rivalry and energy but was especially pronounced for chasing, which can be seen when a dog pursues small animals like birds or squirrels. A different study found that the French bulldog and the bull mastiff breeds exhibit similar chasing behavior suggesting that            

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Buried collections of Bronze Age metal items (called hoards) have been found all over Britain. For hoards discovered since the 1960s, such as the 1965 discovery of the Walderslade hoard, advancements like inexpensive metal detectors, ground-penetrating radar, and aerial surveys have made it much easier for searchers to locate hoards before putting the first shovel in the ground.Hoards found before the 1960s, however, such as the discovery of the Auchnacree hoard around 1921, were not aided by such technologies and thus were much more likely to _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The state of Wisconsin has classified the walnut twig beetle as an invasive species that could harm some of the state's native species. But researchers Alejandro Camacho and Jason McLachlan have pointed out that "invasive" and "native" are labels that describe temporary circumstances. Changes in Earth's climate may force animals from their current ranges. Climate changes may also create good habitats in areas where a species couldn't live previously. In the case of Wisconsin, these observations suggest that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

In May of 1986, the Philippines liberalized its stock market, meaning that it began allowing foreign individuals and businesses to invest money in Filipino companies. This was part of a wave of stock market liberalizations around the world---Malaysia in 1987, Morocco in 1988, and so on. The standard view among economists at the time was that liberalization would make it easier for companies to raise money from investors. Economist Peter Blair Henry examined the economies of 11 countries that were part of the liberalization wave and found that, on average, companies based in those countries received significant increases in investment in the three years following liberalization, suggesting that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Bounce and Tubarao are the unofficial names of two small yet notable rocks found on Mars by the Opportunity rover. After touching down on January 25, 2004, the rover spent over fourteen years __      data while on the red planet.

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

Pomo artist Susan Billy creates elaborate baskets. She typically           them from willow and sedge.

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

The algaita is a double reed wind instrument from West Africa. The reed of a wind instrument is the mouthpiece ___ A double reed contains two pieces of cane that vibrate and produce sound as air passes between them.

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

From 2009 to 2019, travelers flew out of major urban airports with increasing ____ Washington Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, saw a 6.9 percent increase in airline passengers, from 11,122,438 total passengers in 2009 to 11,892,778 in 2019.

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

In a 2023 study, researchers documented a fascinating behavior in the aquatic plant Elodea densa. When exposed to low levels of light, the plant's___ the cellular organs that generate energy from light---reshuffled to form a tightly packed, glass-like surface ideal for collecting more light.

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

Textile artist Amber Joy Greenidge-Sabral wanted to avoid using harsh synthetic dyes that could be damaging to the environment. _____ she began experimenting with more environmentally friendly natural dye methods, using organic materials like prairie parsley and weld herb for their natural red and yellow colors.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Within a given ecosystem, energy tends to transfer across what ecologists, such as Michelle Evans-White, call trophic levels. _____ primary producers, like plants, at the first trophic level provide energy (i.e., food) for herbivores, like deer, at the second level; those at the second level provide energy for carnivores and omnivores, like coyotes, at the third; and so on, up the food chain.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Residents of Brasilia, Brazil, rely on its rapid transit system, the Brasilia Metro, for millions of trips each year. ___ city officials strive to maintain the system's 25 stations to ensure each of these journeys is as smooth as possible.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
The Great Salt Lake is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water.
The lake is located in Utah.
The northern portion of the lake has a higher concentration of salt than the southern portion.
Crustaceans called Artemia franciscana live in the southern portion. Bacteria called Nodularia live in the southern portion.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between Artemia franciscana and Nodularia. 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 international Slow Food movement was founded in 1989 with the signing of the "Slow Food Manifesto." The movement promotes universal access to healthy, high-quality food. It calls for sustainable food production practices that protect local environments, ecosystems, and biodiversity. It advocates for fair treatment of and compensation for food production workers. The Slow Food USA organization was founded in 2000.

The student wants to introduce the Slow Food movement to a new audience. 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 poem "7 haiku (for St. Augustine)" is by African American writer Sonia Sanchez.

It was published in her 2010 poetry book entitled Morning Haiku.

The poem is written as a sequence of seven haiku.

According to the book's publisher, Penguin Random House (PRH), the book "celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures."

According to Sanchez, she chose to write in the form of haiku because it helps "maintain memory and dignity."

The student wants to describe the format of "7 haiku (for St. Augustine)." Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?