9/11- Question was based on graph

Question: According to the graph, under which set of conditions was team performance the strongest?

Answer: [D] High humor patterns, low job insecurity

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The graph shows that under the conditions of high humor
patterns and low job insecurity, the tram performance score is 4. This is the highest team performance
score plotted on the graph.

9/13- Ghosts, haunted houses, ancestral curses—these common tropes of Gothic literature might lead
some readers to dismiss the genre as one better suited for entertainment than for serious literary
scholarship. An analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” though,
demonstrates that the Gothic was a vehicle for serious social commentary worthy of further study. 1
The story’s protagonist is suffering from a “nervous condition.” She becomes obsessed with the
wallpaper in her bedroom. At one point, she conjures a disturbing image of a woman trapped behind
the bars depicted in the pattern of the wallpaper. Though utterly fantastical, this image is very much
grounded in the reality of the oppressive mores of the Victorian era: the trapped figure symbolizes the
protagonist’s sense of being imprisoned by her social circumstances.

Question: Which choice most effectively combines the underlined sentences?

Answer: [C] The story’s protagonist, suffering from a “nervous condition,” becomes obsessed with the
wallpaper in her bedroom.

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer because it most effectively combines the underlined sentences.
The underlined sentences provide closely relates information about the story’s protagonist, so it makes
sense to integrate the information from the first sentence as a participial phrase (“suffering from a
‘nervous condition’”).
9/15- I have already observed that, from their origin, the sovereignty of the people was the fundamental
principle of the greater number of British colonies in America. . . .

At the present day the principle of the sovereignty of the people has acquired, in the United States, all
the practical development which the imagination can conceive. It is unencumbered by those fictions
which have been thrown over it in other countries, and it appears in every possible form according to
the exigency of the occasion. Sometimes the laws are made by the people in a body, as at Athens; and
sometimes its representatives, chosen by universal suffrage, transact business in its name, and almost
under its immediate control.

In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and
forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly
without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society
governs itself for itself. All power centres in its bosom; and scarcely an individual is to be meet with who
would venture to conceive, or, still less, to express, the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation
participates in the making of its law by the choice of its legistlators, and in the execution of them by the
choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and
so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin
and the power from which they emanate.

Question: Part 1: Tocqueville suggests that the culture of self-government he witnesses in the United
States derives in part from the country’…

Part 2: Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?

Answer: Part 1: [D] division of powers

Part 2: [D] Lines 29-37 (“The nation …emanate”)

Correct/Incorrect- Part 1: Incorrect

Part 2: Incorrect

Explanation: Part 1: Choice B is the best answer. In the first paragraph, Tocqueville comments that
sovereignty has been a fundamental principle in the United States since the country’s origin as British
colonies. In other words, the culture of self-government has ties to the country’s colonial history.
Part 2: Choice A is the best answer. In these lines, Tocqueville states that sovereignty, or self-
government, has been a fundamental, or primary, principle in America since the country’s origins as
British colonies.

9/16- As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political
advancement which woman has already gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of
emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy; yet I do not think
the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need today is not
simply more voters, but better voters. Today there are red-handed men in our republic, who walk
unwhipped of justice, who richly deserve to exchange the ballot of the freeman for the wristlets of the
felon; brutal and cowardly men

. . . . More than the changing of institutions we need the development of a national conscience, and the
upbuilding of national character. Men may boast of the aristocracy of blood, may glory in the aristocracy
of talent, and be proud of the aristocracy of wealth, but there is one aristocracy which must ever
outrank them all, and that is the aristocracy of character; and it is the women of a country who help to
mold its character, and to influence if not determine its destiny; and in the political future of our nation
woman will not have done what she could if she does not endeavor to have our republic stand foremost
among the nations of the earth, wearing sobriety as a crown and righteousness as a garment and a
girdle. In coming into her political estate woman will find a mass of illiteracy to be dispelled. If
knowledge is power, ignorance is also power. The power that educates wickedness may manipulate and
dash against the pillars of any state when they are undermined and honeycombed by injustice.

Save

Save

Question: As used in line 25, “determine” most nearly means…

Answer: [A] decide

Correct/Incorrect: Correct
Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. When the speaker states that women “help to mold” the
character of a country and “influence if not determine its destiny” she means that women can influence
the country’s destiny and may even “decide,” or cause, a certain future for the country.

9/18- Since its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, action painting has become closely associated 1 with
Jackson Pollock, an abstract expressionist painter who began experimenting with this technique after
taking his canvas off the easel and laying it down on the floor. According to Pollock, maneuvering
around the canvas on the floor allowed him to get lost in the painting. Photographer Hans Namuth, who
once had the opportunity to observe Pollock’s action painting, described it as dancing. He said Pollock
gradually picked up speed as he circled the canvas, flinging black, white, and rust-colored paint off his
brush until the canvas was covered, a tangle of splashes and splatters and drips.

Question: After reading the passage, choose the answer to the question that most effectively improves
the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard
written English.

Answer: [A] No change

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer because no punctuation is needed between the preposition
“with” and its object “Jackson Pollock.”
9/20- I have already observed that, from their origin, the sovereignty of the people was the fundamental
principle of the greater number of British colonies in America. . . .

At the present day the principle of the sovereignty of the people has acquired, in the United States, all
the practical development which the imagination can conceive. It is unencumbered by those fictions
which have been thrown over it in other countries, and it appears in every possible form according to
the exigency of the occasion. Sometimes the laws are made by the people in a body, as at Athens; and
sometimes its representatives, chosen by universal suffrage, transact business in its name, and almost
under its immediate control.

In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and
forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly
without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society
governs itself for itself. All power centres in its bosom; and scarcely an individual is to be meet with who
would venture to conceive, or, still less, to express, the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation
participates in the making of its law by the choice of its legistlators, and in the execution of them by the
choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and
so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin
and the power from which they emanate.

Question: In the passage, Tocqueville presents himself as someone who is well acquainted with…

Answer: [C] popular opinion

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer. In the third paragraph, Tocqueville suggests that he knows
enough about popular opinion to speak generally for the people of the United States, asserting that
almost nobody in the United States would ever think of seeking a different political structure.
9/22- One of the primary shortcomings of the Homestead Act of 1862, a program through which the
federal government offered free plots of land to US citizens willing to establish farms in the American
West, was that the plots were too small to sustain a farm. Land in the semiarid Great Plains region
received twenty or fewer inches of rain per year, so plots there were best left half unplanted each
growing season to conserve water. With farms consisting of a mere 160 acres, however, this practice
would not have produced sufficient harvests. Moreover, raising cattle was impossible because the tiny
homesteads would quickly become overgrazed. 1 Between 1862 and 1904, only 80 million of the 500
million acres disbursed by the General Land Office went to homesteaders.

Question: Which choice most effectively provides support for the paragraph’s primary claim?

Answer: [C] According to geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell, sustainable homesteads on the
Great Plains actually needed to be a staggering 2,560 acres.

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer because it provides a specific detail that illustrates the main
claim of the paragraph: that the plots of the land provided by the Homestead Act of 1862 were too small
to sustain a farm.
9/24- I have already observed that, from their origin, the sovereignty of the people was the fundamental
principle of the greater number of British colonies in America. . . .

At the present day the principle of the sovereignty of the people has acquired, in the United States, all
the practical development which the imagination can conceive. It is unencumbered by those fictions
which have been thrown over it in other countries, and it appears in every possible form according to
the exigency of the occasion. Sometimes the laws are made by the people in a body, as at Athens; and
sometimes its representatives, chosen by universal suffrage, transact business in its name, and almost
under its immediate control.

In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and
forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly
without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society
governs itself for itself. All power centres in its bosom; and scarcely an individual is to be meet with who
would venture to conceive, or, still less, to express, the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation
participates in the making of its law by the choice of its legistlators, and in the execution of them by the
choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and
so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin
and the power from which they emanate.

Question: As used in line 31, “execution” most nearly means…

Answer: [D] enforcement

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. In this context, “execution” most nearly means
“enforcement,” or the act of carrying something out. When Tocqueville says that people participate in
the making and execution of laws by appointing officials, he means that people help to create laws and
see that those laws are carried out.
9/26- To determine whether chimpanzees are more likely to delay gratification for a cooked food
reward than they are for a raw food reward, 1 cognition researcher Felix Warneken and cognition
researcher Alexandra Rosati conducted an experiment comparing chimpanzees’ decisions in two
situations: a “raw-delay” condition and a “cooked-delay” condition. In the raw-delay condition,
Warneken and Rosati offered the chimpanzees a choice between receiving a piece of raw food
immediately and waiting for one minute to receive three pieces of raw food; the chimpanzees chose the
larger, delayed reward 60 percent of the time. In the cooked-delay condition, in which the chimpanzees
could receive one piece of raw food immediately or wait one minute for three pieces of cooked food,
they chose the larger, delayed reward approximately 85 percent of the time.

Question: After reading the passage, choose the answer to the question that most effectively improves
the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard
written English.

Answer: [A] No change

Correct/Incorrect: Incorrect

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer because it offers clear and concise wording for the paragraph’s
introduction of the two researchers.

9/28- I have already observed that, from their origin, the sovereignty of the people was the fundamental
principle of the greater number of British colonies in America. . . .

At the present day the principle of the sovereignty of the people has acquired, in the United States, all
the practical development which the imagination can conceive. It is unencumbered by those fictions
which have been thrown over it in other countries, and it appears in every possible form according to
the exigency of the occasion. Sometimes the laws are made by the people in a body, as at Athens; and
sometimes its representatives, chosen by universal suffrage, transact business in its name, and almost
under its immediate control.

In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and
forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly
without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society
governs itself for itself. All power centres in its bosom; and scarcely an individual is to be meet with who
would venture to conceive, or, still less, to express, the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation
participates in the making of its law by the choice of its legistlators, and in the execution of them by the
choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and
so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin
and the power from which they emanate.

Question: Which fact, if true, would most clearly undermine Tocqueville’s primary argument about the
sovereignty of the people of the United States?

Answer: [A] The majority of people in the United States in 1835 were not permitted to vote.

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. Throughout the passage, Tocqueville argues that in the United
States the people truly govern and have power, as he has seen that they participate in the selection of
their authorities and in the creation and implementation of the laws. Tocqueville's argument would be
weakened if, at the time he was writing, it were true that most people in the United States were not
permitted to vote and therefore were not participants in the government

9/30- The creation of today’s animated films, frequently hailed for their lifelike artistry, relies heavily on
mathematics. Animators use algorithms, or sequences of mathematical steps, to create, for instance,
the rounded shapes making up an old man’s knobby knuckles or a young girl’s bouncy hair. One of the
algorithms now considered an industry standard repeatedly subdivides a polygon by splitting and
averaging the midpoint of a line. Developed by Pixar Animation Studio’s Tony DeRose, this algorithm
eliminated the problem of discernible edges of polygons by replacing them with the seamlessly rounded
curves of the parabolas that emerge as a result of the polygon subdivision process. Innovations such as 1
DeRoses depend on an understanding of applied mathematics in areas such as geometry, linear algebra,
trigonometry, and calculus.

Question: After reading the passage, choose the answer to the question that most effectively improves
the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard
written English.

Answer: [C] DeRose’s

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer because it uses the apostrophe properly to indicate the
possessive relationship between DeRose and his innovation.

10/2- Racks of clothes stood at distances from each other across the room: cliques of glamorous ghosts.
A mirror covered one wall, sketches and patterns taped to it here and there. Near the opposite wall of
paned glass, two assistants worked at a long table topped with computers, stacks of magazines, and
wads of fabric. Across a narrow street stood a brick building with small windows framing scenes from a
play: actors playing office workers, drifting in and out of cubicles.

"Now," Eddie said once Rebecca had ended her call, "show us what you're working on."

Rebecca searched the coffee table and tugged some sketches out from a pile. "It's Arts and Crafts, and
it's Dolce Vita. There's a little kabuki in the silhouette, you see. And Voltaire—I've been reading
Voltaire." She turned to Dinah. "I must sound totally pretentious to you, Dinah, but this is what I do.

I have to plunder. Fashion is nothing so pure as dance. By nature, clothes must refer."

She continued to make claims Dinah didn't quite understand, but which sounded wild and intelligent,
and which made Dinah long to become that person who would understand them, agree or disagree with
them. Dinah clearly knew nothing. She hadn't even known that dance was pure.

Eddie voraciously seconded everything Rebecca said. Then Rebecca led them over to a rack and started
pulling out suits of pink tweed, tops of accordioned silk, skirts of mossy burlap.

"I'm working younger these days." She held a strange little blue dress up to Dinah. "You could wear this.
It's that young."

In general, Dinah sailed on a smooth emotional sea, free from the crushes and contests that stormed on
her friends. But now and then, a wave of adolescent emotion would rise out of nowhere and crash
against her. Here came one such tsunami: complete devotion to Rebecca Leigh, this queen of the city
who treated Dinah as an equal. Dinah loved her more than her best friend, more than her mother.

Question: Based on the passage, which statement best reflects Rebecca’s view of fashion designers?

Answer: Part 1- [C] Their work depends in elements drawn from various creative sources.

Part 2- [B] Lines 22-23 (“I have… refer”)

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Part 1- Choice C is the best answer. Rebecca says that her new designs are influenced by
other sources, such as kabuki and Voltaire, and she asserts that fashion must "plunder" and "refer," or
take things from and refer to other creative works.
Part 2- Choice B is the best answer. In these lines, Rebecca explains that fashion is not "pure" because it
must "plunder" and "refer." In other words, she suggests that fashion designers must take things from
and refer to other works

10/4- 1] The song opens with three drummers tapping their panderos. [2] Two smaller hand drums—the
segundo and the requinto—weave in and out of that beat. [3] Each pandero adds a layer to the complex,
syncopated rhythm I immediately recognize as that of plena music. [4] A maraca and an accordion chime
in and are soon joined by the ratchet-like scrape of the güiro. [5] Next, the singers pipe up, one calling
and two others responding in a playful chant. [6] As the music builds to a crescendo, I detect a twist on
the traditional Puerto Rican folk style: a trombone bursts in and then a clarinet. [7] They add an element
of big band jazz. [8] Underneath the fused musical styles, though, the classic plena rhythm, propelled by
the panderos, beats on. 1

Question: After reading the passage, choose the answer to the question that most effectively improves
the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard
written English.

Answer: [B] after sentence 1

Correct/Incorrect: Incorrect

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer because it results in the most logical sequence. It makes sense
to introduce the three drummers first and then include the detail about the largest of three drums
between the introduction and the details provided about the other two, smaller drums.

10/5- Racks of clothes stood at distances from each other across the room: cliques of glamorous ghosts.
A mirror covered one wall, sketches and patterns taped to it here and there. Near the opposite wall of
paned glass, two assistants worked at a long table topped with computers, stacks of magazines, and
wads of fabric. Across a narrow street stood a brick building with small windows framing scenes from a
play: actors playing office workers, drifting in and out of cubicles.

"Now," Eddie said once Rebecca had ended her call, "show us what you're working on."

Rebecca searched the coffee table and tugged some sketches out from a pile. "It's Arts and Crafts, and
it's Dolce Vita. There's a little kabuki in the silhouette, you see. And Voltaire—I've been reading
Voltaire." She turned to Dinah. "I must sound totally pretentious to you, Dinah, but this is what I do.

I have to plunder. Fashion is nothing so pure as dance. By nature, clothes must refer."

She continued to make claims Dinah didn't quite understand, but which sounded wild and intelligent,
and which made Dinah long to become that person who would understand them, agree or disagree with
them. Dinah clearly knew nothing. She hadn't even known that dance was pure.

Eddie voraciously seconded everything Rebecca said. Then Rebecca led them over to a rack and started
pulling out suits of pink tweed, tops of accordioned silk, skirts of mossy burlap.
"I'm working younger these days." She held a strange little blue dress up to Dinah. "You could wear this.
It's that young."

In general, Dinah sailed on a smooth emotional sea, free from the crushes and contests that stormed on
her friends. But now and then, a wave of adolescent emotion would rise out of nowhere and crash
against her. Here came one such tsunami: complete devotion to Rebecca Leigh, this queen of the city
who treated Dinah as an equal. Dinah loved her more than her best friend, more than her mother.

Question: In line 24, “claims” most nearly means…

Answer: [d] assertions

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. In the third paragraph, Rebecca makes several assertions, or
strong statements, about her work. When the narrator then says that Rebecca “continued to make
claims,” he or she means that Rebecca continued to make assertions.

10/7- In recent years, several urban US airports have converted some of the unused land 1 past their
runways to provide habitats for honeybees. While airports may seem unlikely locations for beekeeping,
many of them, in fact, have the potential to offer ideal conditions for an apiary (a group of beehives).
The Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, for instance, hosts an apiary on a 400-square-foot area of
land just north of one of its runways. This area is rich in Dutch clover, a preferred food source for
honeybees. The honeybees may thrive there in part because they aren’t exposed to the agricultural
pesticides suspected of contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder. Though unorthodox, airport-based
honeybee habitats can help to ensure that local regions have healthy populations of honeybees.

Question: After reading the passage, choose the answer to the question that most effectively improves
the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard
written English.

Answer: [A] NO CHANGE

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer because it follows the conventions of standard English usage.
“Past” is used here as a preposition to indicate the location of the honeybee habitats. “Their” is used as
a possessive determiner to indicate that the runways are those of the airports.

10/17- Like an opera house, which has its public entrance separate from that for the performers, a cell
has different doors for different molecules. Each gets scrutinized at its door before it can enter the cell.
Now researchers from the University of California at San Francisco have revealed in the journal Science
the three-dimensional structure of one such door, or membrane channel, that specializes in granting
entry to a membrane component known as glycerol. Specifically the channel is called the glycerol
facilitator (GlpF), from the bacterium Escherichia coli.
Bearing three alcohol groups, glycerol is a basic building block for the cell membrane. (Other
components include fatty acids and small charged molecules.) And not just in E. coli. Indeed, although
the channel the researchers studied is from a bacterium, it belongs to a large protein family dubbed the
aquaporins, which are found in species ranging from bacteria to humans.

GlpF is highly specific for glycerol and similar polyalcohols. Somehow, even though water molecules are
much smaller, they cannot enter. The new study reveals why. In order for glycerol to clear the four-
channel configuration in the cell membrane, it must pass through a narrow selectivity filter in the center
of a channel. Here it is surrounded by amino acids that closely match its own structure, which is
hydrophilic (“water-loving”) on one side and hydrophobic (“water-fearing”) on the other. Water
molecules, in contrast, can only pass through this area in single file, which is not energetically favorable,
because they like to bond to one another. And ions, which are charged, are unable to pass the “water-
fearing” side of the channel. This cell entrance, it seems, is truly exclusive.

Question: The main purpose of the passage is to…

Answer: [D] discuss a study that offers a new understanding of a fundamental cellular process

Correct/Incorrect: Correct

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The author’s focus is on discussing work done by researchers
studying the structure of membrane channels in cells. According to the author, the researchers’ study
revealed how certain molecules move through cells’ membranes.

10/19- Some plant pathologists have turned to genetic engineering to devise new ways of responding to
botanical diseases. Plant pathologist William Powell, for instance, teamed up with forest biologist Chuck
Maynard to restore North America’s population of American chestnut trees, which was decimated in the
early 1900s by a fungus known as chestnut blight. A fungus, C. parasitica, contributes to the growth of
cankers on the trees’ 1 trunks. These cankers, in turn, preventing trees from transporting water from
their roots to their branches and leaves. To render American chestnut trees resistant to the blight,
Powell and Maynard experimented with the genetic makeup of the trees. The resultant genetically
engineered trees are called Darling 4 American chestnut trees, and during the first 15 weeks after
infection with chestnut blight, they grow cankers that are much smaller than those that grow on
American chestnut trees.

Question: After reading the passage, choose the answer to the question that most effectively improves
the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard
written English.

Answer: [