DIRECTIONS.

For each of Questions 1 to 15, select one answer choice unless otherwise instructed.

Questions 1 to 3 are based on the following passage.

It is their sensitive response to human circumstance that accounts for the persistence of certain
universal ideas. Rabbi Meir, a second-century scholar, admonished his disciples to look not at
the pitcher but at its contents because, he stated, “Many a new pitcher has been found to be full
of old wine”. This was his way of emphasizing the importance of the distinction between form
and idea and of stressing that the integrity of an idea is more important than the form of its
expression. Creative ideas not only produce their own instruments of survival as time and
circumstances demand, but permit the substitution of new forms for old under the pressure of
changed circumstances. For example democracy, as an idea, originated in ancient Greece and
was carried from there to Western Europe and the Americas. But it did not retain the ancient
Greek form: it passed through several reforming processes and exists today in many countries.
Democratic governments differ in form because democracy is in principle dynamic and has
therefore responded to local needs.

Q1
It can be inferred from the passage that the author would agree with all of the following
statements EXCEPT:
A) Changing circumstances sometimes give rise to original ideas.
B) An idea must be expressed in a traditional way.
C) Creative ideas may have universal applications.
D) Changing human needs influence universal ideas.
E) Democracy is an old idea but exists widely in new forms.

Q2
The primary purpose of the passage is to
A) illustrate the importance of a historical figure
B) discuss an important characteristic of human ideas
C) describe the history of the growth of democracy
D) evaluate the contribution of ancient Greece to modern government
E) contrast ancient and modern views of the importance of creative ideas

Q3
Select a sentence from the passage that provides a justification for why democracy has persisted.

For Question 4, select one entry for each blank from the corresponding column of choices.
Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.

Q4
Although many findings of the Soviet and United States probes of Venus were complementary,
the two sets of atmospheric results clearly could not be (i) _______ without a major change of
data or (ii) _______.
 Blank (i) Blank (ii)

(A) obtained (D) falsification

(B) reconciled (E) implementation

(C) assessed (F) interpretation

Question 5 is based on the following passage.

Weight loss programs that guarantee results mislead their customers. No program can
ensure that someone who follows it will lose weight. These programs prey upon unhappy and
insecure people who are often driven more by emotion than by reason. Moreover, many people
who lose weight while on a program eventually regain the weight within a year. So while the
programs’ claims may be true for a short period, customers will be disappointed in the long run.

The two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?

A) The first is a generalization; the second is a consequence of that generalization.
B) The first is an opinion under examination; the second is evidence weighing against that
opinion.
C) The first is an assertion that the author questions; the second is evidence in support of that
assertion.
D) The first is evidence in support of the author’s main point; the second is the author’s main
point.
E) The first is the author’s position; the second is a consideration in support of that position.

Question 6 is based on the following passage.

It has been a staple of drama to feature an innocent young protagonist, eager to make a mark on
the world, who is stymied by an indifferent or hostile society. Since the playwrights of such
works wished the audience to empathize with the protagonist, historians do not regard these
plays as serious revelations of what the societies presented in the plays were really like.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to justify the viewpoint of the historians
described above?
A) The historians believe that playwrights tend to be more critical of their own societies than
of other societies.
B) The historians believe that playwrights tend to exaggerate the weaknesses of a society for
the sake of dramatic effect.
C) The historians believe that plays tend to provide useful information about the time and
society in which they were written.
D) The historians believe that plays often contain serious revelations of what the societies
presented in those plays were like.
E) The historians believe that only the most popular plays within a society accurately
portray that society.
Question 7 is based on the following passage.

A newly discovered painting on wooden panel by Michelangelo must have been completed after
1507 but before 1509. It cannot have been painted earlier than 1507 because one of its central
figures carries a coin that was not minted until that year. It cannot have been painted after 1509
because it contains a pigment that Michelangelo is known to have abandoned when a cheaper
alternative became available in that year.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

A. No stocks of the abandoned pigment existed after 1509.
B. Michelangelo did not work on the painting over the course of several years.
C. The coin depicted in the painting was known to general public in 1507.
D. The wooden panel on which the painting was executed cannot be tested accurately for
age.
E. Michelangelo's painting style did not change between 1507 and 1509.

Question 8 is based on the following passage.

Of the people who moved from one state to another when they retired, the proportion who retired
to SunState has decreased by 10 percent over the past five years. Since many local businesses in
SunState cater to retirees, this decline is likely to have a noticeably negative economic effect on
these businesses.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A. SunState attracts more people who move from one state to another when they retire than
does any other state.
B. There are far more local businesses in SunState that cater to tourists than there are local
businesses that cater to retirees.
C. The total number of people who retired and moved to another state for their retirement
has increased significantly over the past five years.
D. The number of retirees who have moved out of SunState to accept re-employment in
other states has increased over the past five years.
E. SunState has lower property taxes than any other state, making the state a magnet for
retirees.

Questions 9 to 12 are based on the following passage.

Picture-taking is a technique both for annexing the objective world and for expressing the
singular self. Photographs depict objective realities that already exist, though only the camera
can disclose them. And they depict an individual photographer’s temperament, discovering itself
through the camera’s cropping of reality. That is, photography has two antithetical ideals: in the
first, photography is about the world and the photographer is a mere observe who counts for
little; but in the second, photography is the instrument of intrepid, questing subjectivity and the
photographer is all.
These conflicting ideals arise from a fundamental uneasiness on the part of both photographers
and viewers of photographs toward the aggressive component in “taking” a picture. Accordingly,
the ideal of a photographer as observer is attractive because it implicitly denies that picture-
taking is an aggressive act. The issue, of course, is not so clear-cut. What photographers do
cannot be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent. As a
consequence, one ideal of picture-taking or the other is always being rediscovered and
championed.

An important result of the coexistence of these two ideals is a recurrent ambivalence toward
photography’s means. Whatever the claims that photography might make to be a form of
personal expression on a par with painting, its originality is inextricably linked to the powers of a
machine. The steady growth of these powers has made possible the extraordinary
informativeness and imaginative formal beauty of many photographs, like Harold Edgerton’s
high-speed photographs of a bullet hitting its target or of the swirls and eddies of a tennis stroke.
But as cameras become more sophisticated, more automated, some photographers are tempted to
disarm themselves or to suggest that they are not really armed, preferring to submit themselves to
the limits imposed by pre-modern camera technology because a cruder, less high-powered
machine is thought to give more interesting or emotive results, to leave more room for creative
accident. For example, it has been virtually a point of honor for many photographers, including
Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, to refuse to use modern equipment. These photographers
have come to doubt the value of the camera as an instrument of “fast seeing.” Cartier-Bresson, in
fact, claims that the modern camera may see too fast.

This ambivalence toward photographic means determines trends in taste. The cult of the future
(of faster and faster seeing) alternates over time with the wish to return to a purer past – when
images had a handmade quality. This nostalgia for some pristine state of the photographic
enterprise is currently widespread and underlies the present-day enthusiasm for daguerreotypes
and the wok of forgotten nineteenth-century provincial photographers. Photographers and
viewers of photographs, it seems, need periodically to resist their own knowingness.

Q9
The author is primarily concerned with
A. establishing new technical standards for contemporary photography
B. analyzing the influence of photographic ideals on picture-taking
C. tracing the development of camera technology in the twentieth century
D. describing how photographers’ individual temperaments are reflected in their work
E. explaining how the technical limitations imposed by certain photographers on themselves
affect their work

Q10
The author mentions the work of Harold Edgerton in order to provide an example of
A. how a controlled ambivalence toward photography’s means can produce outstanding
pictures
B. how the content of photographs has changed from the nineteenth century to the twentieth
C. the popularity of high-speed photography in the twentieth century
D. the relationship between photographic originality and technology
 E. the primacy of formal beauty over emotional content

Q11
Which of the following statements would be most likely to begin the paragraph immediately
following the passage?
A. Photographers, as a result of their heightened awareness of time, are constantly trying to
capture events and actions that are fleeting.
B. Thus the cult of the future, the worship of machines and speed, is firmly established in
spite of efforts to the contrary by some photographers.
C. The rejection of technical knowledge, however, can never be complete and photography
cannot for any length of time pretend that it has no weapons.
D. The point of honor involved in rejecting complex equipment is, however, of no
significance to the viewer of a photograph.
E. Consequently the impulse to return to the past through images that suggest a hand-
wrought quality is nothing more than a passing fad.

For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.

Q12
Which of the following does the passage state about photographs?
[A] The can convey information.
[B] They can change the viewer’s sensibilities.
[C] They can depict the photographer’s temperament.

Question 13 is based on the following passage.

People with high blood pressure are generally more nervous and anxious than people who do not
have high blood pressure. This fact shows that this particular combination of personality traits –
the so-called hypertensive personality – is likely to cause a person with these traits to develop
high blood pressure.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed because the argument

A) fails to define the term “hypertensive personality”
B) presupposes that people have permanent personality traits
C) simply restates the claim that there is a “hypertensive personality” without providing
evidence to support that claim.
D) takes a correlation between personality traits and high blood pressure as proof that the
traits cause high blood pressure.
E) focuses on nervousness and anxiety only, ignoring other personality traits that people
with high blood pressure might have
For each of Questions 14 to 15, select the two answer choices that, when used to complete
the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences
that are alike in meaning.

Q14
Their air of cheerful self-sacrifice and endless complaisance won them undeserved praise, for
their seeming gallantry was wholly motivated by a _________wish to avoid conflict of any sort.

[A] valiant
[B] commendable
[C] poltroonish
[D] sincere
[E] laudable
[F] craven

Q15
While some see in practical jokes a wish for mastery in miniature over a world that seems
very_______, others believe that the jokes' purpose is to disrupt, by reducing all transactions to
chaos.

[A] dubious
[B] disorderly
[C] harmonious
[D] unruly
[E] regulated
[F] conservative