During his career, Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona produced hundreds of compositions. Especially impressive is how _____ his body of work is: Lecuona showcased a diverse range of musical talents in different areas, from orchestral pieces and operas to popular film scores.

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

The following text is from Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club. The narrator describes practicing the piano when she was a child.

For the talent show, I was to play a piece called “Pleading Child” from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to memorize the whole thing, playing the repeat parts twice to make the piece sound longer. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed. I never really listened to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else.

©1989 by Amy Tan

Based on the text, when the narrator describes herself as “cheating,” what does she most likely mean?

As with other river deltas, the Indus River delta is _____; it is a constantly evolving network of channels and strips of land that change in size and shape as the river deposits new sedimentary particles where the river meets the waters of the Arabian Sea.

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

The following text is from Bram Stoker’s 1911 novel The Lair of the White Worm. Adam is meeting his great-uncle Richard at a port.

The meeting so auspiciously begun proceeded well. Adam, seeing that the old man was interested in the novelty of the ship, suggested that he should stay the night on board, and that he would himself be ready to start at any hour and go anywhere that the other suggested. This affectionate willingness to fall in with his own plans quite won the old man’s heart. He warmly accepted the invitation, and at once they became not only on terms of affectionate relationship, but almost like old friends.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Vertical gene transfer involves the transmission of genetic material from a parent to offspring; horizontal gene transfer, on the other hand, involves the exchange of genetic material between organisms not in a parent-offspring relationship. While horizontal gene transfer is common among prokaryotes—single-celled organisms such as the bacteria Cyanobacterium viridans and Moraxella catarrhalis—it has rarely been observed among eukaryotes (typically multicellular organisms). However, new studies suggest that horizontal gene transfer is more common in eukaryotes than originally thought.

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

Though John Crowley, author of Endless Things, is perhaps not as well known as the most widely read American writers of the past fifty years, influential figures have championed his work, including the poet James Merrill and the literary critic Harold Bloom. In his afterword to Crowley’s book Little, Big, Bloom praises the novel’s adroit blend of what playwright Friedrich Schiller termed the naive and sentimental modes—while Schiller thought works could be classified as either naive (seeking to describe reality) or sentimental (seeking to develop ideas), Little, Big demonstrates that a work can be both.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

The following text is from a translation of María Dueñas’s 2009 novel The Time in Between.
The narrator has just rented an apartment and is entering it for the first time.

Over the years there have been many times when my destiny has delivered me unexpected moments, unforeseen twists and turns that I’ve had to handle on the fly as they appeared. Occasionally I was ready for them; very often I wasn’t. Never, however, was I so aware of entering a new stage as I was that afternoon in October when I finally dared to cross the threshold and my steps sounded hollowly in the unfurnished apartment. Behind me was a complicated past, and in front of me, like an omen, I could see a space opening out, a great empty space that time would take care of filling up.

©2009 by María Dueñas. Translation ©2011 by Daniel Hahn.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

The soil on Mars can make missions to explore the planet challenging, as the sand and dust are known to clog filters and lock moving parts on robotic rovers and other exploration devices. Using simulants, which are materials designed to simulate different planetary surfaces, scientists are able to study the characteristics of Mars’s surface. Simulants like the Mars Mojave simulant—which was developed using lava deposits from California’s Mojave Desert—help scientists evaluate how well their devices will handle the surface when operated on Mars.

Based on the text, what is one reason why simulants are valuable for scientists?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum. In the novel, the narrator describes a character’s house as having become very faded in appearance over time: _____

Which quotation from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz most effectively illustrates the claim?

As the second-most populous continent in the world, Africa was home to an estimated 1.186 billion people in 2015. In a paper for a social studies class, a student nonetheless notes that countries with very large populations may be less densely populated than are countries with much smaller populations, as can be seen by comparing____.

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