MCAT Section Tests Dear Future Doctor, The following Section Test and explanations should be used to practice and to assess your mastery of critical thinking in each of the section areas Topics are confluent and are not necessarily in any specific order or fixed proportion This is the level of integration in your preparation that collects what you have learned in the Kaplan classroom and synthesizes your knowledge with your critical thinking Simply completing the tests is inadequate; a solid understanding of your performance through your Score Reports and the explanations is necessary to diagnose your specific weaknesses and address them before Test Day All rights are reserved pursuant to the copyright laws and the contract clause in your enrollment agreement and as printed below Misdemeanor and felony infractions can severely limit your ability to be accepted to a medical program and a conviction can result in the removal of a medical license We offer this material for your practice in your own home as a courtesy and privilege Practice today so that you can perform on test day; this material was designed to give you every advantage on the MCAT and we wish you the best of luck in your preparation Sincerely, Albert Chen Executive Director, Pre-Health Research and Development Kaplan Test Prep © 2003 Kaplan, Inc All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by Photostat, microfilm, xerography or any other means, or incorporated into any information retrieval system, electronic or mechanical without the written permission of Kaplan, Inc This book may not be duplicated, distributed or resold, pursuant to the terms of your Kaplan Enrollment Agreement ANSWER KEY: C A C B D 11 12 13 14 15 D B D C A 21 22 23 24 25 A D B D B 31 32 33 34 35 A B B B D 41 42 43 44 45 C B A B D 51 52 53 54 55 B B A C B 10 A B A B D 16 17 18 19 20 A C D C D 26 27 28 29 30 B D C B C 36 37 38 39 40 C A C B A 46 47 48 49 50 C D A D C 56 57 58 59 60 B D C B C VERBAL REASONING TEST EXPLANATIONS Passage I (Questions 1-6) Topic and Scope: Winston Churchill compares painting a picture to commanding troops in a battle Paragraph Structure: ¶1 and ¶2 kick off the extended comparison Two things are important for painting and waging a battle, he says: making a plan and keeping a strong reserve Making a plan requires reconnaissance and attentive observation, which he comments on in ¶3 It also requires a familiarity with the masters of the past and their achievements (¶4) The last ¶s are devoted to a discussion of how a painter uses the reserves of Proportion and Relation just as a commander uses reserve troops in battle The Big Picture: You may not always have to go back to the passage in order to answer a question Read the stem carefully Questions: (C) The author’s conception of painting involves making a plan and using reserves well Making a plan requires attentive observation and reconnaissance of the thing to be painted You clearly cannot observe the gates of heaven, so a painting of them would contradict the author’s conception of painting (A) fits perfectly well with the author’s idea of painting (B) may be tempting because the author talks about studying works in a European art gallery, but one does not have to go to Europe to fulfill the author’s requirement of learning from the masters (D) has nothing to with painting (A) The author says that it is of utmost importance to “reconnoitre the battleground” as a painter, to study the features of Nature that one intends to paint This makes (A) the correct answer (C) Matisse’s juxtaposition of black and white resulted in a striking contrast—that is, it clearly makes an impression, so Matisse’s work weakens the author’s claim (A) The author never says that great artists should be imitated, just that the amateur can learn a lot from seeing how the masters dealt with certain challenges (B) We can infer from the context of the last ¶ that using black or white ‘neat’ means using them on the canvas as pure colors Since Matisse is using black and white ‘neat,’ this choice is out (D) The author never makes this claim (B) Reread the second-to-last ¶, where the author says “the largest brush, the brightest colors cannot even make an impression.” His overall point is that without “high direction”—a sense of proportion and relation—on the part of the painter, a fine brush or fine colors cannot help (A), (C) and (D) may make sense to a certain degree but have nothing to with the passage (D) Since the author spends the entire passage conveying his ideas about art through an analogy to warfare, he would have to agree with this statement (A) The author never discusses the relative importance of training versus talent in the making of an artist (B) The author certainly learns from his failures, but he never claims that you can learn more from failure than from success; the only thing he says is that trying to paint is more exciting than being successful at it (C) is far too pessimistic and negative to fit the author (A) If a painting (or a group of fighting troups) that ends up in disorder “consequently” is “without effect,” in the author’s opinion, then the author assumes that paintings that go awry never have an unintended artistic effect (B), (C) and (D) are all simply misreadings of the statement in question and its context Passage II (Questions 7-12) Topic and Scope: Right and wrong don’t mean much to corporations, who are by their very nature only interested in maximizing profit Convicting them of ethical crimes is difficult and punishing them does not serve as a deterrent Paragraph Structure: ¶1 introduces the idea that corporations not have the same ethical values as individuals ¶2 explains why: corporations, unlike individuals, have one, and only one, goal: profit Moral considerations are relevant only if they have a financial impact on the corporation (¶3) What happens if a corporation is suspected of having committed a moral crime—can it be held responsible? The authors illustrate the complexities of the problem with the example of the Ford Pinto in ¶5 In ¶6 and ¶7, they conclude that corporations cannot be held to interpersonal standards, and that attempting to deter them from crime through punishment will not change the way they operate Questions: (B) This claim is made in the second paragraph and then supported by the info in the third paragraph (as well as the rest of the passage), so it seems true This rules out (C) and (D) So is the claim necessarily true? No The authors are just making an argument, and they could be wrong or ignoring evidence to the contrary (B) is correct (A) See ¶3 (B) and (D) may be tempting because the third paragraph is about moral opposition to company practice from inside or outside the company, but “limiting operating conditions” is really a more general concept that covers everything that could hinder a company’s profit-making, including, as the authors say, increases in the costs of raw materials (C) focuses too narrowly on the mention of the cost of raw materials Strategy Point: Don’t ever answer a “word- or phrase-in-context” question without going back to the passage and rereading the lines around the word or phrase (B) In ¶6, the authors say “ we are only talking about the corporate entity itself—not its managers, agents, and owners who, as human persons, can be held to standards ” The assumption here is that a corporation has an identity above and beyond the people in it (A) and (C) There is no support for either of these (D) is wrong because, according to the authors, the end always justifies the means for corporations as long as the end is profitable enough 10 (D) The hypothetical situation would weaken the authors’ argument, since they maintain that profitability, and not morality, is what drives a company’s decisions 11 (D) In the authors’ analogy, the person driving faulty brakes does not have them repaired because it would be too costly The implication is that Ford may have taken no action to correct the Pinto’s defects because it would have cost too much (A) is not the authors’ position; they say that they are using the Pinto case only as an example, and that Ford was found innocent The analogy they make is only to Ford’s alleged actions (B) and (C) are both unwarranted inferences 12 (B) The authors say in the last ¶ that potential penalties don’t automatically work as a deterrent; they just become a factor in corporations’ cost/profit decision-making So if penalties haven’t cut into companies’ profits in the past, they wouldn’t be much of a deterrent, and this would support the authors’ argument (A) is not as strong a strengthener as (B) because it deals with human and not corporate behavior (C) is out because it WEAKENS the authors’ argument by indicating that deterrence does work (D) is completely irrelevant to the argument in question Passage III (Questions 13-21) Topic and Scope: The environmental movement has met with “stunning success” but everybody is afraid to acknowledge it Paragraph Structure: ¶1 asserts that the environmental movement has resulted in a series of landmark environmental bills in the U.S and Europe that have proved effective and economically beneficial Everybody is afraid to acknowledge this success, however; the author spells out the reasons for this in ¶2 In support of the author’s argument that the environment is improving, ¶3 kicks off a litany (which continues through the following paragraphs) of all the strides that have been made in the effort to improve the environment The final ¶ emphasizes that enviromental regulation is now being driven by market demand and should be seen as a “boon” that will make Western industry more efficient and competitive Questions: 13 (D) The support for this claim is found in the last ¶, where the author mentions that acid-rain reductions were successfully centered on market mechanisms (A), (B) and (C) are all claims made in the passage, but the author provides no supporting evidence for any of them 14 (C) Reduction in auto emissions is clearly good for the environment Nevertheless, don’t jump to the conclusion that the reduction was due to landmark environmental bills, as (A) tempts you to You need to know for a fact that they were (C) Strategy point: NEVER pick a choice before reading through all of them first 15 (A) According to the passage, CFC emissions have declined, but this doesn’t mean they no longer damage the ozone layer This statement is untrue, as far as we know from the passage (B) can be found in ¶3 (C) and (D) can be found in ¶4 Strategy point: Take careful note of any NOTs in the question stem so that you don’t go for choices that are the opposite of what you need 16 (A) This question centers on ¶2 (A) is the correct choice because the author believes that the environmentalists and leftand right-wing politicians know about environmentalism’s success; they just don’t want to acknowledge it Therefore, pessimistic appraisals of the environment could not stem from their ignorance (B) is plausible and could be the reason environmentalists are still pessimistic (C) is plausible; in fact, it is the reason politicians on the left and the right continue to be pessimistic (D) is plausible and could be another reason environmentalists continue to be pessimistic 17 (C) In ¶5, we find out that under the Endangered Species Act only species have died out, which is many fewer than would have died out otherwise The overall number of species, then, is still declining a little under the Endangered Species Act, but at a much slower rate (A) and (B) are wrong; evolution would have to be operating at a pretty high rate for the number of species to increase (remember the question is asking about the overall number of species in America, not the number of members within a species) (D) contradicts ¶5 18 (D) If the head of the EPA is out there being optimistic about the environment, this would weaken the author’s whole thesis, including the idea that the vocabulary of environmentalism is dominated by images of futility (A) and (B) The author claims that environmental reform has been cost-effective, not costly 19 (C) According to ¶2, right-wingers don’t like environmentalism’s success because “it shows that governmental regulations might occasionally amount to something other that wickedness incarnate, and actually produce benefits at an affordable cost.” The implication is that they dislike all governmental regulations and will oppose even beneficial programs because they involve regulations (A) and (B) are incorrect; the politicians on the political right clearly are not going to extol the endangered species program (D) is out because the program has shown measurable success 20 (D) Judging from the last ¶, the author thinks that environmental reform works better if it centers on market mechanisms and voluntary choice He would be in favor of bills that encourage rather than coerce industries to control pollution (A) Establishing a subcommittee is hardly an action at all, much less one the author would support (B) The author never mentions inefficient bureaucracies; muddled programs, maybe, but not bureaucracies (C) The author would be very much opposed to this 21 (A) The author maintains that politicians of any stripe don’t like environmental good news, as we’ve said before An optimistic speech about the environment by a senator would weaken the author’s argument (B) This would not challenge the info in the passage; the author admits that endangered species have disappeared under the Endangered Species Act (C) This choice does not challenge the info in the passage because you would expect an environmentalist to be pessimistic, even though the pessimism is unwarranted (D) This fits right in with what we know from the passage Passage IV (Questions 22-27) Topic and Scope: The author discusses the pros and cons of a radical theory that posits that the people of Stone Age Europe lived in matriarchal communities until they were overrun by Indo-European marauders Paragraph Structure: ¶s 1, and set out the details of the theory mentioned above ¶4 explains why the theory has been popular among feminists: it provides an alternative to traditional, patriarchal mythologies However, it has been criticized by others as the product of illegitimate speculation, as we find out in ¶5 The response of the supporters of the theory to such criticism is that speculation is important since it keeps the field of archaeology on its toes (¶6) Questions: 22 (D) Proponents of the Great Goddess theory say that Great Goddess symbols have reappeared many time over the centuries, so they wouldn’t agree with this (A) They would be happy to hear this, however, so this choice is out (B) They would also agree with this; see ¶4 (C) This also comes from ¶4 Proponents of the theory think that the idea of the matriarchy “provides a new and more positive model for the human relationship to the natural world.” 23 (B) What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander If archaeological evidence cannot tell us about the ancient world’s social structures, then there is no support for the matriarchal or the patriarchal theories (A) and (C) are far too pessimistic and contrary to the firm belief in archaeology of the supporters of the Great Goddess theory (D) Nobody said anything in the passage about lower intellectual functioning 24 (D) Traditional archaeologists argue that we cannot know from archaeological evidence what the dwellers of the ancient world actually thought; so they would say we have no way of knowing whether the Old Europeans were worried about invaders (A), (B) and (C) are all examples of conclusions that could be drawn from archaeological evidence (see ¶5) 25 (B) This choice is in line with the argument of the G.G theory’s supporters in the second half of the last ¶ (A) makes no sense in the passage’s context (C) is wrong on two counts: (1) the proponents of the G.G theory did think the more unorthodox theory was the correct one and (2) the orthodox theory was the correct one (D) There is no reason to think the supporters of the G.G theory would accuse the traditional archaeologists of doctoring the evidence 26 (B) The general idea behind the supporters’ argument is that speculation helps to spark debate and stimulate scholarship; being narrow-minded stifles these things (B) is the statement that best reflects this idea (A) and (D) just don’t apply to the argument of the supporters of the G.G theory (C) The traditional archaeologists do, as far as we know, understand the arguments of the G.G theory supporters, so this wouldn’t apply either 27 (D) All the Great Goddess theory says is that Old European matriarchies were more egalitarian than the patriarchy of the Russian marauders This does not constitute a demonstration that matriarchies are consistently more egalitarian than patriarchies are (A) can be found in ¶s and (B) is taken from ¶4 (C) is a paraphrase of the second half of the last ¶ Passage V (Questions 28-33) Topic and Scope: So much emphasis was placed on the importance of persuasive public speaking in ancient Greek life that it eventually became a detriment to the culture Paragraph Structure: ¶1 introduces the topic, explains how important rhetoric was to the Greeks and mentions that it was even taught as an art Even though people were wary of being misled by skillful speakers, it was still worthwhile to be one (¶2) In ¶3, the author criticizes the Greek writers who became so concerned with rhetorical style that they lost sight of what was really important: content He gets even heavier-handed in the last ¶, saying that the study of rhetoric eventually lost any positive value and instead just encouraged shallowness in thought Questions: 28 (C) Throughout the passage the author laments the fact that the Greeks elevated rhetorical style over substance You can infer, then, that he would have high regard for an orator who preferred substance over rhetorical tricks (A) In the first ¶, the author sarcastically derides rhetoric in which the immediate effect is all-important, so this choice is wrong (B) The author thinks that the aesthetic side of rhetoric was overemphasized in Greece, so he would not be as much in favor of this orator as (C)’s (D) Isocrates passed on his techniques to many students and the author is nevertheless critical of him 29 (B) In the first ¶, the author notes that Greeks relied on rhetoric in part because they had no backcloth of daily journalism to make their views known Modern politicians can make their positions known in this way, so they would have less of a need to make speeches (A) This is a distortion of a statement from ¶3 to the effect that Isocrates’ speeches were of limited use in the abrupt vicissitudes of politics (C) and (D) There is nothing in the passage to suggest that the author would agree with either of these statements 30 (C) This question is all about ¶2, where the author explains that skillful speaking often bred mistrust because listeners knew that malicious arguments could be made to sound good (A), (B) and (D) are never mentioned in the passage 31 (A) If Greek juries didn’t like personal attacks, then an accusation of cleverness would damage the accuser and not the accused This would weaken the author’s assertion (B) This supports rather than weakens the author’s assertion (C) This neither supports nor weakens the author’s assertion (D) If Greeks naturally expected speakers to use tricks, then an accusation of cleverness would not necessarily change their opinion of a speaker or otherwise damage him However, (D) is not as good a weakener of the author’s assertion as (A) is 32 (B) The author doesn’t spell out his logic completely, but when he says that the exaltation of virtuosity is due not to Isocrates but to the fact that public display was normal in the Greek world, he is assuming that exaltation of virtuosity (excessive concern with style) must necessarily arise in a world that is full of public display (A) contradicts everything the author says about Isocrates (C) misunderstands what the author means by public display; he never mentions art and architecture in the passage (D) Previous historians and their estimates of Isocrates’ influence are never discussed in the passage 33 (B) The “side effects” of rhetoric alluded to in the last paragraph are “not such as to encourage depth of thought.” The author must be referring to the negative aspects of rhetoric—primarily the elevation of style over substance—that he has been railing against for the entire passage Passage VI (Questions 34-41) Topic and Scope: Philosophy; specifically, that people should be free to what they want so long as it doesn’t unjustifiably harm others Furthermore, people should act independently rather than relying blindly on custom and tradition to guide them The Big Picture: Passages like this with dense philosophical prose have been appearing in recent administrations of the MCAT It’s important to realize that underneath all the stilted language are just two or three straightforward (in the case of this passage, simple) ideas Questions: 34 (B) The author gives examples of opinions—corn dealers are starvers of the poor, for example—that are harmless in one context and dangerous in another; so he would agree with this statement (A) This is a distortion of the author’s statement that different opinions are useful because mankind is imperfect (C) The author would not agree with this statement as is; there would have to be a qualification that those opinions be a positive instigation to a mischievous act in order for them to be punishable (D) The author thinks that only certain opinions should be considered actions 35 (D) In arguing that opinions should lose their immunity from punishment if they instigate a mischievous act, the author says that opinions circulating through the press are OK He is assuming, then, that opinions circulated through the press could not instigate a mischievous act (A) is not an assumption but rather one of the opinions the author uses as examples in his discussion (B) This is a distortion of one of the author’s examples (C) is another incorrect choice that plays off the examples the author uses to make his argument 36 (C) The author believes that people should be able to what they want as long as it doesn’t harm others, so he wouldn’t approve of interfering with a teenager’s smoking (A) The author does think that “unfavorable sentiments” and active interference are appropriate when someone is doing harm to someone else, so he would approve here (B) and (D) There is no reason in the passage that the author would not approve of either of these 37 (A) According to the author, the liberty of the individual must be limited to the extent that the person is doing something that without justifiable cause does harm to others He doesn’t say what exactly constitutes a “justifiable cause,” but we would need to know that in order put his policy into effect (B) and (D) are very minor and unhelpful pieces of information (C) No one wants his liberty limited, whether he has done something harmful to another or not; the author’s personal opinion just wouldn’t be very helpful 38 (C) The author believes that acting in accordance with custom may make sense since there is something to be learned from the experience of others However, he gives several reasons toward the end of the passage as to why following custom may also be bad Ultimately, he says, people who blindly follow custom don’t learn how to decide, perceive, and judge In sum, he thinks that observing custom is sometimes good and sometimes bad 39 (B) Option I is a distortion of the author’s position that traditions and customs may be the result of misinterpreted experiences Option II contradicts the author’s belief that past experience can be beneficial in the present Option III is true because it reiterates the point the author makes in the last ten lines or so Strategy Point: If you get stuck trying to figure out which options are true in a Roman Numeral Question, use the answer choices to guide you For example, in the next question, you know from the answer choices that all three options cannot be true because there is no corresponding choice for this 40 (A) The author says that even when a custom is based on a correctly-interpreted experience, it may still be unsuitable as a guide because customs are appropriate only for customary people or situations (B), (C) and (D) are objections to following custom that the author never voices in the passage 41 (C) The author maintains that conforming to custom merely as custom stifles the development of human judgment and decision-making However, if it is the custom to let children make their own decisions, then conforming to custom does encourage decision-making This challenges the author’s argument (B) supports rather than challenges the author’s argument (A) and (D) are irrelevant to the author’s argument Passage VII (Questions 42-48) Topic and Scope: The author uses the example of medical quackery as a springboard for the discussion of pseudoscience and the difficulty of refuting it Paragraph Structure: ¶s through explain why fraudulent medicine can seem to have a genuine effect: most people not get steadily sicker and then die; they get sick and then get better or at least go through periods of improvement before they die, and the quack just takes advantage of the periods of improvement to make it seem as though he is really doing something Of course, the quack will fail most of the time anyway, but people will remember his successes and forget the failures ¶s through broaden the discussion The author argues that it’s difficult to refute any fraudulent cure because one can always come up with explanations/excuses in order to be able to keep one’s belief that the cure works In ¶5 he brings up Quine’s idea that experience never forces one to reject a belief—which means you can never refute pseudoscience Does the author agree? No In the last ¶ he argues that although there may be pseudoscience that is difficult to refute, there is definitely a difference between science and pseudoscience The Big Picture: Follow the twists and turns of the author’s argument through the passage You may think you know what the passage is all about after a couple of paragraphs, but the author may decide to change focus or head off in a new direction after a while Questions: 42 (B) What the author means by his claim is that any treatment will have at least some success purely by chance just because odds are that some people will happen to get better at the time of treatment However, this claim would fall apart if nobody ever got better—there would never be any “miracle cures.” (D) supports rather than weakens the author’s argument (A) and (C) neither support nor weaken the claim 43 (A) Look at ¶3 The author says that if the disease is self-limiting, fraudulent treatment will be often be successful A fraudulent treatment will be successful only if a person is going to improve anyway, so self-limiting diseases must be those in which the person is going to get better rather than die (B) is never mentioned in the passage (C) makes no sense because a condition that had a high rate of mortality would not result in many instances of a fraudulent treatment being successful (D) is wrong because if there is no chance of recovery, there is no chance that a fraudulent treatment for the disease will appear successful 44 (B) The author maintains that fraudulent medical treatment can often appear successful since those who are sick are often going to get better anyway (A), (C) and (D) are all choices that could not be attributed to the author based on the passage 45 (D) The author points out in ¶3 that many quacks get away with practicing pseudomedicine because people remember their successes but not their failures If a record is kept of both successes and failures, this would be an accurate indication of the successfulness of the intervention (B) commits the same mistake that people in general do: remembering the successes but not the failures (A) and (C) are irrelevant to determining whether the intervention as a whole is worthwhile or not 46 (C) This is the point of ¶4 (A) This choice comes out of nowhere; the author discusses pseudomedicine in the passage, not real medicine (B) and especially (D) are the opinions of W.V.O Quine, which are too extreme for the author 47 (D) In the last ¶, the author argues that there is a “problematic fringe area” between science and pseudoscience, that we cannot distinguish between them in all cases If doctors and scientists are having trouble deciding whether some types of alternative medicine are scientific or not, this supports the author’s claim (A) The information in the stem has no impact on this claim (B) is wrong because the scientific method can still be useful in distinguishing science from pseudoscience, even if it cannot bring a quick end to the debate over alternative medicine (C) This claim is never made in the passage 48 (A) Does the author agree with Quine that experience never forces anyone to reject any belief? No For the author, Quine’s views are too extreme; science, at times, can be distinguished from pseudoscience, as the author argues in the last ¶ (B) takes a positive view of Quine and is therefore wrong (C) is appropriately negative but gives a nonsensical objection to Quine’s view (D) is far too extreme an objection to Quine Passage VIII (Questions 49-55) Topic and Scope: American business lags behind the competition because corporate management has dropped the ball by alienating workers, concentrating on high tech products and neglecting long-range planning Paragraph Structure: ¶1 outlines the decline of American business, while ¶2 lays out all the reasons that analysts have come up with to explain the decline The author largely dismisses them, however, and puts forth his own thesis: the business decline is due to the misguided attempts to minimize labor costs (¶4), concentrate on high tech products (¶5) and reap fast profits through mergers and acquisitions (¶6) Questions: 49 (D) If labor costs were in fact the only part of total production costs to rise, then management was right to blame the cost of workers’ wages for driving up prices; this weakens the author’s argument (A), (B) and (C) The author never makes these claims 50 (C) Look at the 2nd ¶ If analysts cited labor demands and poor productivity as reasons American business fell behind the Japanese, then these analysts considered American workers to be less content and less productive 51 (B) The author criticizes management’s effort to minimize production costs in ¶4, so he wouldn’t agree with this statement (A) echoes the general sentiment of ¶6 (C) The author would agree with this since he blames corporate management for the decline, not the consumers (D) The author states this outright in the first sentence of ¶3 52 (B) The author’s position is that American business should have specialized first in the production of low tech products, gained valuable experience and then moved into high tech markets However, if manufacturing high tech products is completely different from manufacturing low tech products, then a company wouldn’t be able to gain experience producing low tech goods that would be valuable in the high tech arena, and the author’s argument weakens (A) has no impact on the argument (C) would support the author’s claim that foreign but not American firms have been producing low tech products (D) does not weaken the author’s argument because American firms could have overconcentrated on high tech products and Americans could still have bought foreign products 53 (A) This sums up what the author wants: the return of American business to its former position of unrivaled dominance (B) This choice is wrong because alienating skilled workers was just one of the blunders, not the major blunder, of American business (C) The author thinks that the future of American business would be hopeless if there isn’t a change in the traditional American philosophy of management (D) This is never mentioned in the passage Strategy point: When a question stem asks you to choose the answer that the author would most support, there will probably be more than one choice that the author would agree with at least somewhat You have to pick out the best choice, so read all of them carefully and don’t jump on the first one that looks good 54 (C) ¶s and pound home the message that American firms are doing things wrong and should be following the example of foreign firms (A) This is the sort of merger-and-acquisition strategy the author deplores (B) The author would support this, but it solves only one problem, whereas (C) would solve many problems and would therefore receive more support (D) The author isn’t worried about American consumers 55 (B) The information in the question stem would torpedo the whole idea that American business has declined since WWII; if there was no decline, then America never lost its advantage (or never had one to begin with) (A) The info in the stem does not really establish that the American workforce has been able to compete (perhaps the US share of the market has been consistently low) (C) This claim (which the author never makes explicitly) would not be affected by the info in the stem (D) The author never makes this claim Passage IX (Questions 56-60) Topic and Scope: The suffragette movement; particularly, the tactics used by the suffragettes and what they ultimately accomplished Paragraph Structure: ¶1 introduces the idea that the suffragette movement was more than just politics because it entailed the idea of female moral superiority ¶2 shows that the suffragists had well-planned politcal strategies, using popular ideologies that usually exploited other American minorities ¶3 states that modern feminists and historians express disdain that the more radical suffragists were not the only ones to capitalize on anti-minority sentiment ¶4 discusses the suffragist belief that women would vote in a pattern that would ensure a more comfortable and moral future In ¶5, the author says the voting patterns of women did not occur as suffragettes predicted, and she concludes by stating that suffrage (the right to vote) is inherent to democratic political society The Big Picture: In this type of passage, it is easy to get confused because the author reviews a number of components to the suffragette movement before she finally reaches a conclusion in the final paragraph Don’t expect to understand the overall meaning of the passage until you have read all of it Understand each paragraph for its main point; by the end of the passage, the overall meaning should become clear Questions: 56 (B) In ¶2, the author says that suffragists exploited American ideas for their own purposes, specifically the political gain of being able to vote (A) “Political rhetoric” could mean “guidelines used by political speechwriters,” yet that is a general definition which does not define the meaning of the term in the context of the passage (C) The passage never states that suffragettes tried to confuse voters; rather, the suffragettes wanted voters to understand that women’s ability to vote could actually help the present voting contigent (white American men) (D) Tactics used during a successful election campaign are not discussed in this passage 57 (D) The last ¶ concludes the passage with the statement that the franchise (the right to vote) is vital to civic emancipation, which, in turn, is the basis for democratic political life (D) paraphrases this idea (A) Although it is implicit that the author does not condone the suffragette exploitation of American ideology, it is never indicated that the author felt that this was a severe violation of moral principles Rather, the author states that modern day feminists and historians lament this fact (B) ¶1 says that suffragists had an “untiring political education,” and ¶4 says that “the suffragists were overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of the educated.” (C) The last paragraph states that no clear-cut voting patterns have emerged, which indicates that the author would not agree with the statement in choice C 58 (C) As stated in the last ¶, no clear-cut voting patterns for women have emerged Thus, (C) could not be true (A) is definitely true; it paraphrases information contained in ¶s and (B) is also true As indicated in ¶s and 3, many suffragists appealed to racial and ethnic prejudices to reach their ultimate goal, enfranchisement (D) restates what is mentioned in ¶s and 4: suffragists believed that women had superior virtues and a greater capacity for human empathy 59 (B) (B) paraphrases the idea that the emancipation of members of society, by giving them the right vote, is crucial to achieving good for society; however, it still does not guarantee that all good ends will be achieved This idea is found in the final sentences of the concluding paragraph (A) Nothing in the passage suggests that the suffragists didn’t see the hypocrisy of their actions In fact, the passages indicates that the suffragists were self-aware and fully understood the ramifications of their plans to gain the right to vote (C) Suffragists did possess an extensive knowledge of American history, yet they were inaccurate when they predicted that women would vote uniformly for the good of humanity (D) The author indicates in the last paragraph that the suffragist movement propelled society toward a more democratic society, which is indeed progress in the author’s eyes 60 (C) Later generations of feminists and historians consider the tactics effective since the suffragists ultimately reached their goal; but the fact that they lament these tactics indicates that they view this suffragist behavior as lacking integrity (A) Since the later generations of feminists and historians lament the tactics used by the suffragists, they consider the tactics hurtful, but definitely not valid (B) Modern day feminists and historians don’t consider the tactics useless because the suffragists ultimately did help women gain the right to vote (D) These tactics aren’t considered ignorant because they actually resulted from a thorough knowledge of American history, sentiment, and “political rhetoric.” ... 30 B D C B C 36 37 38 39 40 C A C B A 46 47 48 49 50 C D A D C 56 57 58 59 60 B D C B C VERBAL REASONING TEST EXPLANATIONS Passage I (Questions 1-6) Topic and Scope: Winston Churchill compares... this claim (B) Reread the second-to-last ¶, where the author says “the largest brush, the brightest colors cannot even make an impression.” His overall point is that without “high direction”—a... Passages like this with dense philosophical prose have been appearing in recent administrations of the MCAT It’s important to realize that underneath all the stilted language are just two or three straightforward