GRE GRE General Test Questions and Answers

No act is done purely for the benefit of

Claim: others

All actions—even those that seem to be done

for other people—are based on self-interest.

Reason-

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a Batavia newspaper

"The department of agriculture in Batavia reports that the number of dairy farms throughout the country is now 25 percent greater than it was 10 years ago. Dunne this same time period, however, the price of milk at the local Excello Food Market has increased from SI.50 to over S3.00 per gallon. To prevent farmers from continuing to receive excessive profits on an apparently increased supply of milk, the Batavia government should begin to regulate retail milk prices Such regulation is necessary to ensure fair prices for consumers."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation

Colleges and universities should require their students to spend at least one semester studying in a foreign country.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with (lie claim. In developing and supporting your position- be sure to address the most compelling reasons and or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

Even the most complex models used in fishery management are cartoons of reality. They reduce hundreds of links in food webs to a handful and inadequately represent processes operating over space. Many of their assumptions are as flawed today as those of the simplest models of the past. Fish stocks, for one. are still assumed to be populations of a species that are isolated from one another. Yet many populations mix at their edges and some even migrate through areas occupied by other populations. Furthermore, the more complex models suffer from a "crisis of complexity"—more is really less. Adding layers of detail, each carrying its own set of assumptions, produces instability. The model's behavior becomes erratic, and conclusions drawn from it can be downright misleading.

In the context of the passage, the highlighted portion serves to

Edited collections of scholarly essays generally lend to be somewhat uneven: they suffer from the_______ subject matter of the various essays, the lack of an overarching and consistent thesis, and the variable quality of the contributions.

Carbon dating of charcoal gathered from a Nok iron smelter at Intime. Nigeria, suggests that iron technology was established there by 410 B.C. This may not be the oldest smelter in sub-Saharan Africa, however. Archaeologists have located evidence of iron-smelting in the Termite Hills of Niger from as early as 1400 B.C.. but skeptics say the wood used for that dating could have already been centuries old when burned as fuel—a problem that dogs carbon dating, especially in arid places like Niger, where wood desiccates and lasts longer. Of course, the same problem could distort dates for the Intime furnace as well, but here there is an important piece of corroborating evidence: Nok pottery found inside the furnace alongside the charcoal.

The author implies which of the following about the "Nok pottery found inside the furnace"?

Harriet Monroe, who founded Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1912. argued that the more heterogeneous and sprawling the modem world became, the more poetry needed "an entrenched place, a voice of power." But this goal could only be realized if poets were valued in ways that encouraged them to participate in the world and made writing verse economically viable. Monroe argued that poets needed sites of institutional opportunity like those that had been developed for visual artists, architects, and musicians. She believed that the hand-wringing anticapitalism dominating genteel literary* culture—particularly the idea that poetry ought to be removed from "sordid" pecuniary considerations—brought no economic and only illusory aesthetic benefits, instead severing poets from meaningful participation in the modern world.

The author mentions "visual artists, nrchitecis. and musicians" primarily lo

Though mathematics is________, like language, it has its roots in the mud of everyday embodied

experience: one such root is counting.

The poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was the premier Black writer of poetry that used the dialect of rural African Americans of the southern United States. Although Dunbar's works were both popular with readers and acclaimed by literary critics during his lifetime, after the First World War a radical shift occurred, at least in critical opinion of his poetry, and twentieth-century critical evaluation of his work has been generally negative. Some critics attacked his work on social grounds for failing to challenge plantation stereotypes of African Americans. Other critics, such as the poet James Weldon Johnson, argued from aesthetic grounds that dialect poetry in general was too limited as an artistic medium, and capable of producing only two effects: pathos and humor. The negative critical trend only began to reverse itself in the 1970s, when scholars began to emphasize the importance of mythic, psychological, and historical dimensions of Dunbar's works, focusing on the interior and exterior realities of African American life after the Civil War.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage concerning scholars' use of mythic, psychological, and historical considerations in evaluating Dunbar's works?

Claim: Governments must ensure that their major cities receive the financial support they need in order to thrive.

Reason: It is primarily in cities that a nation's cultural traditions are preserved and generated.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.

Exhibit

A)

B)

C)

D)

E)

When positive integer m is divided by 6. the remainder is 4. When positive integer p is divided by 6. the remainder is 5. What is the remainder when the product mp is divided by 6 ?

II cost a certain manufacturer a total of S7.8O0.OO to make and sell 6,500 units of a certain product. If the manufacturer sold each of the 6.500 units for S3.50. what was the manufacturer's profit per unit of the product? (Profit is equal to the selling price minus the cost.)

Exhibit.

-5, -3, -1, 0, 10, 20

How many different sums can be obtained by adding two different numbers from the list shown?

A rancher is planning to build an enclosed pen for horses on level ground. The pen will be rectangular with a length that is 2 times the width. If the perimeter of the pen will be P meters, which of the following represents the area, in square meters, of the pen in terms of P ?

A)

B)

C)

D)

E

The complex topic of whether bilingualism enhances cognitive functions beyond language, the so-called "bilingual advantage." is an intensely debated subject. Research results can be influenced by many variables, including the definition of bilingualisni itself. The previous focus on what was perceived to be a classical case of bilingualism (early, simultaneous acquisition of more than one language) has been largely replaced by a more inclusive definition. based on the ability to communicate rather than a perfect command. Indeed, improvement in cognitive functions has been reported after only one week of an intensive language course. Conversely, inactive bilinguals. who were early balanced bilinguals in their childhood but moved to an exclusive use of one language in later life, perform differently from active bilinguals and more like monolinguals.

Iii the context of the passage as a whole, the reference to "improvement in cognitive functions" primarily serves to

Age data from meteorites suggests that, in contrast to the relatively_________pace of planetary evolution we are

witnessing today, the first ten million years or so of our solar system history were extremely eventful.

The graph summarizes the responses from 4.500 respondents who rated their degree of confidence in each of eight United States institutions. Each respondent gave each institution one of five confidence ratings: high, moderate, little, none, or undecided.

For the respondents who rated their degree of confidence in state government high or moderate, the ratio of the number who gave a rating of high to the number who gave a rating of moderate was 1 to 3. How many of the respondents rated their degree of confidence in state government high?

A total of S72.000 was invested for one month in a new money market account that paid simple annual interest at the rate of r percent- If the investment earned $360 in interest for the month, what is the value of r?

Exhibit.

Writing for the New York Times in 1971. Saul Braun claimed that - todays superhero is about as much like his predecessors as today's child is like his parents." In an unprecedented article on the state of American comics, "Shazam! Here Comes Captain Relevant. Braun wove a story of an industry whose former glory producing jingoistic fantasies of superhuman power in the 1930s and 1940s had given way to a canny interest in revealing the power structures against which ordinary people and heroes alike struggled following World War II Quoting a description of a course on •Comparative Comics" at Brown University, he wrote, 'New heroes are different—they ponder moral questions, have emotional differences, and are just as neurotic as real people. Captain America openly sympathizes with campus radicals.. Lois Lane apes John Howard Griffin and turns herself black to study racism, and everybody battles to save the environment."" Five years earlier. Esquire had presaged Braun s claims about comic books: generational appeal, dedicating a spread to the popularity of superhero comics among university students in their special 'College Issue." As one student explained. "My favorite is the Hulk. I identify with him, he's the outcast against the institution.'1 Only months after the NW York Times article saw print. Rolling Stone published a six-page expose on the inner workings of Marvel Comics, while Ms. Magazine emblazoned Wonder Woman on the cover of its premier issue—declaring s Wonder Woman for President'’ no less—and devoted an article to the origins of the latter-day feminist superhero.

Where little more than a decade before comics had signaled the moral and aesthetic degradation of American culture, by 1971 they had come of age as America's "native art::: taught on Ivy League campuses, studied by European scholars and filmmakers, and translated and sold around the world, they were now taken up as a new generation's critique of American society. The concatenation of these sentiments among such diverse publications revealed that the growing popularity and public interest in comics (and comic-book superheroes) spanned a wide demographic spectrum, appealing to middle-class urbamtes, college-age men. members of the counterculture, and feminists alike. At the heart of this newfound admiration for comics lay a glaring yet largely unremarked contradiction: the cultural regeneration of the comic-book medium was made possible by the revamping of a key American fantasy figure, the superhero, even as that figure was being lauded for its realism"" and social relevance."" As the title of Braun's article suggests, in the early 1970s, "relevance" became a popular buzzword denoting a shift in comic-book content from oblique narrative metaphors for social problems toward direct representations of racism and sexism, urban blight, and political corruption.

In the first paragraph, the author of the passage develops his argument primarily by

In 1755 British writer Samuel Johnson published .in acerbic letter to Lord Chesterfield rebuking his patron for neglect and declining further support. Johnson's rejection of his patron's belated assistance has often been identified as a key moment in the history of publishing, marking the end of the culture of patronage. However, patronage had been in decline for 50 years, yet would survive, in attenuated form, for another 50. Indeed. Johnson was in 1762 awarded a pension by the Crown—a subtle form of sponsorship, tantamount to state patronage. The importance of Johnson's letter is not so much historical as emotional: it would become a touchstone for all who repudiated patrons and for all who embraced the laws of the marketplace.

Which of the following best describes the function of the highlighted phrase in the context of the passage as a whole?

Scientists have long debated the exact timing of the lunar cataclysm, a period approximately 4 billion years ago when Earth and the Moon were pummeled with asteroids. A clue to this puzzle may come from spherules, millimeter-sized droplets of molten rock formed after au asteroid collides explosively with a planet. Upon impact, the asteroid vaporizes both itself and the target rock, producing a vapor plume that condenses into spherules. These form a layer preserved in rock, whose age can be estimated using radiometric dating. Scientists know of fourteen of these spherule layers scattered across Earth, but none dates to the theorized lunar cataclysm time period. Four layers, however, are from between 3.47 and 3.24 billion years ago. indicating perhaps a slow decline in collisions.

The primary purpose of the passage is to

The following appeared as a letter to the editor from the owner of a skate shop in Central Plaza.

"Two years ago the city council voted to prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. They claimed that skateboard users were responsible for litter and vandalism that were keeping other visitors from coming to the plaza. In the past two years, however, there has been only a small increase in the number of visitors to Central Plaza. and litter and vandalism are still problematic. Skateboarding is permitted in Monroe Park, however, and there is no problem with litter or vandalism there. In order to restore Central Plaza to its former glory, then, we recommend that the city lift its prohibition on skateboarding in the plaza."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

The following appeared in a memo from the president of Bower Builders, a company that constructs new homes.

"A nationwide survey reveals that the two most-desired home features are a large family room and a large, well-appointed kitchen. A number of homes in our area built by our competitor Domus Construction have such features and have sold much faster and at significantly higher prices than the national average. To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. Moreover, our larger family rooms and kitchens can come at the expense of the dining room, since many of our recent buyers say they do not need a separate dining room for family meals."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

Instances of "galactic cannibalism"—mergers in which large galaxies completely consume smaller ones—may be fairly common. Tidal forces produced by the Milky Way's powerful gravity, for example, appear to be dismantling and engulfing a dwarf galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius, producing large clumps and streamers of stars connecting the two galaxies. Astronomers have also observed two dense clusters of stars and gas at the heart of the Andromeda galaxy, an apparent "double nucleus" that may contain the remnant of a cannibalized dwarf galaxy. But this Twin-lobed appearance could also be created by two parts of a single nucleus bisected by a lane of dust. Scientists believe that only about 25 percent of such apparent double nuclei actually represent galactic cannibalism. Many of the rest result from the illusion of proximity that occurs when objects at different distances appear along the same line of sight: others consist of debris from galactic "collisions." in which one galaxy has passed through another without merging, causing waves of new star formation.

According to the passage, a true double nucleus may be produced by the

Given the_________of archival materials related to her subject, it is not surprising that the author is unable to

marshal much detailed documentary evidence to support some of her claims.

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a Batavia newspaper

"The department of agriculture in Batavia reports that the number of dairy farms throughout the country is now 25 percent greater than it was 10 years ago. During this same time period, however, the price of milk at the local Excello Food Market has increased from SI.50 to over $3.00 per gallon. To prevent farmers from continuing to receive excessive profits on an apparently increased supply of milk, the Batavia government should begin to regulate retail milk prices Such regulation is necessary to ensure fair prices for consumers."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation

The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment complex to its manager.

"Last week, all the showerheads in the first three buildings of the Sunnyside Towers complex were modified to restrict maximum water flow to one-third of what it used to be. Although actual readings of water usage before and after the adjustment are not yet available, the change will obviously result in a considerable savings for Sunnyside Corporation, since the corporation must pay for water each month. Except for a few complaints about low water pressure, no problems with showers have been reported since the adjustment. Clearly, modifying showerheads to restrict water flow throughout all twelve buildings in the Sunnyside Towers complex will increase our profits further."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

Exhibit.

A company has assets worth SI50.000 and liabilities worth S70.000. giving it an asset-to-liability ratio of approximately 2.1. The company will borrow x dollars, and the amount borrowed will be added to both the assets and the liabilities. If the asset-to-liability ratio is to be greater than 1.2 after the money is borrowed, which of the following could be the value of x ?

Indicate all such values.