Admission Test Section One : Verbal Sample Questions:

1. Late Victorian and modern ideas of culture are indebted to Matthew Arnold, who, largely through his
Culture and Anarchy (1869), placed the word at the center of debates about the goals of intellectual life
and humanistic society. Arnold defined culture as "the pursuit of perfection by getting to know the best
which has been thought and said." Through this knowledge, Arnold hoped, we can turn "a fresh and free
thought upon our stock notions and habits." Although Arnold helped to define the purposes of the liberal
arts curriculum in the century following the publication of Culture, three concrete forms of dissent from his
views have had considerable impact of their own. The first protests Arnold's fearful designation of
"anarchy" as culture's enemy, viewing this dichotomy simply as another version of the struggle between a
privileged power structure and radical challenges to its authority. But while Arnold certainly tried to define
the arch-the legitimizing order of value-against the anarch of existentialist democracy, he himself was
plagued in his soul by the blind arrogances of the reactionary powers in his world. The writer who
regarded the contemporary condition with such apprehension in Culture is the poet who wrote "Dover
Beach," not an ideologue rounding up all the usual modern suspects. Another form of opposition saw
Arnold's culture as a perverse perpetuation of classical and literary learning, outlook, and privileges in a
world where science had become the new arch and from which any substantively new order of thinking
must develop. At the center of the "two cultures" debate were the goals of the formal educational
curriculum, the principal vehicle through which Arnoldian culture operates. However, Arnold himself had
viewed culture as enacting its life in a much more broadly conceived set of institutions. A third form is
so-called "multiculturalism," a movement aimed largely at gaining recognition for voices and visions that
Arnoldian culture has implicitly suppressed. In educational practice, multiculturalists are interested in
deflating the imperious authority that "high culture" exercises over curriculum while bringing into play the
principle that we must learn what is representative, for we have overemphasized what is exceptional.
Though the multiculturalists' conflict with Arnoldian culture has clear affinities with the radical critique,
multiculturalism actually affirms Arnold by returning us more specifically to a tension inherent in the idea
of culture rather than to the cultureanarchy dichotomy. The social critics, defenders of science, and
multiculturalists insist that Arnold's culture is simply a device for ordering us about. Instead, however, it is
designed to register the gathering of ideological clouds on the horizon. There is no utopian motive in
Arnold's celebration of perfection. Perfection mattered to Arnold as the only background against which we
could form a just image of our actual circumstances, just as we can conceive finer sunsets and unheard
melodies.
It can be inferred from the passage that the two-cultures debate

A) developed after 1869
B) led to a schizophrenic educational system
C) emerged as a reaction to the multiculturalist movement
D) was carried on by American as well as European scientists
E) influenced Arnold's thinking about culture

2. Marie Curie was one of the most accomplished scientists in history. Together with her husband, Pierre,
she discovered radium, an element widely used for treating cancer, and studied uranium and other
radioactive substances. Pierre and Marie's amicable collaboration later helped to unlock the secrets of the
atom. Marie was born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, where her father was a professor of physics. At the
early age, she displayed a brilliant mind and a blithe personality. Her great exuberance for learning
prompted her to continue with her studies after high school. She became disgruntled, however, when she
learned that the university in Warsaw was closed to women.
Determined to receive a higher education, she defiantly left Poland and in 1891 entered the Sorbonne, a
French university, where she earned her master's degree and doctorate in physics. Marie was fortunate to
have studied at the Sorbonne with some of the greatest scientists of her day, one of whom was Pierre
Curie. Marie and Pierre were married in
1 895 and spent many productive years working together in the physics laboratory. A short time after they
discovered radium, Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn wagon in
1 906. Marie was stunned by this horrible misfortune and endured heartbreaking anguish. espondently she
recalled their close relationship and the joy that they had shared in scientific research. The fact that she
had two young daughters to raise by herself greatly increased her distress. Curie's feeling of desolation
finally began to fade when she was asked to succeed her husband as a physics professor at the
Sorbonne. She was the first woman to be given a professorship at the world-famous university. In 1911
she received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for isolating radium. Although Marie Curie eventually suffered a
fatal illness from her long exposure to radium, she never became disillusioned about her work.
Regardless of the consequences, she had dedicated herself to science and to revealing the mysteries of
the physical world.
_ ____she remembered their joy together.

A) Tearfully
B) Sorrowfully
C) Dejectedly
D) Happily
E) Worried

3. The Andean cordillera is made up of many interwoven mountain ranges, which include high intermontane
plateaus, basins, and valleys. The Northern Andes contain several broad ecosystems falling into four
altitudinal belts. Its northern subregion is distinguished by higher humidity and by greater climatic
symmetry between eastern and western flanks. The Central Andes are characterized by a succession of
agricultural zones with varied climatic conditions along the mountains' flanks and by large, highaltitude
plateaus, variously called puna or altiplano, which do not occur in the Northern Andes. The soil fertility of
the northern altiplano is generally good. The western Central Andean ranges are relatively arid with
desert-like soils, whereas the eastern ranges are more humid and have more diverse soils. The eastern
slopes of the Central Andes in many ways are similar to the wet forests of the Northern Andes. Unlike the
Northern Andes, however, these slopes have a dry season. In regions of gentle topography, such as the
Amazon basin, regional climatic variation can be determined from a few widely spaced measurements.
Regional projections in the Andean cordillera are quite difficult by comparison. For example, while air
temperature generally decreases with increasing altitude, variability of mountain topography can produce
much lower than expected air temperatures. Nevertheless, some general climatic patterns are discernible.
For example, with increasing distance south of the equator the seasonality of precipitation increases,
whereas the total annual amount generally decreases. Humidity commonly increases with increasing
altitude, but only to some intermediate altitude, above which it declines. The variability of mountain terrain
also affects precipitation, such that conditions of extreme wetness and aridity may exist in close proximity.
Related to this temperature gradient is a pattern of greater rainfall at the valley heads, and less rain at
lower altitudes, resulting in part from mountain rainshadow effect. The weather patterns of the Andean
cordillera and Amazon basin in general reflect movements of highand low-pressure cells associated with
the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a low-pressure trough that moves further north and south on a
seasonal basis. Precipitation is high throughout the year in the highlands and on the coast in the Northern
Andes. Coastal aridity increases south of central Ecuador, culminating in the Atacama desert of northern
Chile. In the Central Andes, highland precipitation is seasonal, and amounts are approximately half those
measured in the Northern Andes. The aridity of the Central Andean coastal zone is the result of the drying
effect of the cold Pacific Humboldt current and the southern Pacific high-pressure cell. Much of the
southern portion of the Central Andes in Bolivia is also arid. The dry season causes soil moisture deficits
and diminished stream flow part of each year.
It can be inferred from the passage that air temperatures in the Andean cordillera are often "lower than
expected" (line 39) probably due to wide variations in

A) precipitation levels
B) mountain elevation
C) air pressure
D) aridity
E) prevailing wind direction

4. The Pope divided New World lands between Spain and Portugal according to their location on one side or
the other of an imaginary geographical line 50 degrees west of Greenwich that extends in a ___ direction.

A) north and south
B) north and west
C) easterly
D) south east
E) crosswise

5. While there will always be a need for social programs geared toward alleviating the poverty of individuals,
the community is perhaps the more relevant level for public policy intervention, especially in rural areas. It
has been recognized that social isolation within urban ghettos is a structural characteristic of urban
poverty, but rural poverty is marked by physical isolation as well. This uniqueness makes rural community
poverty particularly intractable, requiring policies that account for the cost of isolation. It is possible to
provide vocational training for individuals anywhere, but if there are no jobs within the community for
those individuals, the training is largely wasted. The current transition to a service-based economy and
deregulation in transportation (resulting in disproportionately higher transportation costs for relatively
isolated areas) have only exacerbated the growing social and economic distress in rural America,
underscoring the need to redefine poverty and redirect the focus of our funding agencies and
policy-makers in accordance with the new definition. What's needed is a more holistic view on an
aggregate level, where poverty is properly seen as a condition of the local social structure, with income
only one of the salient parameters.
The author seeks to draw which of the following distinctions between urban ghettos and impoverished
rural communities?

A) Job training programs are more accessible in urban ghettos than in rural communities.
B) Funding agencies are more likely to recognize poverty in an urban ghetto than in a rural community.
C) Residents of urban ghettos typically have better jobs than residents of rural communities.
D) Impoverished individuals feel more isolated in urban ghettos than in rural communities.
E) Poverty is more common in rural communities than in urban ghettos.

Solutions: