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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 4)

Drill 4 · Reading & Writing · Hard Inferences

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 4) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Inferences. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

These hard SAT inference questions ask you to complete short academic passages by choosing the conclusion the text best supports. The right answer stays inside the evidence; the wrong ones tend to overreach, reverse the logic, or bring in something the passage never says.

Questions & Explanations

Text
To estimate how many bird species lived in a stretch of rainforest, surveyors walked the forest floor and recorded every species they could see or hear from ground level. Ornithologists reviewing the count note that many of the region's birds spend nearly all their time in the high canopy and rarely descend or call within earshot of the ground. The surveyors used no platforms, towers, or recordings aimed upward to reach those upper levels. Because the method could detect only what was visible or audible from ground level, the ornithologists conclude that the survey's species total ______

Question 1. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) probably overstates the true number of species by treating repeated sightings of a few birds as many species.
  • B) captures the region's high canopy-dwelling species considerably more fully than it manages to capture the ground-dwelling ones.
  • C) probably understates the region's true diversity, since birds that stay in the high canopy went largely undetected. ✓
  • D) is too high because the surveyors repeatedly mistook variations in a single call for separate species.

Explanation: (C) The method registered only what could be seen or heard from the floor, many species stay in the canopy and seldom come within range, and no upward-reaching tools were used, so the count misses those birds and runs low. The choice names that coverage gap. (B) reverses it: the survey reaches ground level and misses the canopy. (A) and (D) both describe ways a count could be too high, by double-counting or miscounting calls, but the stated problem is unreached habitat, which removes birds from the tally.

Text
An office moved its recycling bins from a distant corridor to spots beside each desk cluster and tracked how much paper employees recycled before and after. Recycling rose noticeably in the weeks that followed. A coordinator notes that no campaign ran and no rewards were offered during this period, and that a second floor of the same building, where the bins were not moved, recorded no comparable change over the same weeks. With messaging held constant and the unmoved floor flat, the coordinator concludes that the increase ______

Question 2. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) most likely resulted from a recycling campaign that the office happened to run during those same weeks.
  • B) was probably due in part to the bins being placed within easy reach of the desks. ✓
  • C) occurred just about equally on both floors of the building over the course of that month.
  • D) would probably have been even larger had the bins simply been left in the distant corridor.

Explanation: (B) Recycling rose after the bins came within reach, no campaign or reward accompanied the change, and the floor whose bins did not move stayed flat, so easier access is a credible driver. The choice keeps to that cautious claim. (A) credits a campaign, but the coordinator says none ran. (C) claims both floors rose alike, yet the unmoved floor recorded no comparable change. (D) says distance would have raised recycling further, but the far bins are the earlier condition with no rise.

Text
A short poem has long been read as a straightforward elegy, a sincere lament for a dead patron, and the printed editions that carry this reading reproduce only the poem's main text. Editors recently examined an early manuscript copy and found that several lines praising the patron carry, in that version, small marginal glosses that twist each compliment into a barb. The glosses appear in the same hand as the poem and seem contemporary with it. Scholars stress that the mournful surface remains intact. Still, the manuscript variant suggests that the poem ______

Question 3. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) was never really intended as an elegy at all and contains no sincere mourning of any kind.
  • B) may actually have been composed considerably later than its consistently mournful surface would imply.
  • C) praises its dead patron plainly, without the least trace of irony or hidden reservation anywhere.
  • D) may carry a satirical undercurrent beneath its mournful surface, given the barbed glosses in the early copy. ✓

Explanation: (D) The contemporary glosses turn each compliment into a barb while the lament's surface stays in place, so the poem can be read as carrying mockery under its grief. The hedge qualifies a single variant. (A) denies any real mourning, but scholars stress the mournful surface remains intact. (C) says the praise is free of irony, which the barb-making glosses contradict. (B) shifts to the poem's date, which the variant does not address; the glosses bear on tone.

Text
A beetle species normally bears a bright red shell. Researchers disabled a single gene in a group of the beetles, and the treated insects developed with pale, colorless shells while every other feature appeared normal. A separate group, handled identically but with the gene left intact, kept the usual red coloring. The researchers note that the red pigment depends on a chain of steps and that this gene governs only one of them. Taken together, the results indicate that the disabled gene ______

Question 4. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) produces the beetle's red pigment entirely on its own, unaided.
  • B) has no real effect on the beetle's coloring at all.
  • C) controls the beetle's overall body shape as well as its color.
  • D) is necessary for the beetle to develop normal red coloring. ✓

Explanation: (D) Disabling the gene left the beetles colorless while the intact group stayed red, so the gene is needed for normal coloring. The choice claims necessity, which the comparison supports, without claiming the gene acts alone. (A) says the gene makes the pigment on its own, but the passage says the pigment depends on a chain and this gene governs one step. (B) says the gene has no effect on color, which the loss of color contradicts. (C) extends its role to body shape, yet other features appeared normal.

Text
A historian studying public opinion in a past city relies on a large collection of surviving private letters. Archivists point out that letter-writing in that era required literacy and leisure, so almost all of the preserved letters were written by the wealthy and well-educated. Laborers and the poor, who made up most of the population, left very few letters of their own, and the handful that survive voice concerns the wealthier writers never mention. Because the surviving correspondence reflects mainly one narrow group, any portrait of the city's opinion drawn from it ______

Question 5. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) probably captures the views of laborers more clearly than it captures those of the wealthy.
  • B) probably underrepresents the views of the city's poorer majority, whose letters rarely survived in the record. ✓
  • C) is simply too large a body of material to support any firm conclusions at all.
  • D) can safely treat the surviving views of the wealthy writers as fairly representing the opinion of the whole city.

Explanation: (B) The surviving letters come almost entirely from the literate wealthy, while the poorer majority left few, so a portrait built from them slights that majority. The choice names that skew. (A) reverses it: the collection favors the wealthy, so it cannot capture laborers more clearly. (C) faults the collection's size, but the problem is whose letters survived, not how many. (D) would treat the wealthy as speaking for the whole city, exactly the overreach the skewed record warns against.