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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 12)

Drill 12 · Reading & Writing · Hard Inferences

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 12) 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 wander off the passage's point.

Questions & Explanations

Text
For years a warbler's elaborate song was explained by testosterone alone, on the view that higher hormone levels simply produced richer song. In one controlled comparison, hand-raised males given identical hormone levels sang strikingly different songs depending on how much adult song each had heard as a nestling; those exposed to more varied tutoring sang more complex songs at the same hormone level. Hormone level still tracked song vigor, but not song complexity on its own. Taken together, the findings suggest that a warbler's song complexity ______

Question 1. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) has nothing to do with hormone level, which the comparison shows plays no part in shaping the song at all.
  • B) is fixed entirely at hatching, so no amount of later tutoring or hormonal change can alter how complex it becomes.
  • C) depends chiefly on the warbler's overall health, the true factor behind both its hormone levels and its singing.
  • D) depends on more than hormone level alone, since early exposure to adult song shaped complexity at matched hormone levels. ✓

Explanation: (D) With hormone levels held identical, males that had heard more adult song as nestlings sang more complex songs, so complexity turns on early exposure and not on hormone level by itself, even though hormone level still tracked vigor. The choice revises the old view without denying the hormone's role. (A) says hormone level plays no part, but it still tracked song vigor. (B) makes the song fixed at hatching, yet early song exposure changed how complex it became. (C) blames overall health, a factor the passage never measures or mentions.

Text
A historian estimating the size of a city's leatherworking trade used the guild's official rolls, which recorded only those who had reached the rank of master and paid the master's due. The rolls did not enter journeymen, who worked for wages under a master, or apprentices bound to learn the craft, though both groups labored daily in the workshops. Since a single master's shop might employ several journeymen and apprentices at once, a count drawn only from the master rolls ______

Question 2. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) likely undercounts the trade's actual workforce, since the wage-earning journeymen and bound apprentices never entered those rolls. ✓
  • B) gives an exact head count of everyone who worked leather in the city, since masters supervised all such labor directly.
  • C) is worthless for any estimate, because guild rolls of any kind can never bear on the real size of a workforce.
  • D) probably overstates the trade's size, since many listed masters had in fact retired from active leatherwork by then.

Explanation: (A) The rolls entered only masters, yet journeymen and apprentices worked daily in the same shops and often several per master, so a count from the master rolls leaves out most of the actual workforce and comes in low. The choice names the coverage gap the passage describes. (B) treats the master rolls as a complete head count, but the wage-earners and apprentices were never listed. (C) calls the rolls worthless for any estimate, an overreach; the flaw is a specific gap, not total uselessness. (D) blames retired masters padding the count, a scenario the passage never raises.

Text
In a greenhouse trial, one tray of seedlings was grown under added red light while a second, otherwise identical tray sat under the room's ordinary light. The grower kept the soil, the watering schedule, the temperature, and the seed stock the same for both trays, so the added red light was the only condition that differed between them. Over three weeks the red-light seedlings grew markedly taller than the ordinary-light seedlings, which grew only at their usual modest rate. Given that the two trays were matched in every respect but the light, the extra height ______

Question 3. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) appeared in both trays alike, which would leave the red light with nothing to explain.
  • B) cannot be traced to any single factor at all here, since too many conditions were left to vary at once.
  • C) is plausibly tied to the red light rather than to soil, water, or warmth, which were held the same. ✓
  • D) most likely reflects a difference in the seed stock that the grower failed to keep constant.

Explanation: (C) The trays were matched in soil, water, temperature, and seed stock, and only the red-light tray grew taller, so the extra height is plausibly tied to the light rather than to conditions that were the same for both. The choice draws that bounded causal reading from the built-in contrast. (A) says the height appeared in both trays, but only the red-light tray grew taller. (B) claims too many conditions varied, yet the passage states the light was the only difference. (D) blames the seed stock, which was deliberately kept identical and so cannot be the difference.

Text
A copy of an old poem survives with no date on it. Throughout the copy, the scribe consistently uses a set of spelling conventions that a language academy introduced by decree in a known year; before that decree, no scribe wrote the words this way. The copy uses the new spellings evenly from first line to last, not as scattered later corrections but as the hand's normal practice. Since a scribe could not have written throughout in a spelling system that did not yet exist, this copy of the poem ______

Question 4. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) was made at almost exactly the moment the spelling academy first issued its decree that year.
  • B) cannot be older than the spelling decree, and so this copy was written after that reform took effect. ✓
  • C) must predate the decree, since the reformed spellings were surely added by a later hand cleaning up the text.
  • D) can be dated to a precise year, because the decree's known date fixes exactly when the scribe worked.

Explanation: (B) The scribe writes throughout in a spelling system that a dated decree introduced, and does so as normal practice rather than as patchy corrections, so the copy could not have been written before that reform; the decree's date sets a lower bound. The choice states exactly that bound. (A) ties the copy to the decree's first issuance, but using the spellings only requires that the reform already existed. (C) makes the copy older and treats the new spellings as a later hand's fixes, yet they run evenly as the scribe's own usage. (D) claims a precise year, but the reformed spelling shows only that the copy is later, not exactly when it was made.

Text
A company placed billboards for its app in one city for a month and, over that month, saw new signups from that city climb well above their prior level. Analysts asked whether the billboards drove the rise or whether the app was simply gaining popularity everywhere. They found that signups from a comparable city with no billboards, tracked over the same weeks, stayed at their usual level, and the climb appeared only in the billboard city. Given that the unadvertised city showed no such rise, the billboard campaign ______

Question 5. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) probably did little on its own to lift signups, since the app's popularity was most likely rising just about everywhere anyway during that month.
  • B) cannot be linked to the rise at all, because a single month is far too short a window to reveal any advertising effect.
  • C) drove the climb only because the comparison city happened to suffer a service outage that suppressed its signups that month.
  • D) is a more likely source of the climb in signups than a general rise in the app's popularity, since the unadvertised city stayed flat. ✓

Explanation: (D) The climb showed up only in the billboard city while the comparable unadvertised city held flat, so a general rise in the app's popularity cannot explain it, and the campaign is the more likely source. The choice draws that bounded comparative conclusion. (A) asserts an everywhere-rise in popularity, but the control city was flat, which is the opposite. (B) dismisses the result on window length, yet the passage supplies a clean side-by-side contrast. (C) invents a service outage in the comparison city that the passage never mentions.