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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 20)

Drill 20 · Reading & Writing · Hard Inferences

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 20) 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
To assess the invertebrate life of a stream, a crew sampled only its riffles, the shallow, fast, stony stretches that are easy to wade and net. Those samples turned up many clingers and crawlers suited to swift water. Later sampling in the stream's pools, the deep, slow reaches the crew had skipped, recovered several burrowing and sprawling species that live in soft bottoms and had appeared in none of the riffle samples. Because the crew drew its specimens only from the fast riffles and never from the slow pools, its inventory of the stream's invertebrate species ______

Question 1. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) likely undercounts the stream's invertebrate species, since animals that live only in the slow pools had no chance of being sampled. ✓
  • B) proves the stream supports less invertebrate life overall than other streams that were sampled by wading their riffles.
  • C) cannot be used for any purpose, since riffle sampling and pool sampling yield results that are simply not comparable to each other.
  • D) probably reflects the swift current sweeping soft-bottom species downstream rather than any real gap in where the crew sampled.

Explanation: (A) The crew sampled only the fast riffles, and later pool sampling recovered soft-bottom species that appeared in no riffle sample, so an inventory drawn from riffles alone leaves out the pool dwellers and undercounts the total. The choice names that coverage gap. (B) ranks this stream against others never sampled here. (C) calls the two methods incomparable, yet the passage compares them directly. (D) blames the current for sweeping species away, but the problem named is that the crew skipped the pools.

Text
On one traditional account of the parable, the short tale succeeds only when the events of its story map cleanly onto the moral lesson it is meant to teach, so that a listener can read the lesson off the story itself; a parable whose narrative points nowhere in particular has failed at the one thing the form requires. Consider a brief tale, offered as a parable, whose charming events suggest no lesson at all and leave listeners unable to say what it teaches. If the account is right, then a listener applying it to this tale should conclude that the tale ______

Question 2. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) succeeds as a parable on that account, since a story open to many different readings gives its listeners the richest possible experience.
  • B) falls short of what that account treats as a parable's defining aim, since its events point to no lesson a listener can read off. ✓
  • C) cannot be assessed by that account at all, because a tale carrying no clear lesson lies outside the parable form altogether.
  • D) disproves the account, given that a story this charming and memorable must surely count as a parable whatever the account may require.

Explanation: (B) The account makes a parable's success depend on its story mapping onto a readable lesson, and here the events suggest no lesson at all, so by that standard the tale fails to do what the form requires. The choice applies the rule as given. (A) treats openness to many readings as a virtue, but the account locates success in a story that yields its lesson, so it reverses the standard. (C) says the tale falls outside the account, yet the account is offered to judge exactly such cases. (D) claims the tale's charm refutes the account, but charm is not among its conditions and cannot override them.

Text
A city's guild registers show that apprentice enrollments in its building trades jumped in the year the city began paying a small stipend to masters who took on beginners in those trades. An archivist wondered whether the stipend drew the apprentices or whether youth were flocking to all the city's trades in a growing economy. The same registers show that several other trades, which the stipend program expressly did not cover, enrolled about their usual number of apprentices that year, with no similar jump. Because only the stipend-eligible building trades saw a surge while the excluded trades stayed level, the stipend ______

Question 3. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) is a more likely source of the surge in apprentices than a general boom in the trades, since only the eligible trades rose. ✓
  • B) clearly had no bearing on the surge, because young people were plainly streaming into every one of the city's trades those years.
  • C) probably mattered less than the guilds' decision to shorten the required term of apprenticeship in the building trades that same year.
  • D) drew the new apprentices mainly because a nearby city had just barred outsiders from its own building trades, sending them elsewhere.

Explanation: (A) The surge appeared only in the stipend-eligible building trades, while other trades the program expressly excluded enrolled their usual numbers, so a general boom cannot account for the jump, and the stipend is the more plausible driver. The choice ties the surge to the stipend without calling it the sole cause. (B) asserts youth streaming into every trade, but the excluded trades were flat. (C) credits a shortened apprenticeship term the passage never mentions. (D) invents a nearby city's ban that appears nowhere in the text; the given evidence is the contrast between the eligible and excluded trades.

Text
A monitoring group first credited a lake's unusually clear summer entirely to a drop in its algae. A fuller look at the inflows complicated that reading: the main stream feeding the lake had also run far clearer that summer, carrying much less suspended silt than usual after a dry spring, so less fine sediment clouded the water regardless of the algae. Fewer algae and less inflowing silt both worked to clear the lake that season, and the group's readings cannot tell how much each contributed. Given that two causes coincided, the lake's clarity ______

Question 4. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) was clearly produced by the reduced silt load alone, since the amount of algae in a lake never affects how clear the water looks.
  • B) shows the drop in algae to have been irrelevant, because summer clarity in any lake is governed by inflowing sediment rather than by algae.
  • C) cannot safely be attributed to the drop in algae alone, since the inflowing stream also ran clearer and carried less silt that summer. ✓
  • D) most likely resulted from a change in the depth at which the group lowered its clarity meter during that summer's readings.

Explanation: (C) Both fewer algae and a clearer, less silty inflow worked to clear the lake that summer, and the readings cannot say how much each did, so the clarity cannot be laid to the drop in algae alone; the reduced silt is an equally live cause. The choice revises the first reading without discarding the algae drop as a contributor. (A) credits reduced silt alone, which the same inseparability forbids. (B) makes the algae drop irrelevant, but the evidence shows only that its effect cannot be isolated. (D) invents a change in the meter's depth the passage never mentions.

Text
A fitness chain saw evening attendance climb at one branch in the months after it renovated that branch's locker rooms, and asked whether the upgrade brought members in or whether people across the city were simply exercising more that season. A second branch of similar size and membership, whose locker rooms were left unchanged, tracked its own evening attendance over the same months; those numbers stayed flat, showing none of the renovated branch's climb. Because attendance rose only at the branch with upgraded lockers while the unchanged branch held steady, the locker renovation ______

Question 5. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) plainly had no effect on the attendance climb, because interest in evening exercise was clearly rising across the whole of the city that season.
  • B) probably mattered far less than a cut in evening membership rates that the chain applied at the renovated branch those same months.
  • C) raised attendance chiefly because a competing gym near the renovated branch had just closed, sending its members looking elsewhere.
  • D) better explains the rise in evening attendance than a citywide trend would, since only the renovated branch's numbers climbed. ✓

Explanation: (D) Attendance rose only at the branch with renovated lockers, while a comparable branch left unchanged stayed flat over the same months, so a citywide trend cannot account for the climb, and the renovation better explains it. The choice ties the rise to the renovation without calling it the sole cause. (A) asserts a citywide rise, but the unchanged branch was flat. (B) credits a membership-rate cut the passage never mentions. (C) invents a competing gym's closure that appears nowhere in the text; the evidence is the contrast between the renovated and unchanged branches.