SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective SAT Strategies Ever Published (13 page)

Second, t
he phrase “visual arts” doesn’t fit with the author’s explanation of what it means to be a “Renaissance artist.” The author says that being such an artist involves writing, painting, composing, and inventing; from that list, only painting is a “visual art.” So the desire to be a Renaissance artist must involve more than the desire to devote oneself to the “visual arts.”

(C) ends up being correct because of the
parenthetical phrase “too seriously!” in the original text. We have to read really carefully here, and we have to be somewhat aware of the meanings of the words “naïve” and “grandiose” (or we have to be able to realize that the other four choices don’t work). People often think “naïve” can only mean “inexperienced,” but it can also mean something along the lines of “sincere” or “direct.” This goes with the idea of being “serious.” The word “grandiose” in this context indicates that someone has an exaggerated sense of his own abilities or importance, and the word “too” in the text before “seriously” indicates that the author considers his youthful commitment to have been excessive.

Finally, the word “ambition” from the answer choices goes with the part of the text that says the author “wanted to be a Renaissance artist.” Remember that the College Board wants us to treat ideas stated in succession as though they were synonyms, so the author’s statement about wanting to be an artist can be taken into consideration for this question.

It’s subtle, but it’s there: the phrase “too seriously!” matches with the words “naïve and grandiose,” and the word “ambition” matches with the phrase “I wanted to be.”

Remember, as always, that it’s absolutely critical to pay attention to details in answer choices and in the relevant parts of the text!

This question often seems weird to students because they have a hard time seeing how a “monster” can be a “process.” But we have to remember that answering these questions is always
a matter of seeing exactly what’s in the text, and the text here says that “everything . . . issues . . . from a benign monster called manufacture,” which means the “benign monster” is the source of “everything.” (The verb “to issue from” means “to come from” in this case.) So the text says that everything comes from this “benign monster,” which is why (C) is right when it says we’re talking about the process by which these goods come into existence.

This is one of the best questions in the entire Blue Book when it comes to demonstrating the various ways that the College Board can make an answer choice wrong even though it might sound like an intelligent analysis of the text.

The correct answer here is (C). The word “insights” goes with “penetrating intuition;” the word “character” goes with “female heart” (“heart” is meant in the sense of “core” or “essence,” not in the anatomical sense); the phrase “in his everyday life” goes with “the real man.”
The text says that people who were drawn to him because of his insight into people’s hearts were surprised that the real man was actually insensitive; the answer choice says that Balzac’s knowledge of character wasn’t present in his everyday life.

Now let’s talk about a couple of the wrong answers, and what makes them wrong. Pay special attention here, because this question has some uniquely frustrating wrong answers.

(A) is basically the opposite of the text—the text says that female readers were drawn to him.

(B) is basically the
opposite of an earlier part of the text. Line 2 says Balzac’s fiction was “financially wise.”

(C) is correct.

(D) is fairly close to the text, but doesn’t repeat it exactly. The text says that people who knew “the real man” were “appalled to discover” how he was, and that seems pretty close to the answer choice’s ideas of knowing him “personally” and not being able to “respect him.” The problem here is the phrase “as an artist,” which isn’t reflected in the text. It might feel like a natural assumption to think that being appalled by someone in person would cause you to lose respect for the person as an artist, but we have to remember that the College Board is extremely nit-picky about these kinds of things. We can’t make assumptions when we’re looking for the answers; if it doesn’t specifically mention how people felt about Balzac
as an artist
, then we can’t choose (D).

(E) is probably the sneakiest choice of all. The text definitely says that people were “appalled to discover” how Balzac was, and this choice says that people expected Balzac to be a certain way
. The main problem here is the word “unreasonable”—the text never indicates whether readers were
reasonable
when they expected Balzac to live up to the expectations they formed from reading his work. Remember that a difference of even one word from the text is enough to make an answer choice wrong.

This is yet another example of a question that is extremely, extremely nit-picky. Almost everyone who misses this question chooses (D), because the text says in line 41 that “only the male’s initials” were eventually on the token. But here’s the problem: the question asks about “the seventeenth century,” but line 41 is talking about “the late eighteenth century.” So (D) is restating an idea from the passage that applies to a timeframe different from the one the question asked about. The correct answer is (E), because the text says that “in the . . . seventeenth century, . . . tokens . . . carried the initials of the man’s and woman’s first names and the couple’s surname.” Later, it describes a seventeenth-century woman who “confidently joined in the family . . . business.”

As always
, it’s critical to pay attention to every detail in every answer choice.

So-called “tone” questions
like this are typically answered by finding a phrase in the text that reflects the definition of the correct answer choice. For instance, if (A) were the correct answer here, we’d have to see phrases in the passages like “those wonderful years of the past that will never return,” because that would be an example of “affectionate nostalgia.”

Here, we have a special case: neither text uses any kind of language that betrays any particular tone, so the answer is (B), because being “analytical” and “detached” essentially means that you write with no emotion at all.

Some people see words like “agitating” in line 91 and assume that the correct answer is either (C), which mentions “regret,” or (D), which mentions “indignation.” But there are several problems with this type of thinking, from an SAT standpoint. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, “agitating” for something is not precisely the same thing as feeling “regret” or “indignation.” It’s true that agitation, regret, and indignation are all negative emotions, but they’re not the same as one another. Further, if we read line 91 carefully, we see that the author is not the one doing the agitating; instead, the author is referring to another person’s agitation. The text itself can still maintain an analytical tone even though it’s referring to someone else being agitated.

Students often miss this question because they don’t know all the meanings of the word “authority.” Most people think that the word refers to someone with some kind of official power over others, like a police officer; they might also think it refers to a recognized expert in a field. But the word “authority” can be used in general to refer to anyone who is the source of a quote, idea, influence, et cetera. So (E) basically says “quotes someone.” That’s why it’s correct: the author of passage 1 quotes someone directly, while the author of passage 2 does not.

This question is a great example of how we sometimes have to trace concepts back through the text in order to figure out which answer choice is restating it accurately.

Almost everyone chooses (D) because the word “humorous” seems to fit nicely with “funny,” “good joke,” and “laughed” from the text. But the text also includes the idea of “mak[ing] matters worse,” which seems a little odd if (D) is going to be correct, and might make us read a bit more carefully. Remember that the question is asking how Waverly felt about the advertisement, but the words “funny,” “joke,” and “laughed” are describing how the company at the table reacted to Waverly herself, which is a different thing. Furthermore, even if we accidentally like “humorous,” we have a problem because the word “effective” isn’t reflected anywhere in the text at all.

The correct answer is (A), because of the phrase “not sophisticated” in line 8. But, if you read carefully (and you should be reading carefully!), you’ll notice that the question asks how
Waverly
characterizes the advertisement, but line 8 is a quote from
June’s mother
. Why is that suddenly okay?

It’s okay because the quote from June’s mother comes directly after Waverly’s quote, and it begins with the word “true,” which indicates that June’s mother is agreeing with whatever Waverly just said. So Waverly says what she says, and then the mom says, “true . . . June is not sophisticated.” According to the rules of SAT Reading that we’ve discussed in this book, this means we can equate Waverly’s remark with the idea that June is “not sophisticated.”

That’s why “unsophisticated and heavy-handed” is correct. “Unsophisticated” is a pretty clear restatement of “not sophisticated,” and “heavy-handed” is basically a synonym for “unsophisticated” or for the idea of lacking “style.”

This question is challenging for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it’s one of those questions that ask us to think about an author’s argument, which means the correct answer might technically involve concepts not explicitly stated in the text (for a refresher on those questions, see the article called “Special Cases: Parallelism And Demonstration” earlier in this book). For another thing, the question is basically a double-reversal, because it asks for the answer choice that “detracts least,” which can be confusing for a lot of people.

But, as with any confusing SAT question, the key thing here is to remain calm, read very carefully, and pick our way through each phrase as we come to it.

Since the question asks for the choice that would detract the least from the argument, we should expect to find four wrong answers that all detract from the argument in some way, and one correct answer that does not detract at all. (Don’t be put off by the word “least.” Remember that the College Board deliberately attempts to mislead students by using these kinds of relative terms, but the SAT only has value if each question has exactly one correct answer, and the only way to achieve that is to avoid interpretation and deal in absolutes.)

Now we have to figure out what the argument is that the author is making in the cited lines. In those lines, the author makes a few related points. He says we have a “human need to wake by day and sleep by night.” He
says, “night is when we dream, and . . . reality is warped.” He says, “we are accustomed to mastering our world by day,” but at night we are “vulnerable as prey,” so bats seem to “threaten” our “safety.”

Now let’s take a look at the answer choices. Remember, we’re looking for the one answer choice that does NOT detract from the argument in the text.

(A) does detract, because the argument says that people wake by day and sleep by night, but this choice says that many people do the opposite.

(B) also detracts, because the argument says that things that hunt at night scare us, but this choice says that some things that hunt at night don’t scare us.

(C) also detracts, because the argument says that the night is when we are prey, but this choice says that some dangerous things hunt during the day.

(D) also detracts, because
the entire paragraph is full of references to how “we,” as humans, dislike bats because they are active at night. This choice says that some humans think of bats positively.

(E) is the correct answer because it does NOT detract from the argument—in fact, it’s not really relevant to the argument at all. The original argument does say something about “reality” being “warped” during “dreamtime,” but it doesn’t say anything about where dream imagery comes from. Since the argument doesn’t make any claims about the source of dream imagery, this statement about the source of dream imagery can’t contradict the argument.

I just wanted to touch on this question briefly because students who have used other preparation materials before are often put off by the word “scornful,” which seems extreme to them. (There are some tutors and books that claim that extreme answer choices are never correct on the SAT.)

So I wanted to use this question to point out that we don’t really need to worry about whether answer choices are extreme or not; all that matters is whether they restate ideas from the text. If the text is extreme (and this particular text is quite extreme), then correct answers that describe the text accurately will also have to be extreme. This is why it’s okay for (B) to be correct here.

This question troubles a lot of students. Most of the people who miss it seem to choose (D), because line 49 of the text talks about “manipulators and manipulated, actors and imitators, simulants and simulated, stupefiers and stupefied.” But the text never talks about “blurring the line” between those groups, so (D) doesn’t work. Remember: every part of the answer choice has to be reflected in the original text!