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Test Prep PSAT Exam Questions
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Updated On: Sep 27, 2024
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Question 1
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George Washington served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and was then elected
President of the United States in 1789. This is from his first address to Congress.
Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present
station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to the Almighty
Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can
supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of
the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every
instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In
tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses
your sentiments not less than my own; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large, less than either. No people can
be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men, more than the
people of the United States.
Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been
distinguished by some token of providential agency. And, in the important revolution just accomplished in the
system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct
communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most
governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude along with a humble anticipation of
the future blessings which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have
forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there
are none, under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously
commence.
By the article establishing the executive department, it is made the duty of the President “to recommend to your
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The circumstances, under which I
now meet you, will acquit me from entering into that subject farther than to refer you to the great constitutional
charter under which we are assembled; and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with
the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute
that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism, which adorn the characters selected to devise and
adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges, that as, on one side, no local
prejudices or attachments, no separate views or party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal
eye, which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests; so, on another, that the
foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the
preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes, which can win the affections of its
citizens, and command the respect of the world.
The word acquit (3rd line of last paragraph) is used to mean
Answer: C
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George Washington served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and was then elected
President of the United States in 1789. This is from his first address to Congress.
Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present
station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to the Almighty
Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can
supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of
the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every
instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In
tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses
your sentiments not less than my own; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large, less than either. No people can
be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men, more than the
people of the United States.
Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been
distinguished by some token of providential agency. And, in the important revolution just accomplished in the
system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct
communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most
governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude along with a humble anticipation of
the future blessings which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have
forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there
are none, under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously
commence.
By the article establishing the executive department, it is made the duty of the President “to recommend to your
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The circumstances, under which I
now meet you, will acquit me from entering into that subject farther than to refer you to the great constitutional
charter under which we are assembled; and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with
the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute
that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism, which adorn the characters selected to devise and
adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges, that as, on one side, no local
prejudices or attachments, no separate views or party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal
eye, which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests; so, on another, that the
foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the
preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes, which can win the affections of its
citizens, and command the respect of the world.
The word acquit (3rd line of last paragraph) is used to mean
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Question 2
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This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and widerranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It is infused
with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese colony on mainland
China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would be far
less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the emperor than
his contemporaries’.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944 – just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill health;
this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria. When
Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were attacked by the
Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees, desperate for food. Many
unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time, Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group of
avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting black
humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he mimeographed
fifty copies of his first “published” literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It was a politically charged
set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in Manchuria. Shortly thereafter,
he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which imagined another life for his best friend
who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the Communist Party, organizing literary groups
for workingmen. Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in Japan. In
early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he published the work
that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director Teshigahara Hiroshi’s film
adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe’s work to the international stage. The movie’s fame has
wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe’s masterpiece. It would be more accurate to say that the novel
simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away from the experimental and heavily political
work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to furusato and the emperor after all, but rather
began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation.
Not completely a stranger to his earlier commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the
sixties, to the effects on the individual of Japan’s rapidly urbanizing, growthdriven, increasingly corporate
society.
Which of the following does the passage present as a fact?
Answer: C
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This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and widerranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It is infused
with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese colony on mainland
China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would be far
less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the emperor than
his contemporaries’.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944 – just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill health;
this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria. When
Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were attacked by the
Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees, desperate for food. Many
unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time, Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group of
avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting black
humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he mimeographed
fifty copies of his first “published” literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It was a politically charged
set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in Manchuria. Shortly thereafter,
he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which imagined another life for his best friend
who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the Communist Party, organizing literary groups
for workingmen. Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in Japan. In
early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he published the work
that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director Teshigahara Hiroshi’s film
adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe’s work to the international stage. The movie’s fame has
wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe’s masterpiece. It would be more accurate to say that the novel
simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away from the experimental and heavily political
work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to furusato and the emperor after all, but rather
began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation.
Not completely a stranger to his earlier commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the
sixties, to the effects on the individual of Japan’s rapidly urbanizing, growthdriven, increasingly corporate
society.
Which of the following does the passage present as a fact?
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Question 3
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The complex argument had a number of __________ upon which it was based.
Answer: A
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The complex argument had a number of __________ upon which it was based.
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Question 4
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Expand the expression:
(x3 – 4x)(6 + 12x2)
Answer: A
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Expand the expression:
(x3 – 4x)(6 + 12x2)
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Question 5
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The next morning a message came from Lady Berrick, to say that she would see her nephew after breakfast.
Left by myself, I walked toward the pier, and met with a man who asked me to hire his boat. He had lines and
bait, at my service. Most unfortunately, as the event proved, I decided on occupying an hour or two by sea
fishing.
The wind shifted while we were out, and before we could get back to the harbor, the tide had turned against us.
It was six o’clock when I arrived at the hotel. A little open carriage was waiting at the door. I found Romayne
impatiently expecting me, and no signs of dinner on the table. He informed me that he had accepted an
invitation, in which I was included, and promised to explain everything in the carriage. Our driver took the road
that led toward the High Town. I subordinated my curiosity to my sense of politeness, and asked for news of his
aunt’s health
In context, the word “subordinated” (at the end of the passage) most nearly means
Answer: A
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The next morning a message came from Lady Berrick, to say that she would see her nephew after breakfast.
Left by myself, I walked toward the pier, and met with a man who asked me to hire his boat. He had lines and
bait, at my service. Most unfortunately, as the event proved, I decided on occupying an hour or two by sea
fishing.
The wind shifted while we were out, and before we could get back to the harbor, the tide had turned against us.
It was six o’clock when I arrived at the hotel. A little open carriage was waiting at the door. I found Romayne
impatiently expecting me, and no signs of dinner on the table. He informed me that he had accepted an
invitation, in which I was included, and promised to explain everything in the carriage. Our driver took the road
that led toward the High Town. I subordinated my curiosity to my sense of politeness, and asked for news of his
aunt’s health
In context, the word “subordinated” (at the end of the passage) most nearly means