GRE Admission Tests GRE General Test Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

Because ii has usually been impossible to_________exotic species once they have become established, it is prudent to minimize the introduction of such species that have a substantial probability of unwanted impacts.

While prudence is recognized as a kind of virtue, there is nonetheless a tendency to view someone who is prudent as. in some sense._________. too narrow and dull to partake of spontaneously arising opportunities.

Robert Philip argues that the advent of recorded music has directed performance style into a search for greater precision and perfection, with a consequent loss of spontaneity and warmth. Various expressive devices once common in classical music have been almost outlawed, including portamento (sliding from one note to another on a stringed instrument), playing the piano with the hands not quite synchronized, and flexibility of tempo. Philip fully documents these changes. However, other forces independent of recording were also at work. For example, the freedom of tempo so valued by Philip was. in its time, both a necessary expedient and disastrously abused. Recording alone did not cause the reaction against it. although hearing a particularly unintelligent use of it on disc may have reinforced the prejudice.

Hie author would most likely agree with which of the following statements about the "devices"?

Recently, we have seen the emergence of the food movement, or perhaps we should say "movements." since it is

(i)_________as yet by little more than the recognition that industrial food production is in need of reform because its

social or environmental or public health or animal welfare or gastronomic costs are too high. As that list suggests, the

activists are coming at the issue (ii)_________. Where many social movements, over time, break into various factions

representing differing concerns or tactics, the food movement has been (iii)_________from its beginning.

One difficulty in convincing early scientists that craters fanned as a result of impacts from space is that most craters are circular. Impacts could come in at any angle, and experiments firing projectiles in the laboratory show that low-angle impacts lead to elliptical craters, not circular ones. Furthermore, while there was rarely evidence of any impacting object, there was often silicate melt around, suggesting that craters were caused by volcanic processes. The breakthrough in understanding crater origin was the recognition that the shock caused by the impacting object—not the object itself—creates a circular crater some twenty Times larger than the diameter of the impactor. The impact also generates enough heat to largely vaporize the impactor and melt the native rock.

What can be inferred from the passage about the silicate melt found around craters?

Responsibility for the nation's decline rests squarely with a people who take for granted their claims to preeminence but do not_________interest in or commitment to actually maintaining it.

Female Australian Dunaiothhps [small, sap-sucking insects] create tent-like structures on the surface of leaves to protect themselves and their eggs and larvae from desiccation in the arid Australian climate. Bono and Crespi compared survival and reproduction of thrips that founded structures alone with those in groups of two or more individuals. They found that although per capita egg production fell with increasing group size, foundresses were more likely to survive and lay eggs in groups than when alone. Several studies of other species of nest-building insects have concluded that foundress associations are beneficial to all parties. It is likely that the relative success of groups is at least in part accounted for by a reduction of energy use in the modification of a shared nest.

The author mentions "desiccation" primarily to

Like paleontologists who interpret timescales from fossil evidence, we infer the history of star formation in the Milks' Way galaxy from the heavy-element composition of its stars. According to the big bang theory of the origin of the universe, the first gas clouds—and the first generation of stars formed from them—were composed of pure hydrogen and helium; most heavier elements— iron and calcium, for example—came later, created by explosions of supernovas, massive stars in their death thaws. Loaded with heavy elements, material ejected from supernovas enriched the interstellar gas clouds from which the next generation of stars formed, the level of heavy elements increasing with succeeding generations. Because most stars live for many billions of years and because the Milky Way is thus composed of multiple stellar generations, comparing the number of stars of low heavy-element abundance with those of high heavy-element abundance enables astronomers to untangle the history of star formation in the Milky Way.

The passage implies that if a star contains calcium, then the

The movie has a surfeit of inscrutable characters and tortuous subplots, so it is no surprise that viewers leaving the recent screening appeared_________-

Iii recent years ii has become common for industrial workers who do heavy lifting to wear special wide leather belts that are advertised as reducing back strain. However, physiologists doubt that these belts actually reduce back strain. In fact the belts must put additional strain on the back, since records of injuries to industrial workers show that people wearing the belts were significantly more likely to suffer a back injury than were others doing the same job.

Which of die following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

When applied to written records, the word "preservation" is fraught with multiple meanings and connotations For some archivists, preservation involves the attempt to save artifacts from physical deterioration and is synonymous with the conservation of original documents. For archivists with a contrary view the overriding obligation is to save intellectual content through the use of surrogates. Thus the original earners of information are seen as superfluous and consequently disposable The practice of microfilming old newspapers and discarding the originals is one example of such preservation. On yet another level, preservation considers whether limited storage space should be allotted indefinitely to materials that are rarely consulted or whether certain items are so peripheral to current interests that they should be discarded altogether to ensure a home for more-pert inent materials.

It can be inferred that which of the following approaches to preservation would be unacceptable to "some archivists: but acceptable to the archivists with a contrary views as the two groups positions are described in the passage?

The highly dispersed nature of Panzaleo pottery throughout present-day Ecuador has led archaeologists to speculate about the pottery's origins and significance. Jijon y Caamano attributed the pottery's distribution to trade, and based on the large quantities of pottery recovered in the Ambato-Latacunga region of the central Ecuadorian highlands, he proposed that region as the probable locus of production. However. Porras suggests that inhabitants of the subtropical eastern Andean slopes, or montafta, were the original producers of Panzaleo. Porras: theory involves the forced migration of the montaria population from their homeland in the Quijos River valley into the Ecuadorian highlands. The gradual exodus and ensuing dispersal of the makers of this ware could account for the diffuse distribution of the materials.

The passage cites evidence supporting which of the following hypotheses?

Female Korean shellfish divers, known as haemyeo. are (i)_________the (ii)_________the international seafood market: since they export most of their products, even consistent harvests translate into unreliable earnings.

When Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck moved to England in 1632 to become court painter to Charles The introduced an entirely new way of representing dress in portraiture. In women's portraits. he left off fashionable accessories, depicted subjects in unbuttoned sleeves and collars, and added lavish drapery and jewels. For the first time an artist actively participated in dressing his subjects, creating an amalgam of fantasy and reality. While Van Dyck was most innovative when representing women, he used similar elements in portraits of men.

Van Dyck's Portrait of Thomas Killigrew and Willian. Lord Crofts (1638) demonstrates how the artist relaxed and unbuttoned men's dress to accord with an underlying theme. The double portrait may be seen as an essay in grief: Killigrew. a poet and playwright, had lost his wife Cecelia to the plague shortly before the sitting, and Crofts was her nephew. The painting contains clear references to the situation at hand. The background features a broken column, a traditional emblem of earthly transience. A drawing in Killigrew's right hand depicts two Itinerary monuments. Crofts holds a blank sheet of paper, seen by some scholars as an analog to the drawing Killigrew holds: a symbol of what is gone.

At historians have interpreted the clothing depicted in this portrait, particularly Crofts' doublet which is worn unbuttoned in back, as an allusion to the subjects' grief-stricken distraction. It is true that Killigrew's dress includes references to his loss—he wears a cross inscribed with his wife's initials. There is an intimate nature to this painting, which seems underscored by the loose clothing worn by both subjects. However, diis reading of the costumes as signs of grief does not take account of seventeenth-century fashion conventions. Only Killigrew appears in noticeably disheveled attire;

Crofts" dress would be quite appropriate for a formal portrait. Though black clothing, such as that won by Crofil, was common for mourning, it was also ordinary on other occasions. Furthermore, during the first stage of mounting no shiny surfaces, such as Crofts' satin doublet, would be permitted. The unbuttoned slit on Crofts" doublet was probably a matter of style: a French courtier in a 1635 fashion print by Bosse. who is gallivanting rather than grieving, wears a similarly undone doublet. Evidence suggests that by the late 1630s a certain calculated looseness was conventional in men's formal dress. Ribeiro. for example, cites the writings of moralists objecting to this style.

Killigrew's attire, though even looser than Crofts", should not necessarily be associated with grief. Other seventeenth-century subjects depicted in melancholic states do not dress this way. Although Killigrew's "undress" lends this portrait a distinctive intimacy, it might also refer to Killigrew's literary career. Many of Van Dyck's other subjects who engaged in literary pursuits are depicted in loose clothing. The blank sheet held by Crofts may be a reminder not only of Killigrew's loss but also of his solace: he had but to express his grief in writing.

The author of the passage suggests that if the cited "art historians" had taken account of seventeenth-century fashion, they would have been more likely to

Though the ant colonies of fable and film often are invested with the hierarchical organization characteristic of human societies, a real ant colony operates without_________.

In 1755 British writer Samuel Johnson published an acerbic letter to Lord Chesterfield rebuking his patron for neglect and declining further support. Johnson's rejection of his patron's belated assistance has often been identified as a key moment in the history of publishing, marking the end of the culture of patronage. However, patronage had been in decline for 50 years, yet would survive, in attenuated form, for another 50. Indeed. Johnson was in 1762 awarded a pension by the Crown—a subtle form of sponsorship, tantamount to state patronage. The importance of Johnson's letter is not so much historical as emotional: it would become a touchstone for all who repudiated patrons and for all who embraced the laws of the marketplace.

The author of the passage mentions Johnson's 1762 pension award in order to

A divide between aesthetic and technical considerations has played a crucial role in mapmaking and cartographic scholarship. Some nineteenth-century cartographers, for instance, understood themselves as technicians who did not care about visual effects, while others saw themselves as landscape painters. That dichotomy structured the discipline of the history of cartography. Until the 1980s, in what Blakemore and Harley called "the 'Old is Beautiful' paradigm.* scholars largely focused on maps made before 1800. marveling at their beauty and sometimes regretting the decline of the pre-technical age. Early mapmaking was considered art while modem cartography was located within the realm of engineering utility. Alpers. however, has argued that this boundary would have puzzled mapmakers in the seventeenth century, because they considered themselves to be visual engineers.

According to the passage. Alpers would say that the assumptions underlying the "paradigm" were

As decorated a nmntr as Shalane Flanagan is. perliaps her greater accomplishment lies in_________the rising talent around her: all of her training partners—11 women in total—have qualified for the Olympics.

Scientists have recently confirmed that Mercury possesses a lot of ice._________discovery for a place that ranks among the hottest in the solar system.