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Medical College Admission Test: Verbal Reasoning, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Writing Sample (Page 24 )

Updated On: 13-Sep-2026
Page 24 of 164
PDF with 811 Questions

The anthropomorphic bias of those who would relegate marsupials to an inferior evolutionary status is most apparent in their recourse to data on brain structure and behavior. Unlike humans and other placentals, marsupials lack the corpus callosum, which facilitates inter-hemisphere transfer of data acquired through the senses. Yet it cannot be inferred that marsupials are thus deprived of such function. Didelphis Virginiana, one of the opossums, makes use of the anterior commissure, an adaptation that is also found in reptiles and monotremes. Diprodontons, including kangaroos and koalas, supplement the anterior commissure with the fasciculus aberrans. While the modes of neocortical interconnection may be diverse, the work of Johnson, Heath and Jones points to the conclusion that, functionally speaking the cortices and neocortices of both groups of mammals exhibit parallel connections. Parker also notes "a similar range of brain size to body weight ratios and of neocortical expansion".
Another stigma borne by marsupials is the consensus that they are less intelligent than placentals. Yet Williams argues that, all else being equal, natural selection will favor instinctive over learned behavior as being more biologically efficient and that it is the accidental death of the young that is the prime selective pressure for the evolution of intelligence. Seen in this light, marsupials have a competitive edge; their gestation period is brief and the young remain in the pouch for an extended period exposed only to those dangers which also affect the mother. There they are directly exposed to the mother's food supply and can observe her behavior at leisure. Placentals, on the other hand, not only have a longer gestation period but, once their young are born, must often leave while foraging. Such absences increase the risk of mortality and decrease the opportunity to learn. Thus, among placentals, selection would favor the apparent intelligence in the young and protective behavior in the mother.
Marsupials are not known to exhibit maternal protective behavior. In fact, Serventy has reported that frightened female kangaroos will drop their pouch-young as they flee, drawing a predator's attention to the less able offspring while the adult escapes. This behavior, whether purposeful or accidental, instantaneously relieves the female marsupial of the mechanical difficulties of pregnancy with which her placental counterpart would be burdened, while marsupials can replace any lost young quickly. Thus, in the absence of any need for close maternal supervision, sacrificing their offspring in this manner may well have been favored in selection. Pointing to the absence of the "virtue" of maternal protectiveness in marsupials is an instance of how mistaken are those theorists who see similarities with humans as marks of evolutionary sophistication.
The author uses the word "virtue" (line 48) in order to:

  1. remind the reader that the word has specialized connotation in this context.
  2. ridicule the thinkers whom she is attacking in her conclusion.
  3. introduce the idea that moral concepts can be applied only to humans.
  4. indicate that the term reflects a mode of thinking with which she disagrees.

Answer(s): D

Explanation:

Often the use of quotation marks when they're not setting off a specialized term has an ironic intent. The context should tell us here that choice D is what we're after. Notice that the author says in this sentence that pointing out the absence of this virtue is an instance of how mistaken some people can be.
Choice A is incorrect as the author sees no specific or special connotation of the word in this application.
Choice B vastly overstates its case: "ridicule" implies too strong and negative a tone to attribute to the author.
Choice C characterizes the thoughts of the author too generally and does not address the question posed in the stem.



The anthropomorphic bias of those who would relegate marsupials to an inferior evolutionary status is most apparent in their recourse to data on brain structure and behavior. Unlike humans and other placentals, marsupials lack the corpus callosum, which facilitates inter-hemisphere transfer of data acquired through the senses. Yet it cannot be inferred that marsupials are thus deprived of such function. Didelphis Virginiana, one of the opossums, makes use of the anterior commissure, an adaptation that is also found in reptiles and monotremes. Diprodontons, including kangaroos and koalas, supplement the anterior commissure with the fasciculus aberrans. While the modes of neocortical interconnection may be diverse, the work of Johnson, Heath and Jones points to the conclusion that, functionally speaking the cortices and neocortices of both groups of mammals exhibit parallel connections. Parker also notes "a similar range of brain size to body weight ratios and of neocortical expansion".
Another stigma borne by marsupials is the consensus that they are less intelligent than placentals. Yet Williams argues that, all else being equal, natural selection will favor instinctive over learned behavior as being more biologically efficient and that it is the accidental death of the young that is the prime selective pressure for the evolution of intelligence. Seen in this light, marsupials have a competitive edge; their gestation period is brief and the young remain in the pouch for an extended period exposed only to those dangers which also affect the mother. There they are directly exposed to the mother's food supply and can observe her behavior at leisure. Placentals, on the other hand, not only have a longer gestation period but, once their young are born, must often leave while foraging. Such absences increase the risk of mortality and decrease the opportunity to learn. Thus, among placentals, selection would favor the apparent intelligence in the young and protective behavior in the mother.
Marsupials are not known to exhibit maternal protective behavior. In fact, Serventy has reported that frightened female kangaroos will drop their pouch-young as they flee, drawing a predator's attention to the less able offspring while the adult escapes. This behavior, whether purposeful or accidental, instantaneously relieves the female marsupial of the mechanical difficulties of pregnancy with which her placental counterpart would be burdened, while marsupials can replace any lost young quickly. Thus, in the absence of any need for close maternal supervision, sacrificing their offspring in this manner may well have been favored in selection. Pointing to the absence of the "virtue" of maternal protectiveness in marsupials is an instance of how mistaken are those theorists who see similarities with humans as marks of evolutionary sophistication.
With which of the following statements would the author be most likely to agree?

  1. Maternal protectiveness is a trait common to all higher mammals.
  2. Any physical or behavioral trait in animals should be evaluated primarily in terms of its contribution to species survival.
  3. Current conceptions of evolution must be modified to account for new data.
  4. Evolution is a progressive process culminating in the dominance of learned over instinctive behavior.

Answer(s): B

Explanation:

Choice A is incorrect because throughout the passage the author questions the concept of which mammals are higher and which are lower.
Choice C is much too broad: just what the current concepts of evolution might be is very unclear from the passage. Also, the use of the phrase "new data" is off key here; there is no indication that any of the work the author cites is new.
Choice D is a little easier to eliminate, as this is the very attitude that the author is against. This idea would lead, naturally, to the conclusion that placentals are more advanced than marsupials.
Choice B is supported by the author's discussion of the marsupial's lack of maternal instinct. Thus, by process of elimination alone, choice B is our correct answer choice.
Kaplan Strategy: When you are in doubt, use the process of elimination to keep your thinking patterns clear.



The anthropomorphic bias of those who would relegate marsupials to an inferior evolutionary status is most apparent in their recourse to data on brain structure and behavior. Unlike humans and other placentals, marsupials lack the corpus callosum, which facilitates inter-hemisphere transfer of data acquired through the senses. Yet it cannot be inferred that marsupials are thus deprived of such function. Didelphis Virginiana, one of the opossums, makes use of the anterior commissure, an adaptation that is also found in reptiles and monotremes. Diprodontons, including kangaroos and koalas, supplement the anterior commissure with the fasciculus aberrans. While the modes of neocortical interconnection may be diverse, the work of Johnson, Heath and Jones points to the conclusion that, functionally speaking the cortices and neocortices of both groups of mammals exhibit parallel connections. Parker also notes "a similar range of brain size to body weight ratios and of neocortical expansion".
Another stigma borne by marsupials is the consensus that they are less intelligent than placentals. Yet Williams argues that, all else being equal, natural selection will favor instinctive over learned behavior as being more biologically efficient and that it is the accidental death of the young that is the prime selective pressure for the evolution of intelligence. Seen in this light, marsupials have a competitive edge; their gestation period is brief and the young remain in the pouch for an extended period exposed only to those dangers which also affect the mother. There they are directly exposed to the mother's food supply and can observe her behavior at leisure. Placentals, on the other hand, not only have a longer gestation period but, once their young are born, must often leave while foraging. Such absences increase the risk of mortality and decrease the opportunity to learn. Thus, among placentals, selection would favor the apparent intelligence in the young and protective behavior in the mother.
Marsupials are not known to exhibit maternal protective behavior. In fact, Serventy has reported that frightened female kangaroos will drop their pouch-young as they flee, drawing a predator's attention to the less able offspring while the adult escapes. This behavior, whether purposeful or accidental, instantaneously relieves the female marsupial of the mechanical difficulties of pregnancy with which her placental counterpart would be burdened, while marsupials can replace any lost young quickly. Thus, in the absence of any need for close maternal supervision, sacrificing their offspring in this manner may well have been favored in selection. Pointing to the absence of the "virtue" of maternal protectiveness in marsupials is an instance of how mistaken are those theorists who see similarities with humans as marks of evolutionary sophistication.
According to the passage, similarities between marsupials and placentals will most likely be found in:

  1. brain function.
  2. brain anatomy.
  3. maternal behavior.
  4. selection for intelligence.

Answer(s): A

Explanation:

The information that enables us to answer this question correctly is found in the introductory paragraph. Choice A is justified by the discussion in the second to last sentence of that paragraph, in which the author tells us that, functionally speaking, there are parallel connections in the brains of both groups of mammals. Choice B should be easy to eliminate, as the precise opposite point is made in paragraph one. As for choice C, there are differences in maternal behavior that are discussed in the final paragraph. Placentals are protective of their young, while marsupials are not. Choice D is incorrect since it applies only to placental animals. The author implies in the passage that marsupials don't need to get smart.



By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado", as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher- education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." Los Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.
The central purpose of this passage is to:

  1. ascribe California's economic and social problems to a set of measurable factors.
  2. sketch the myriad difficulties facing California today.
  3. contrast California's economic and social problems with those of other states.
  4. to dispute the contention that California's problems were caused by the federal government.

Answer(s): B

Explanation:

The passage provides a general overview of some of the problems that have developed in California.
Choice A is incorrect because the passage doesn't enter a deep analysis of the cause of these problems and never mentions any measurable factors leading to the problems.
Choice C is incorrect because although the passage mentions that other states have comparable university tuitions (line 32) and that California has the lowest bond rating (line 48), the primary concern of the passage is not to contrast California's problems with those of other states. Rather, the passage highlights the state of decline in which California now exists as compared to its sunny past.
The final paragraph indicates that the author may examine causes other than the Federal Government or illegal immigrants; however, the passage as a whole is a general overview of existing problems in the state. Thus, choice D is incorrect.



By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado," as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher- education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next
year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." Los Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.
Why does the author mention Governor Wilson's opinions in paragraph seven?

  1. He wishes to underscore the economic plight that California has been submerged in through federal policy.
  2. He wants to highlight a point of view with which he will disagree.
  3. He is portraying California's plight as a natural result of unfortunate circumstances.
  4. He wishes to show that California's governor is as guilty as any other party in the demise of California's economy.

Answer(s): B

Explanation:

An astute reader should immediately pick up on the tone of paragraph seven by its opening sentence. "If you believe people like Governor Wilson" The author mentions Governor Wilson in a sarcastic and disparaging tone in paragraph 7 and immediately disagrees with him in paragraph 8, writing, "...California's trouble is...more complex than the political rhetoric claims." Even in paragraph 7, the use of words like "denial" and "self- deception" indicate that the author does not agree with Governor Wilson.
A is incorrect because the author immediately disagrees with these opinions in paragraph 8.

C: In the final sentence of the passage, the author claims that "a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us..." The author does not portray the problems as a natural result of unfortunate circumstances.
D Although the author does not agree with Governor Wilson's opinion, he does not lay the blame for California's problems on the Governor.



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