Time—35 minutes

25 Questions

Directions： The questions in this section are based on the reasoning contained in brief statements or passages. For some questions, more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question. However, you are to choose the best answer； that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question. You should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible, superfluous, or incompatible with the passage. After you have chosen the best answer, blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.

1. Of all of the surgeons practicing at the city hospital, the chief surgeon has the worst record in terms of the percentage of his patients who die either during or immediately following an operation performed by him. Paradoxically, the hospital's administrators claim that he is the best surgeon currently working at the hospital.

Which one of the following, if true, goes farthest toward showing that the administrators' claim and the statistic cited might both be correct？

（A） Since the hospital administrators appoint the chief surgeon, the administrators are strongly motivated to depict the chief surgeon they have chosen as a wise choice.

（B） In appointing the current chief surgeon, the hospital administrators followed the practice, well established at the city hospital, of promoting one of the surgeons already on staff.

（C） Some of the younger surgeons on the city hospital's staff received part of their training from the current chief surgeon.

（D） At the city hospital those operations that inherently entail the greatest risk to the life of the patient are generally performed by the chief surgeon.

（E） The current chief surgeon has a better record of patients' surviving surgery than did his immediate predecessor.

2. Between 1971 and 1975, the government office that monitors drug companies issued an average of 60 citations a year for serious violations of drug-promotion laws. Between 1976 and 1980, the annual average for issuance of such citations was only 5. This decrease indicates that the government office was, on average, considerably more lax in enforcing drug-promotion laws between 1976 and 1980 than it was between 1971 and 1975.

The argument assumes which one of the following？

（A） The decrease in the number of citations was not caused by a decrease in drug companies violations of drug-promotion laws.

（B） A change in enforcement of drug-promotion laws did not apply to minor violations.

（C） The enforcement of drug-promotion laws changed in response to political pressure.

（D） The government office should not issue more than an average of 5 citations a year to drug companies for serious violations of drug-promotion laws.

（E） Before 1971 the government office issued more than 60 citations a year to drug companies for serious violations of drug-promotion laws.

3. Sheila： Health experts generally agree that smoking a tobacco product for many years is very likely to be harmful to the smoker's health.

Tim： On the contrary, smoking has no effect on health at all： although my grandfather smoked three cigars a day from the age of fourteen, he died at age ninety-six.

A major weakness of Tim's counterargument is that his counterargument

（A） attempts to refute a probabilistic conclusion by claiming the existence of a single counterexample

（B） challenges expert opinion on the basis of specific information unavailable to experts in the field

（C） describes an individual case that is explicitly discounted as an exception to the experts' conclusion

（D） presupposes that longevity and health status are unrelated to each other in the general population

（E） tacitly assumes that those health experts who are in agreement on this issue arrived at that agreement independently of one another

4. The case of the French Revolution is typically regarded as the best evidence for the claim that societies can reap more benefit than harm from a revolution. But even the French Revolution serves this role poorly, since France at the time of the Revolution had a unique advantage. Despite the Revolution, the same civil servants and functionaries remained in office, carrying on the day-to-day work of government, and thus many of the disruptions that revolutions normally bring were avoided.

Which one of the following most accurately characterizes the argumentative strategy used in the passage？

（A） demonstrating that the claim argued against is internally inconsistent

（B） supporting a particular position on the basis of general principles

（C） opposing a claim by undermining evidence offered in support of that claim

（D） justifying a view through the use of a series of persuasive examples

（E） comparing two positions in order to illustrate their relative strengths and weaknesses

5. A person can develop or outgrow asthma at any age. In children under ten, asthma is twice as likely to develop in boys. Boys are less likely than girls to outgrow asthma, yet by adolescence the percentage of boys with asthma is about the same as the percentage of girls with asthma because a large number of girls develop asthma in early adolescence.

Assuming the truth of the passage, one can conclude from it that the number of adolescent boys with asthma is approximately equal to the number of adolescent girls with asthma, if one also knows that

（A） a tendency toward asthma is often inherited

（B） children who develop asthma before two years of age are unlikely to outgrow it

（C） there are approximately equal numbers of adolescent boys and adolescent girls in the population

（D） the development of asthma in childhood is not closely related to climate or environment

（E） the percentage of adults with asthma is lower than the percentage of adolescents with asthma