Law School Admission Test: Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, Analytical Reasoning: LSAT-TEST

Several thousand years ago, people in what is now North America began to grow corn, which grows faster and produces more food per unit of land than do the grains these people had grown previously. Corn is less nutritious than those other grains, however, and soon after these people established corn as their staple grain crop, they began having nutrition-related health problems. Yet the people continued to grow corn as their staple grain, although they could have returned to growing the more nutritious grains.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the people mentioned continued to grow corn as their staple grain crop?

A. The variety of corn that the people relied on as their staple grain produced more food than did the ancestors of that variety.

B. Modern varieties of corn are more nutritious than were the varieties grown by people in North America several thousand years ago.

C. The people did not domesticate large animals for meat or milk, either of which could supply nutrients not provided by corn.

D. Some of the grain crops that could have been planted instead of corn required less fertile soil in order to flourish than corn required.

E. The people discovered some years after adopting corn as their staple grain that a diet that supplemented corn with certain readily available non grain foods significantly improved their health.

We are in a new industrial revolution that requires management trainees to develop "action learning" from real experience within business and industry, rather than getting tied up with theory and academia. Business schools seem unable, on their own, to tear themselves away from their largely academic roots and move closer to the realities of today's business and industry; too often, trainees in business schools find themselves studying hypothetical cases instead of real ones. Furthermore, business schools have been slow to respond to the needs of business. Therefore, business schools should allow business executives to set curricula for management trainees that could then be taught by academics.

The argument relies on which one of the following assumptions?

A. Academics in business schools have no practical business experience that is valuable.

B. Academics in business schools deal only with hypothetical situations in their business case studies.

C. Academics are not capable of teaching curricula suitable for relevant management training.

D. Academic training outside of business schools is more responsive to the needs of business than is training within business schools.

E. Today's business executives have valuable insight into business that academics in business schools do not have.

In the sixteenth century, an age of great marine and terrestrial exploration, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the world. As a young Portuguese noble, he served the king of Portugal, but he became involved in the quagmire of political intrigue at court and lost the king's favor. After he was dismissed from service to the king of Portugal, he offered to serve the future Emperor Charles V of Spain. A papal decree of 1493 had assigned all land in the New World west of 50 degrees W longitude to Spain and all the land east of that line to Portugal. Magellan offered to prove that the East Indies fell under Spanish authority. On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain with five ships. More than a year later, one of these ships was exploring the topography of South America in search of a water route across the continent. This ship sank, but the remaining four ships searched along the southern peninsula of South America. Finally they found the passage they sought near a latitude of 50 degrees S. Magellan named this passage the Strait of All Saints, but today we know it as the Strait of Magellan. One ship deserted while in this passage and returned to Spain, so fewer sailors were privileged to gaze at that first panorama of the Pacific Ocean. Those who remained crossed the meridian we now call the International Date Line in the early spring of 1521 after ninety-eight days on the Pacific Ocean. During those long days at sea, many of Magellan's men died of starvation and disease. Later Magellan became involved in an insular conflict in the Philippines and was killed in a tribal battle. Only one ship and seventeen sailors under the command of the Basque navigator Elcano survived to complete the westward journey to Spain and thus prove once and for all that the world is round, with no precipice at the edge.

One of Magellan's ships explored the _______________ of South America for a passage across the continent.

A. coastline

B. mountain range

C. physical features

D. islands

E. none of the above