GRE questions

Maths:

1.A university admitted 100 students who transferred from other institutions.Of these students, 34

transferred from two year community colleges, 25 transferred from private four year institutions

and rest transferred from public four year institutions. If two different students are to be selected

at random from 100 students, what is the probability that both students selected will be students

from two year community colleges? Give your answer in fraction.

2. Each employee of a certain company is in either Department X or Department Y, and there are

more than twice as many employees in Department X as in Department Y. The average

(arithmetic mean) salary is $25,000 for the employees in Department X and $35,000 for the

employees in Department Y. Which of the following amounts could be the average salary for all

of the employees of the company?

Indicate all such amounts.

A. $26,000

B. $28,000

C. $29,000

D. $30,000

E. $31,000

F. $32,000

G.$34,000

Verbal:

1.The corporation expects only _______ increases in sales next year despite a yearlong effort to

revive its retailing business.

A. dynamic

B. predictable

C. expanding

D. modest

E. slight

F. volatile

2.It is refreshing to read a book about our planet by an author who does not allow facts to be

(1)__________ by politics: well aware of the political disputes about the effects of human

activities on climate and biodiversity, this author does not permit them to (2)__________ his

comprehensive description of what we know about our biosphere. He emphasizes the enormous

gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations, and the (3)__________, calling

attention to the many aspects of planetary evolution that must be better understood before we can

accurately diagnose the condition of our planet.

Blank 1 Blank 2 Blank3

Overshadowed enhance plausibility of our hypotheses

Illuminated obscure certainty of our entitlement

Invalidated underscore superficiality of our theories

Passages:

1) Reviving the practice of using elements of popular music in classical composition, an

approach that had been in hibernation in the United States during the 1960s, composer Philip

Glass (born 1937) embraced the ethos of popular music in his compositions. Glass based two

symphonies on music by rock musicians David Bowie and Brian Eno, but the symphonies’ sound

is distinctively his. Popular elements do not appear out of place in Glass’s classical music, which

from its early days has shared certain harmonies and rhythms with rock music. Yet this use of

popular elements has not made Glass a composer of popular music. His music is not a version of

popular music packaged to attract classical listeners; it is high art for listeners steeped in rock

rather than the classics.

1.The passage addresses which of the following issues related to Glass’s use of popular elements

in his classical compositions?

A. How it is regarded by listeners who prefer rock to the classics

B. How it has affected the commercial success of Glass’s music

C. Whether it has contributed to a revival of interest among other composers in using popular

elements in their compositions

D. Whether it has had a detrimental effect on Glass’s reputation as a composer of classical music

E. Whether it has caused certain of Glass’s works to be derivative in quality

2.The passage suggests that Glass’s work displays which of the following qualities?

A. A return to the use of popular music in classical compositions

B. An attempt to elevate rock music to an artistic status more closely approximating that of

classical music

C. A long-standing tendency to incorporate elements from two apparently disparate musical

styles

3.Select the sentence that distinguishes two ways of integrating rock and classical music.

2) A study based on a year-long analysis of data from an extensive mobile phone network has

produced interesting information that might be of use to epidemiologists and social scientists.

The data, according to the researchers, might shed light, for example on how diseases and

information (or rumors) are transmitted through social networks.

Researchers ranked the link between a pair of phone users on the basis of the total time

spent talking to each other. ‘Strong’ links exist between members of a close social group.

‘Weak’ links tend to be more long range and join individuals from different social groups.

The researchers observed a dramatically different effect when they removed

links in the network in rank order, depending on whether they removed links starting with the

strongest or with the weakest. To their surprise, removing the strong links first had little effect

on the overall structure of the network. But removing weak links first split the network into a

series of unconnected islands, with individual users linked to a small collection of other phone

users.

Thus the researchers have hypothesized that the weak links(the more tenuous connections

between individuals from different social groups) might be very important in maintaining wider

social cohesion. If you lose contact with casual acquaintances you may fragment your social

circle, but if you stop talking to your brother there might be less visible impact on the structure of

your social network.

1. The passage offers support for which of the following positions?

A. ‘Weak’ links are more important than ‘strong’ links

B. Links between family members would be likely to be disrupted by terminating ‘weak’ links

C. Some people believe that phone-network patterns could be useful to social scientists

D. Information transmission through phone networks is essentially the same as information

transmission through face-to-face contact

E. The ‘strong’ links are between geographically close individuals

2. In the last sentence the author apparently intends to

A. make the ideas more specific to enhance the reader’s understanding

B. reinforce the researchers’ conclusions

C. provide a practical illustration of the meaning of a strong link

D. generalize the argument to make it more appealing

E. concretize an argument about the usefulness of the current research

3. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A. The researchers had not anticipated the specific effects of removing weak links

B. The phone-network studied had the same number of users throughout the study

C. The phone users were unaware of the study

#PrepCorner