Admission Test GRE-Verbal : Section One : Verbal

Every year since 1986, some of the world's most daring runners have gathered in the desert of Morocco.
They are there to take part in one of the most difficult races in the world. The Marathon of the Sands, as it
is called, covers over 125 miles of desert and mountain wilderness. The runners complete the course in
fewer than seven days, and they run with their food, clothing, and sleeping bags on their backs. The
Marathon of the Sands was founded in 1986 by Patrick Bauer. His idea was to give the runners, who
come from all over the world, a special kind of adventure. Most of the runners in this race have found that
they form deep friendships with the other runners during their days and nights in the desert. Facing
terrible heat and complete exhaustion, they learn much about themselves and each other. For most of the
runners, though, the challenge of the race is the main reason for coming. On the first day, for example,
they run fifteen miles across a desert of sand, rocks, and thorny bushes. Few runners finish the day
without blistered and raw feet. They also suffer from a lack of water. (They are allowed less than nine
quarts of water during each day of the race.) Most of all, they are exhausted when they arrive at the
campsite for the night. The second day, the runners are up at 6:00 A. M. Within a few hours, it is 100
degrees F, but the runners do not hesitate. They must cover eighteen miles that day. That night, they rest.
They must be ready for the next day's run. On the third day, the runners must climb giant sand dunes- the
first they have faced. Dust and sand mix with the runners' sweat. Soon their faces are caked with mud.
After fifteen miles of these conditions, the runners finally reach their next camp. The race continues like
this for four more days. The fourth and fifth days are the worst. On the fourth day, the runners pass
through a level stretch and a beautiful, tree-filled oasis, but then, on this and on the next day, they cross
more than twenty-one miles of rocks and sand dunes. The temperature soars to 125 degrees F, and many
runners cannot make it. Helicopters rush fallen runners to medical help. Runners who make it to the end
of the fifth day know that the worst is over. On the sixth day, heat and rocks punish the racers terribly. In
the Valley of Dra, the wind picks up and, as the desert heat is thrust against them with great force, they
grow more and more exhausted. The seventh day is the last, with only twelve miles to be covered. The
dusty, tired, blistered runners set out at daybreak. Near the finish line, children race along with the
runners, for everybody has caught the excitement. The ones who have run the whole marathon know they
have accomplished what most people could not even dream of. "During the hard moments," says one
contestant who has raced here twice, "I'd think, 'Why am I here?' Then I'd realize I was there to find my
limits."
What is the main idea of this passage?

• A. Every runner runs the race to find their human limits.
• B. The seventh day is the hardest day of the race.
• C. The Marathon of the Sands race tests the limits of human endurance.
• D. The race causes the strong to stumble and the weak to not finish.
• E. The runners run at their own pace.

SODDEN:

• A. porous
• B. buoyant
• C. parched
• D. billowy
• E. laden

RATIFY : YES

• A. loom:no
• B. eradicate: yes
• C. goad: no
• D. stifle: yes
• E. veto: no

Late Victorian and modern ideas of culture are indebted to Matthew Arnold, who, largely through his
Culture and Anarchy (1869), placed the word at the center of debates about the goals of intellectual life
and humanistic society. Arnold defined culture as "the pursuit of perfection by getting to know the best
which has been thought and said." Through this knowledge, Arnold hoped, we can turn "a fresh and free
thought upon our stock notions and habits." Although Arnold helped to define the purposes of the liberal
arts curriculum in the century following the publication of Culture, three concrete forms of dissent from his
views have had considerable impact of their own. The first protests Arnold's fearful designation of
"anarchy" as culture's enemy, viewing this dichotomy simply as another version of the struggle between a
privileged power structure and radical challenges to its authority. But while Arnold certainly tried to define
the arch-the legitimizing order of value-against the anarch of existentialist democracy, he himself was
plagued in his soul by the blind arrogances of the reactionary powers in his world. The writer who
regarded the contemporary condition with such apprehension in Culture is the poet who wrote "Dover
Beach," not an ideologue rounding up all the usual modern suspects. Another form of opposition saw
Arnold's culture as a perverse perpetuation of classical and literary learning, outlook, and privileges in a
world where science had become the new arch and from which any substantively new order of thinking
must develop. At the center of the "two cultures" debate were the goals of the formal educational
curriculum, the principal vehicle through which Arnoldian culture operates. However, Arnold himself had
viewed culture as enacting its life in a much more broadly conceived set of institutions. A third form is
so-called "multiculturalism," a movement aimed largely at gaining recognition for voices and visions that
Arnoldian culture has implicitly suppressed. In educational practice, multiculturalists are interested in
deflating the imperious authority that "high culture" exercises over curriculum while bringing into play the
principle that we must learn what is representative, for we have overemphasized what is exceptional.
Though the multiculturalists' conflict with Arnoldian culture has clear affinities with the radical critique,
multiculturalism actually affirms Arnold by returning us more specifically to a tension inherent in the idea
of culture rather than to the cultureanarchy dichotomy. The social critics, defenders of science, and
multiculturalists insist that Arnold's culture is simply a device for ordering us about. Instead, however, it is
designed to register the gathering of ideological clouds on the horizon. There is no utopian motive in
Arnold's celebration of perfection. Perfection mattered to Arnold as the only background against which we
could form a just image of our actual circumstances, just as we can conceive finer sunsets and unheard
melodies.
The author's primary concern in the passage is to

• A. trace Arnold's influence on the liberal arts educational curriculum
• B. describe Arnold's conception of culture
• C. argue against those who have opposed Arnold's ideas
• D. explain why Arnold considered the pursuit of perfection to be the essence of culture
• E. examine the different views of culture that have emerged since the eighteenth century

Charles A. Lindbergh is remembered as the first person to make a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic,
in 1927. This feat, when Lindbergh was only twenty-five years old, assured him a lifetime of fame and
public attention. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was more interested in flying airplanes than he was in
studying. He dropped out of the University of Wisconsin after two years to earn a living performing
daredevil airplane stunts at country fairs. Two years later, he joined the United States Army so that he
could go to the Army Air Service flight-training school. After completing his training, he was hired to fly
mail between St. Louis and Chicago. Then came the historic flight across the Atlantic. In 1919, a New
York City hotel owner offered a prize of $25,000 to the first pilot to fly nonstop from New York to Paris.
Nine St. Louis business leaders helped pay for the plane Lindbergh designed especially for the flight.
Lindbergh tested the plane by flying it from San Diego to New York, with an overnight stop in St. Louis.
The flight took only 20 hours and 21 minutes, a transcontinental record. Nine days later, on May 20,1927,
Lindbergh took off from Long Island, New York, at 7:52 A. M. He landed at Paris on May 21 at 10:21 P. M.
He had flown more than 3,600 miles in less than thirty four hours. His flight made news around the world.
He was given awards and parades everywhere he went. He was presented with the U. S. Congressional
Medal of Honor and the first Distinguished Flying Cross. For a long time, Lindbergh toured the world as a
U. S. goodwill ambassador. He met his future wife, Anne Morrow, in Mexico, where her father was the
United States ambassador. During the 1930s, Charles and Anne Lindbergh worked for various airline
companies, charting new commercial air routes. In 1931, for a major airline, they charted a new route from
the east coast of the United States to the Orient. The shortest, most efficient route was a great curve
across Canada, over Alaska, and down to China and Japan. Most pilots familiar with the Arctic did not
believe that such a route was possible. The Lindberghs took on the task of proving that it was. They
arranged for fuel and supplies to be set out along the route. On July 29, they took off from Long Island in a
specially equipped small seaplane. They flew by day and each night landed on a lake or a river and
camped. Near Nome, Alaska, they had their first serious emergency. Out of daylight and nearly out of fuel,
they were forced down in a small ocean inlet. In the next morning's light, they discovered they had landed
on barely three feet of water. On September 19, after two more emergency landings and numerous close
calls, they landed in China with the maps for a safe airline passenger route. Even while actively engaged
as a pioneering flier, Lindbergh was also working as an engineer.
In 1935, he and Dr. Alexis Carrel were given a patent for an artificial heart. During World War I in the
1 940s, Lindbergh served as a civilian technical advisor in aviation. Although he was a civilian, he flew
over fifty combat missions in the Pacific. In the 1950s, Lindbergh helped design the famous 747 jet airliner.
In the late 1960s, he spoke widely on conservation issues. He died August 1974, having lived through
aviation history from the time of the first powered flight to the first steps on the moon and having
influenced a big part of that history himself.
When did the Lindberghs map an air route to China?

• A. while designing the 747
• B. when he was thirty
• C. after World War II
• D. before they worked for an airline
• E. before Charles worked with Dr. Carrel