Section One Verbal Reasoning

Here you have the best Test Prep MCAT Section 1 Verbal Reasoning practice exam questions

  • You have 167 total questions to study from
  • Each page has 5 questions, making a total of 34 pages
  • You can navigate through the pages using the buttons at the bottom
  • This questions were last updated on October 23, 2025
  • This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by Test Prep.
Question 1 of 167
In the early nineteenth century a large number of communal experiments, both secular and religious, sprang up in the northeastern United States. Perhaps the most famous secular commune was Brook Farm, founded by transcendentalists George Ripley and William H. Channing to promote the pursuit of leisure and culture through the proper application of time and labor. Its members (among the more notable were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller) pursued field labor by day, art and philosophy by night. For a time the system worked so well that two afternoons a week were set aside for leisure and Brook Farm began outcompeting local farmers at the produce market. But by nature the Farms members were thinkers, not workers; despite their success they remained mainly interested in the theoretical and philosophical implications of the experiment. Thus, when a devastating fire brought the community considerable financial burdens in its fifth year, the members felt little compunction about closing shop and returning to their comfortable Boston homes.
One of the most notable religious utopias was the Oneida community. Its founder, John Humphrey Noyes, believed that Christs second coming had already occurred and that everyone alive was favored by Divine grace, which Noyes saw as an imperative to live a better life. Perhaps surprisingly, the Oneidans embraced industry and commerce, achieving success in fruit packing, trap making, and silk thread winding. They owned everything communally, and this principle extended to each other. The Oneidans saw monogamy as a selfish act and asserted that the men and women of the community were united in one "complex" marriage; sex between any two consenting members was perfectly acceptable. The Oneidans maintained order solely through "criticism"—anyone acting out of line was made to stand before the other members and hear his or her faults recounted. Oneida remained viable for some thirty years, until the leadership devolved on Noyes son, an agnostic. The old religious fervor died out, and the dream degenerated into a joint stock company.
Doubtless the most successful communalists were the Shakers, so called for the early propensity to tremble ecstatically during religious worship. Their guiding light, Mother Ann, espoused four key principles: Virgin Purity, Christian Communism, Confession, and Separation from the World. Though the Shakers were less adamant on the last pointmaintaining social relations and some commerce with heir neighborsthey insisted on the other three, and renounced both personal property and sex. Men and women lived in a single large "Unitary Dwelling" and were considered complete equals, but they occupied separate wings and could speak together only if a third person were present. Despite their religious strictness, Shakers were known as simple, sincere, intelligent people, healthy and long- lived, producers of lovely books and hymns, and of furniture still prized for its quality and durability. In their eyday, six thousand Shakers lived in fifty-eight separate
"families" throughout the Northeast. Later their celibacy, combined with their strict discipline, led to a decline in numbers, but even today a small number of elderly
Shakers in two communities in Maine and New Hampshire continue to keep the faith.
The passage implies that the end of the Brook Farm experiment was probably brought on by:
    Correct Answer: A

Question 2 of 167
In the early nineteenth century a large number of communal experiments, both secular and religious, sprang up in the northeastern United States. Perhaps the most famous secular commune was Brook Farm, founded by transcendentalists George Ripley and William H. Channing to promote the pursuit of leisure and culture through the proper application of time and labor. Its members (among the more notable were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller) pursued field labor by day, art and philosophy by night. For a time the system worked so well that two afternoons a week were set aside for leisure and Brook Farm began outcompeting local farmers at the produce market. But by nature the Farms members were thinkers, not workers; despite their success they remained mainly interested in the theoretical and philosophical implications of the experiment. Thus, when a devastating fire brought the community considerable financial burdens in its fifth year, the members felt little compunction about closing shop and returning to their comfortable Boston homes.
One of the most notable religious utopias was the Oneida community. Its founder, John Humphrey Noyes, believed that Christs second coming had already occurred and that everyone alive was favored by Divine grace, which Noyes saw as an imperative to live a better life. Perhaps surprisingly, the Oneidans embraced industry and commerce, achieving success in fruit packing, trap making, and silk thread winding. They owned everything communally, and this principle extended to each other. The Oneidans saw monogamy as a selfish act and asserted that the men and women of the community were united in one "complex" marriage; sex between any two consenting members was perfectly acceptable. The Oneidans maintained order solely through "criticism"—anyone acting out of line was made to stand before the other members and hear his or her faults recounted. Oneida remained viable for some thirty years, until the leadership devolved on Noyes son, an agnostic. The old religious fervor died out, and the dream degenerated into a joint stock company.
Doubtless the most successful communalists were the Shakers, so called for the early propensity to tremble ecstatically during religious worship. Their guiding light, Mother Ann, espoused four key principles: Virgin Purity, Christian Communism, Confession, and Separation from the World. Though the Shakers were less adamant on the last pointmaintaining social relations and some commerce with heir neighborsthey insisted on the other three, and renounced both personal property and sex. Men and women lived in a single large "Unitary Dwelling" and were considered complete equals, but they occupied separate wings and could speak together only if a third person were present. Despite their religious strictness, Shakers were known as simple, sincere, intelligent people, healthy and long- lived, producers of lovely books and hymns, and of furniture still prized for its quality and durability. In their eyday, six thousand Shakers lived in fifty-eight separate
"families" throughout the Northeast. Later their celibacy, combined with their strict discipline, led to a decline in numbers, but even today a small number of elderly
Shakers in two communities in Maine and New Hampshire continue to keep the faith.
The Shakers resembled the Oneidans in their attitude toward:
    Correct Answer: C

Question 3 of 167
In the early nineteenth century a large number of communal experiments, both secular and religious, sprang up in the northeastern United States. Perhaps the most famous secular commune was Brook Farm, founded by transcendentalists George Ripley and William H. Channing to promote the pursuit of leisure and culture through the proper application of time and labor. Its members (among the more notable were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller) pursued field labor by day, art and philosophy by night. For a time the system worked so well that two afternoons a week were set aside for leisure and Brook Farm began outcompeting local farmers at the produce market. But by nature the Farms members were thinkers, not workers; despite their success they remained mainly interested in the theoretical and philosophical implications of the experiment. Thus, when a devastating fire brought the community considerable financial burdens in its fifth year, the members felt little compunction about closing shop and returning to their comfortable Boston homes.
One of the most notable religious utopias was the Oneida community. Its founder, John Humphrey Noyes, believed that Christs second coming had already occurred and that everyone alive was favored by Divine grace, which Noyes saw as an imperative to live a better life. Perhaps surprisingly, the Oneidans embraced industry and commerce, achieving success in fruit packing, trap making, and silk thread winding. They owned everything communally, and this principle extended to each other. The Oneidans saw monogamy as a selfish act and asserted that the men and women of the community were united in one "complex" marriage; sex between any two consenting members was perfectly acceptable. The Oneidans maintained order solely through "criticism"—anyone acting out of line was made to stand before the other members and hear his or her faults recounted. Oneida remained viable for some thirty years, until the leadership devolved on Noyes son, an agnostic. The old religious fervor died out, and the dream degenerated into a joint stock company.
Doubtless the most successful communalists were the Shakers, so called for the early propensity to tremble ecstatically during religious worship. Their guiding light, Mother Ann, espoused four key principles: Virgin Purity, Christian Communism, Confession, and Separation from the World. Though the Shakers were less adamant on the last pointmaintaining social relations and some commerce with heir neighborsthey insisted on the other three, and renounced both personal property and sex. Men and women lived in a single large "Unitary Dwelling" and were considered complete equals, but they occupied separate wings and could speak together only if a third person were present. Despite their religious strictness, Shakers were known as simple, sincere, intelligent people, healthy and long- lived, producers of lovely books and hymns, and of furniture still prized for its quality and durability. In their eyday, six thousand Shakers lived in fifty-eight separate
"families" throughout the Northeast. Later their celibacy, combined with their strict discipline, led to a decline in numbers, but even today a small number of elderly
Shakers in two communities in Maine and New Hampshire continue to keep the faith.
It can be inferred from the passage that the cohesion of a secular workers cooperative, based on the principles of collective ownership and the sharing of profits, would probably be weakened by:
I. diminished contact with the outside world.
II. increasing agnosticism.
III. considerable economic losses.
    Correct Answer: C

Question 4 of 167
In the early nineteenth century a large number of communal experiments, both secular and religious, sprang up in the northeastern United States. Perhaps the most famous secular commune was Brook Farm, founded by transcendentalists George Ripley and William H. Channing to promote the pursuit of leisure and culture through the proper application of time and labor. Its members (among the more notable were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller) pursued field labor by day, art and philosophy by night. For a time the system worked so well that two afternoons a week were set aside for leisure and Brook Farm began outcompeting local farmers at the produce market. But by nature the Farms members were thinkers, not workers; despite their success they remained mainly interested in the theoretical and philosophical implications of the experiment. Thus, when a devastating fire brought the community considerable financial burdens in its fifth year, the members felt little compunction about closing shop and returning to their comfortable Boston homes.
One of the most notable religious utopias was the Oneida community. Its founder, John Humphrey Noyes, believed that Christs second coming had already occurred and that everyone alive was favored by Divine grace, which Noyes saw as an imperative to live a better life. Perhaps surprisingly, the Oneidans embraced industry and commerce, achieving success in fruit packing, trap making, and silk thread winding. They owned everything communally, and this principle extended to each other. The Oneidans saw monogamy as a selfish act and asserted that the men and women of the community were united in one "complex" marriage; sex between any two consenting members was perfectly acceptable. The Oneidans maintained order solely through "criticism"—anyone acting out of line was made to stand before the other members and hear his or her faults recounted. Oneida remained viable for some thirty years, until the leadership devolved on Noyes son, an agnostic. The old religious fervor died out, and the dream degenerated into a joint stock company.
Doubtless the most successful communalists were the Shakers, so called for the early propensity to tremble ecstatically during religious worship. Their guiding light, Mother Ann, espoused four key principles: Virgin Purity, Christian Communism, Confession, and Separation from the World. Though the Shakers were less adamant on the last point maintaining social relations and some commerce with heir neighbors they insisted on the other three, and renounced both personal property and sex. Men and women lived in a single large "Unitary Dwelling" and were considered complete equals, but they occupied separate wings and could speak together only if a third person were present. Despite their religious strictness, Shakers were known as simple, sincere, intelligent people, healthy and long-lived, producers of lovely books and hymns, and of furniture still prized for its quality and durability. In their eyday, six thousand Shakers lived in fifty-eight separate "families" throughout the Northeast. Later their celibacy, combined with their strict discipline, led to a decline in numbers, but even today a small number of elderly Shakers in two communities in Maine and New Hampshire continue to keep the faith.
If the passage were to continue, the next topic the author would discuss would probably be:
    Correct Answer: D

Question 5 of 167
The time has come to acknowledge the ascendancy of the humanistic psychology movement. The so-called "Third Stream" emerged at mid-century, asserting itself against the opposition of a pair of mighty, long-established currents, psychoanalysis and behaviorism. The hostility between these two older schools, as well as divisiveness within each of them, probably helped enable humanistic psychology to survive its early years. But the movement flourished because of its wealth of insights into the nature of this most inexact science.
Of the three major movements in the course of 20th century psychology, psychoanalysis is the oldest and most introspective. Conceived by Sigmund Freud as a means of treating mental and emotional disorders, psychoanalysis is based on the theory that people experience unresolved emotional conflicts in infancy and early childhood. Years later, although these experiences have largely disappeared from conscious awareness, they may continue to impair a persons ability to function in daily life. The patient experiences improvement when the psychoanalyst eventually unlocks these long-repressed memories of conflict and brings them to the patients conscious awareness.
In the heyday of behaviorism, which occurred between the two world wars, the psychoanalytic movement was heavily criticized for being too concerned with inner subjective experience. Behavioral psychologists, dismissing ideas and feelings as unscientific, tried to deal only with observable and quantifiable facts. They perceived the human being merely as an organism which generated responses to stimuli produced by its body and the environment around it. Patients neuroses no longer needed analysis; they could instead by modified by behavioral conditioning. Not even babies were safe: B.F. Skinner devised a container in which infants could be raised under "ideal" conditions — if a sound-proof box can be considered the ideal environment for child-rearing.
By mid-century, a number of psychologists had grown dissatisfied with both the deterministic Freudian perspective and the mechanistic approach of behaviorism.
They questioned the idea that human personality becomes permanently fixed in the first few years of life. They wondered if the purpose of psychology was really to reduce people to laboratory specimens. Was it not instead possible that human beings are greater than the sum of their parts? That psychology should speak to their search for fulfillment and meaning in life?
It is questions like these that members of the Third Stream have sought to address. While the movement cannot be simplified down to a single theoretical position, it does spring from certain fundamental propositions. Humanistic psychologists believe that conscious experience, rather than outward behavior, is the proper subject of psychology. We recognize that each human being is unique, capable of change and personal growth. We see maturity as a process dependent on the establishment of a set of values and the development of self. And we believe that the more aspects of self which are satisfactorily developed, the more positive the individuals self-image.
Abraham Maslow, a pioneer of the Third Stream, articulated a hierarchy of basic human needs, starting with food, water and air, progressing upward through shelter and security, social acceptance and belonging, to love, esteem and self-expression. Progress toward the higher stages cannot occur until all of the more basic needs have been satisfied. Individuals atop the pyramid, having developed their potential to the highest possible extent, are said to be "self-actualized".
If this humanist theoretical perspective is aimed at empowering the individual, so too are the movements efforts in the practical realm of clinical psychology.
Believing that traditional psychotherapists tend to lead patients toward predetermined resolutions of their problems, Carl Rogers pressed for objective evaluations of both the process and outcome of psychotherapeutic treatment. Not content to function simply as a reformer, Rogers also pioneered the development of "client- centered" or nondirective therapy, which emphasizes the autonomy of the client (i.e., patient). In client-centered therapy, clients choose the subjects for discussion, and are encouraged to create their own solutions to their problems.
If the author of this passage met a Freudian psychoanalyst who felt that it was important for patients to consider themselves capable of fundamental change, he would most likely conclude that the psychoanalyst was:
    Correct Answer: C