RCT Practice Passages and Questions

The best way to improve your RCT performance is deliberate practice with realistic passages. Read each passage carefully, answer the questions, and then study the explanations — especially for questions you got wrong.

Practice Passage 1: Naval History

The Battle of Midway, fought in June 1942, is widely regarded as the turning point of the Pacific War. Just six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy achieved a decisive victory against the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing one of its own. The battle demonstrated that carrier-based aviation, not battleships, would determine the outcome of naval engagements.

American success at Midway was not merely a product of superior firepower. Intelligence played a crucial role. Navy codebreakers, working under Commander Joseph Rochefort at Station HYPO in Pearl Harbor, had partially broken the Japanese naval code JN-25. This intelligence allowed Admiral Chester Nimitz to position his numerically inferior force at precisely the right location to ambush the Japanese fleet. Without this advance knowledge, the battle's outcome might have been very different.

The strategic implications of Midway extended well beyond the immediate tactical victory. Japan lost four fleet carriers and hundreds of experienced aviators who could not easily be replaced. The battle effectively ended Japan's ability to conduct major offensive operations in the Pacific, shifting the initiative permanently to the United States and its allies. Historians have noted that while the war would continue for more than three years after Midway, Japan was thereafter fighting a predominantly defensive campaign.

Practice Passage 2: Marine Science

The ocean's thermohaline circulation, sometimes called the "global conveyor belt," is a system of deep ocean currents driven by differences in water temperature and salinity. In the North Atlantic, surface waters cooled by Arctic winds become denser and sink to great depths, forming North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). This cold, dense water then flows southward along the ocean floor, eventually rising in other ocean basins in a process that can take centuries to complete a full cycle.

The thermohaline circulation plays a vital role in regulating global climate by distributing heat from tropical regions toward the poles. The Gulf Stream, which carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico northeastward across the Atlantic, is partly driven by this system. Without it, Western Europe would likely experience significantly colder winters, as the warm water that moderates its climate would no longer reach its shores.

Climate scientists have raised concerns that global warming could disrupt the thermohaline circulation. As Arctic ice melts and precipitation increases at high latitudes, large volumes of fresh water enter the North Atlantic. Because fresh water is less dense than salt water, this influx could prevent the surface water from sinking, potentially weakening or even shutting down the conveyor belt. While a complete shutdown is considered unlikely in the near term, even a partial weakening could have significant consequences for weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere.