Test Prep MCAT Test Exam (page: 24)
Test Prep Medical College Admission Test: Verbal Reasoning, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Writing Sample
Updated on: 15-Dec-2025

By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado," as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher- education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." Los Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.
The strongest contrasts between California's educational system in the past and that of today can clearly be seen in:

By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado," as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher- education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." Los Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.
With which of the following statements concerning California would the author most likely agree?

By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado," as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher- education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." Los Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.

This passage argues that California has amassed overwhelming fiscal and social problems since the 1960s.
The author uses which of the following to support this assertion?

I). California has repeatedly borrowed funds to cover its budget shortfalls.
II). Washington has played a major role in the decline of the California state economy.
III). Californian's demands for state services have far outstripped the state's ability to provide them.

By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado," as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher- education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." Los Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.
Which of the following most weakens the image of California as an "El Dorado"?

By now the image of California in decline looms as large in the conventional media wisdom as the Golden State ­ triumphant clichés of a generation ago ­ "this El Dorado," as Time magazine had put it in 1969, that was to be "the mirror of America as it will become." Hardly anyone mentions the sunshine these days, or the beaches, or the beautiful young families around the pool, or the new lifestyles that all Americans will soon emulate, or how the University of California is wall-to-wall with cyclotrons and Nobel laureates, or how the state's higher-education system is accommodating absolutely all comers at little or no cost.
Today, California classrooms are among the most crowded in the country; many schools operate without libraries, without counselors, without nurses, without art or music, with greatly diminished curricular offerings. And what's true for the schools is true for the other services that have no powerful constituencies: children's protective services, probation, public health. Many cities have shut down swimming and wading pools because they cannot be safely maintained, and fenced playgrounds have been shut because of the danger presented by cracked and splintered structures.
The list could be extended indefinitely. As thousands of professors receive golden handshakes from the University of California and California State University, among them some of the stars recruited in the go-go Fifties, the crowding in the lecture halls has increased and the lines at the classroom door have gotten longer and longer ("Don't panic," says the T-shirt on a student waiting to enroll at a Sacramento junior college, but many have been in line since four in the morning). U.C. tuition, which was roughly $800 a year in the early 1980s, is now over $4,000, a figure not out of line with tuitions at public colleges in other states but a far cry from the cost of a California state education in the golden days ­ and it is almost certain to increase again next year. More than 200,000 students ­ roughly 10 percent ­ have vanished from the rolls of the state's colleges and universities in the past two years.
While per capita tax revenues have been effectively frozen, and while they have declined relative to other states, client rolls for state services ­ schools, prisons, Medicaid, welfare ­ have been rising faster than population, leaving a structural gap that no one has yet confronted, much less closed. Again this year, the governor and legislature borrowed $7 billion from the banks and rolled over a $5 billion budget deficit, for which few politicians have proposed any remedies. Thanks to the deficit, California, which a decade ago, had one of the highest bond ratings in the country, has one of the lowest. "Were California a corporation," said John Vasconcellos, the chairman of the State Assembly Ways and Means Committee, "it would have little option but to initiate some sort of bankruptcy proceeding."
The new image of California is familiar enough: a state suffering from earthquakes, fires, drought, floods, urban riots, dirty air, schools as overcrowded as the freeways; a legislature ­ once said to be the nation's most professional and progressive ­ oozing with corruption and stuck in the budgetary gridlock; and of course, recession, unemployment, chronic budget deficits, and financial calamity.
For those who know their Nathaniel West, their Raymond Chandler, and their Joan Didion, the California apocalypse imagery is hardly new; it was always there on the dark side of the dream. This was the place, as Didion wrote back in the 1960s, "in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." os Angeles has burnt before.
If you believe people like Governor Wilson, most of the state's problems were created somewhere else, usually in Washington, where the Clinton Administration has, on the one hand, cost California hundreds of thousands of jobs through excessive defense cuts and, on the other, allowed a horde of illegal immigrants to overrun the state's schools and health facilities without paying them for the immense costs that come with them...much has been changed in California since the days of West and Chandler, but the capacity for denial and self-deception is undiminished.
In fact, California's trouble is at once more prosaic and more complex than the political rhetoric claims or the apocalyptic imagery suggests. It began before the recent recession, the big 1991 fire in the Oakland hills or the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (itself a rerun of a classic), before those L.A. cops beat up Rodney King or the riot and the fire that followed their acquittal in the first trial, before the eight-year drought that still may not be over. And contrary to what a lot of Californians believe, a lot of the damage didn't just happen to us: we inflicted it on ourselves.
It can be inferred from the passage that compared to other states, California: