Last week we went over our first MCAT verbal practice question, below is our second example MCAT passage followed by a question. Read the passage and give the question a legitimate try – pay special attention to why you choose the answer you and do and for what reasons you eliminate wrong answer choices. Then read our explanation and compare your train of thought to ours to see what you can learn from this. Always feel free to ask follow up questions about these exercises.

The real estate bubble, the dot-com craze—for sheer lunacy and truly disastrous consequences, few economic swings hold a candle to tulipomania.

In 1593, a botanist brought back samples of tulips to Holland from Constantinople. He planted them in a garden with the intent of studying their medicinal value. His garden was ransacked, the bulbs were stolen, and that was the beginning of the tulip trade in Holland.

Rich Dutch homeowners coveted the new, colorful plants, and soon many of the finest houses in Holland had small plots of tulips. A mosaic virus attacked the introduced species, weakening the plant stock while at the same time causing odd streaks of color upon the petals of the flowers. These rather pretty alterations made the plants even more desirable, and shortly thereafter, prices began to rise out of control.

By the year 1635, buyers were speculating on tulips, purchasing promissory notes while the bulbs were still in the ground. The trade in tulip futures became frenzied, with the prices of the most popular, damaged plants doubling and tripling overnight. Buyers bought on spec, assuming that they could turn around and sell at a profit once spring came.

Tulips have a built-in rarity, in that it takes years to grow one from seed, and most bulbs produce only one or two “offsets,” or bulb clones, annually. That scarcity kept the value up even when new varieties were introduced on the market.

The tulip craze soon found ordinary citizens selling everything they owned for a single bulb, some of which were valued at the equivalent of thousands of dollars in today’s currency; quite literally, bulbs were worth their weight in gold. Contemporary documents show that people traded oxen, silver, land, and houses for one tulip bulb. During the winter of 1636, when the craze was at its peak, a single bulb future might change hands half a dozen times in one day. Planting bulbs and growing flowers became wholly beside the point; the object was simply to buy and sell and resell.

As wild as this market was, it was transacted entirely outside of the established Stock Exchange in Amsterdam. It was a people’s exchange. Typically, sales took place at auctions, but often they were transacted at pubs or in town squares.

Like any craze in which potential profits seem too good to be true, tulipomania was fated to end badly. In February 1637, at a bulb auction in Harlem, the bottom fell out when no one agreed to pay the inflated prices. The ensuing panic took a matter of a few weeks; prices fell, bulb dealers refused to honor existing contracts, and the government had to leap in to try to bail the country out, offering 10 cents on the dollar for bulb contracts until even that could not be sustained. Eventually, a panel of judges declared that all investment in tulips was gambling and not recoverable investment. Holland slowly fell into an economic depression that lasted for years and eventually overflowed its borders into the rest of Europe.

Which of the following assertions does the author support with an example?

I. Tulips have a built-in rarity.

II. Sales were transacted in pubs and town squares.

III. Holland fell into a depression.

A. I only

B. III only

C. I and II only

D. I, II, and III

First, let’s dissect the question stem. The question is asking us to choose an answer that fulfills 2 requirements, 1) it must support the author’s opinion, and 2) it must be supported with a concrete example.

If you can recall the examples in the passage quickly enough, then you may not have to reference the passage to answer this question. However, I always prefer to reference the passage with these type of questions because A) you know exactly what part of the passage you are looking for almost verbatim and don’t need to spend time getting lost in analyzing the passage and B) often times you may mistake a discussion of a topic to be a concrete example of it.

One more pointer on these type of questions. This question is a great example of where you need to use proper multiple-choice strategy to save yourself time. For instance, Roman Numeral I is in answer choices A, C, and D – so, if you were able to eliminate it as an incorrect answer choice, you would know that the answer is B without any further work (not to discourage you to still read all the choices and double check yourself, but you will not waste excessive time). The bottom line is this: start analyzing the Roman Numeral that is in the answer choices most frequently, and then one that is second most frequent, etc! However, I have to say my personal experience shows that the most frequent answer choice is usually not the incorrect answer choice because it makes it too easy for those us who are sharp on test taking strategies, but it is still the smartest approach to this question type and often times you can at least get away with analyzing 2 of the 3 answer choices!

Let’s take a look at the answer choices.

I -  Found in the second sentence of the second paragraph: “Tulips have a built-in rarity, in that it takes years to grow one from seed, and most bulbs produce only one or two “offsets,” or bulb clones, annually.” We are going to analyze this answer choice first, as it is in 3 of the answer choices. Here we confirm verbatim the author’s belief in tulip’s rarity, and we have an example specifically illustrating how rare they sprout. Looks like Roman Numeral II and III occur an equal amount of times, so we will just continue by analyzing Rom. Num. II.

II – Found in the last sentence of third paragraph (I’ve also included the sentence immediately after it – as maybe an example is hidden there): “Typically, sales took place at auctions, but often they were transacted at pubs or in town squares.

Like any craze in which potential profits seem too good to be true, tulipomania was fated to end badly. “ We have no example of what the sales were like, the next sentence is the beginning of a new paragraph and a new thought. So we can eliminate answer choices C and D. Moreover, we are sure that answer choice A is right – and we don’t have an answer choice that includes I and III, so by default B must be wrong and A is right. However, this all assumes that we reasoned correctly to begin with that A was a correct answer choice, so let’s take a brief look at Rom. Num. III to just confirm this.

III – Last sentence of last paragraph: “Holland slowly fell into an economic depression that lasted for years and eventually overflowed its borders into the rest of Europe.” As the last sentence of this paragraph there is no example of the depression, just that it was. Sure, we have a little afterthought showing that the depression was wide-spread, but this isn’t equivalent to an example of what the circumstances were like during the depression in Holland, specifically (as the question stem asks us to analyze). Moreover, we are confident Rom. Num. I is right, and there is no option where I and III can be right – so even if there is some confusion here, Rom. Num. I is more correct. So – the correct answer choice is A.