SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 25 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. The mathematician Federico Ardila-Mantilla grew up in Colombia, an (1) ______________ student but gifted in math. He was failing most of his classes at his high school in Bogotá when someone (2) _______________ him to apply to MIT. He had not heard of the school. To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Mathematically, he did well. One of his professors, an acid-tongued theoretician known to (3) ____________ his audience to a herd of cows, routinely tucked ‘open’ math problems into homework assignments, without telling the students. These had never been solved by anyone. Ardila solved one. He went on to receive his bachelor’s and Ph.D. in math from MIT. But his academic experience was also one of isolation. Part of it had to do with his own (4) _____________. Part of it was cultural. As a Latino, he was very much in the minority in the department, and he did not feel comfortable in American mathematical spaces. No one had tried to explicitly (5) ______________ him, yet he felt alone. In math, collaborating with others opens up new kinds of learning and thinking. But in his nine years at MIT, Ardila worked with others only twice.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no. 5.

(a)fabricate
(b)exclude
(c)incorporate
(d)stratify

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The connector is the evidence. The sentence reads No one had tried to explicitly blank him, yet he felt alone, and yet signals a concession — the second half must be surprising in the light of the first.

Feeling alone is surprising only if nobody had actively pushed him out.

Exclude supplies that: no one had openly shut him out, and he was lonely all the same. Option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
fabricate — fabricate means to invent or manufacture — you fabricate a story or a component. It does not take a person as its object, so fabricate him is not English.
(c)
incorporate — incorporate reverses the logic. If nobody had tried to include him, his loneliness would follow naturally and yet would have no contrast to mark.
(d)
stratify — stratify means to arrange in layers. It is used of rock or of a whole society, never of shutting out one individual.

Concept

Yet is the strongest word in this sentence. Joining two clauses, it works like but: what follows must run against what came before.

So the blank has to name the hostile act that was absent. Deny the act, keep the loneliness, and the contrast holds.

Explicitly is the second clue. It says nobody did it openly, which leaves room for the quieter isolation the passage describes — a minority in the department, uncomfortable in American mathematical spaces, collaborating almost never.

Key facts

Yet joining two clauses marks contrast, in the same way as but.
Exclude means to shut somebody out, while include and incorporate move the other way.
Stratify means to arrange in layers or strata, and is used of societies and of rock.
Explicitly means openly and in so many words, as against something implied.

Study next

Contrast connectors and what they license: yet, but, however, nevertheless, althoughAntonym pairs of belonging: exclude and include, alienate and integrateVerb-object fit: what fabricate and stratify normally take as their objects

Common traps

Choosing incorporate because the passage is about belonging. Yet needs the denied action to be the hostile one.
Skimming past explicitly. It concedes that nothing was done openly, which is what makes the loneliness worth remarking on.

Closing blanks that turn on direction rather than hard vocabulary also appear at 23 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.25, keyed to predicted, and at 11 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.25, keyed to elevation of.

The earlier blanks of this passage are at English Q.21 to Q.24 here.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. The mathematician Federico Ardila-Mantilla grew up in Colombia, an (1) ______________ student but gifted in math. He was failing most of his classes at his high school in Bogotá when someone (2) _______________ him to apply to MIT. He had not heard of the school. To his surprise, he got in, and he went on scholarship. Mathematically, he did well. One of his professors, an acid-tongued theoretician known to (3) ____________ his audience to a herd of cows, routinely tucked ‘open’ math problems into homework assignments, without telling the students. These had never been solved by anyone. Ardila solved one. He went on to receive his bachelor’s and Ph.D. in math from MIT. But his academic experience was also one of isolation. Part of it had to do with his own (4) _____________. Part of it was cultural. As a Latino, he was very much in the minority in the department, and he did not feel comfortable in American mathematical spaces. No one had tried to explicitly (5) ______________ him, yet he felt alone. In math, collaborating with others opens up new kinds of learning and thinking. But in his nine years at MIT, Ardila worked with others only twice.