The diversity passage

Most RC sections include a passage about a racial or ethnic group, a member of one, or women or a woman — the "diversity passage". On my criterion (membership in a group the test's writers treat as having it hard; nothing in the passage needs to mention race, sex or hardship), 93 of the 96 distinct four-passage sections have at least one on settled reasons, and 25 have two or more. The other three (PrepTest 155 Section 3, PrepTest 156 Section 1 and PrepTest 158 Section 1) are close calls still under review.

Every figure below counts the passages settled as diversity passages, each distinct passage once.

• Position (the 120 in complete sections): fairly even, slightly front-loaded — passage 1 28%, passage 2 30%, passage 3 23%, passage 4 19%.
• Subject (the same 120): humanities 43%, social science 38%, law 12%, science 8%.
• Rarely the paired passage: 7 of the 127 diversity passages (5.5%) are the A/B pair, against 50 of all 412 distinct passages (12.1%).
• By group (78 passages about a racial or ethnic group or a member of one): African American 35, Native American / First Nations 16, Asian American 9, Latino / Hispanic 8, Black outside the US 5, indigenous peoples outside North America 3, Roma 1, other 1.
• African American passages tend to lead the section (16 of 35 are passage 1), are mostly humanities (24 of 35), never science and never the paired passage, and are about one person in 21 of 35. Native American passages are never about one person (0 of 16).