【SAMPLE】IPC ⼊試

Ritsumeikan Uji Junior High School
Entrance Exam - IPC 1 English Writing
SAMPLE
Question Booklet
Instructionsi) You will be given a text to read. The text will be at a 6th grade reading level and may
be fiction or non-fiction.
ii) Applications will be asked to respond to one of the essay prompts that follows thereading. Your response should be AT LEAST 250 words and it should reference thereading text.
iii) There are 100 total points for the examination.
iv) Applicants will have 60 minutes to complete the examination.

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Reading Comprehension and Making Inferences
Read the excerpt below from Associated Press. When you have finished reading, answer ONE ofthe questions that follow.
On January 10, 2024, the St. Paul City Council had a very big first. All of the new council members had
been sworn in the previous day, along with their president, Mitra Jalali. All of the city council members arewomen, a first for Minnesota's capital city.
A city council is responsible for deciding on laws, services and projects that will benefit the city. They mustalso decide how to come up with the money to fund them.
St. Paul has a population of about 300,000 people. Experts say it is the first large U.S. city they know ofwith an all-female city council. It is a big milestone to celebrate. The council members are also excitedabout what they can accomplish in the coming year.
All seven women are under 40 years old. Six out of the seven are people of color. All seven women are
Democrats, but the office is nonpartisan, meaning that it is not biased toward any political group. Fromcivil engineering to nonprofit directing, the members of the council have a wide range of professionalexperiences.
“I think that our community is finally reflected by the city council,” Jalali said. “The median age of ourcommunity is 32.5. We are a majority person-of-color city. We have many major racial and ethnic groups,
many of which are now represented on this council.”
Researchers say St. Paul is special. It is the largest U.S. city they are aware of to ever have an all-female city
council.
Data from Rutgers University shows that there are fewer female than male municipal officials across thecountry. A municipal official is a person who works for a city or town. Jean Sinzdak is the director of aresearch center. She says 7 out of 10 municipal officeholders across the country are male. Most of them arewhite.
Having an all-female council with so many women of color is a big deal, she says. Young girls will look at
the city council and say, “I can do this, too.”
Hwa Jeong Kim is the council's vice president. She and Jalali said that their top priorities include improving
housing policy. They also want to work on economic development and climate action. They will focus on
using police officers less and mental health responders more.
Sinzdak said left-leaning and Democratic communities tend to have more women elected officials. This isbecause there are more Democratic women than Republican women. Therefore, according to Sinzdak, it ismore likely to have a Democratic woman running for office in those communities.

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“What’s remarkable about this lineup is not just that it’s all women, but it’s the age of these women, and it’s
the diversity of these women,” Heidi Heitkamp said. She is the director of the Institute of Politics at theUniversity of Chicago. She is also a former U.S. senator from North Dakota.

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Writing Prompt and Instructions
Directions: Respond to ONE of the essay prompts below. You should write your answer on
the separate answer sheet provided. In response to the question, you should write a wellstructured paragraph of at least 250 words. Please make sure you use some of the ideas fromthe reading above in your response.
1. How does having an all-female city council possibly affect young women and girls' viewsof their own future in politics?
2. Why is it important that a city council is made up of individuals that reflect the membersof the community they represent?

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