Q16 - Research indicates that college

[skapur777]

I eliminated ALL the answer choices here then just picked A out of frustration.

Why is the answer C? I eliminated because the argument does say anything about the households having average or above average incomes for their community, but rather above average incomes for the nation. Kind of confused by this question...

[bbirdwell]

The second sentence mentions community. Let's look at the argument:

Conclusion: profs raised in eco advantaged households
Premise: overall, they grew up in communities with higher than avg incomes

Before we go to the choices, think about potential gaps in the logic here. Clearly something's up with the connection between being raised in an eco-advantaged community and being raised in an eco-advantaged household. That's an assumption the author makes, and therefore a flaw.

(A) that's not inappropriate. In fact it's pretty much the definition of economic advantage.
(B) gets things backwards. The argument is about where professors grow up, not which communities have professors
(C) is immediately appealing because the "generally" matches the "overall" from the argument. "Presumes..." means assumes. So this choice says "assumes that profs raised in households with incomes avg or above avg in their communities." Yes!

Think about it this way: if the the prof's incomes were LESS than the average in their above-average communities, then maybe they came from the poorest family in those rich neighborhoods and therefore did not come from advantaged households.

(D) way out of scope
(E) doesn't matter where they live -- argument is about where they were raised.

See it?

[aamatsui]

Man I picked A) with high confidence and moved on!

I see why C is right, but I still think a case could be made for A) though....

A family's household income can be 200,000 thousand dollars. However, say it all comes from one working adult in the house, and he has to care for 10 kids, his elderly parents, and a dog.

Even though his household income may be higher than the national average-- his situation does not depict an "economically advantaged household".

[WaltGrace1983]

I came up with the answer in a slightly different way. I totally cannot believe I missed the "communities" → "households" gap but either way I think this works too...

CPs grew up in communities with average household income higher than that of the nation
→
College professors were raised in economically advantaged households

So the gap here would be that, just because they grew up in communities that were higher than the national average does not necessarily mean that they were economically advantaged. The idea of being "rich," "poor," "middle class," "average," etc. is all relative. To say that someone is economically advantaged in terms of the nation is very different to say that one is economically advantaged in terms of the community.

For example, let's say I live in Des Moines, Iowa. My friend lives in Manhattan. Both of our households make $40,000 a year. In Des Moines, where the cost living is presumably quite low, $40k may seem like a very nice salary. Living in Manhattan though, $40k is not a lot by any means as an average studio apartment will probably run $25k a year. However, $40k is still probably much more than the average household income for a nation, it just goes much farther in one city than in another.

So (C) takes this idea of being above the national average and shows that these professors were above the community average too. Thus, they had to be economically advantaged as anything above the average is presumably advantageous.

As for the others...
(A) the answer choice does not "inappropriately" assume this! It is based on research.
(B) We only care about where professors grew up!
(D) This answer choice is talking about now. The argument is talking about back then - unless of course there is a 6 year old college professor.
(E) It doesn't matter where they live. Also, the argument is talking about relative figures (economically advantaged) yet this answer choice is talking about absolute figures (low income). Also, how are we measuring "low?"

Hope that helps

[jones.mchandler]

So the gap here would be that, just because they grew up in communities that were higher than the national average does not necessarily mean that they were economically advantaged. The idea of being "rich," "poor," "middle class," "average," etc. is all relative. To say that someone is economically advantaged in terms of the nation is very different to say that one is economically advantaged in terms of the community.

This is an interesting way of looking at this argument, as I took the "economically advantaged" and "higher than average income" at face value. I assumed the flaw as discussed in the first post, that just because they grew up in neighborhoods with a higher than average income does not mean that they themselves were at or above the national average.

Could a moderator chime on these two lines of reasoning?

[xuxinyue]

My personal interpretation of why choice C is correct is that - this choice points out that the stimulus falsely assumes a characteristic of some families in a community ( that some families in the community have a household income above average) to all families in a community ( so that everyone's household, including those of the professors who were raised in, have income above average).

Would this be a correct interpretation?