Q25 - University president: Our pool of applicants

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your post!

My answer key says (A) is correct. And I like (A). So let's try to eliminate everything else, and see whether the answer key and I are right.

~ By the way: notice that we're looking for a necessary assumption ~

Now, the university president concludes that to increase the applicant pool, it is necessary to raise tuition and fees. What's his evidence? That one possible explanation is that the tuition and fees are too low, leading prospective students and parents to think the school must be of lower quality than those where costs are higher.

Well, shoot, that's well and good, but it's just one possible explanation. We don't know that it's the correct one! In order for us to agree with the president's conclusion, we have to assume that the explanation is indeed applicable here.

So that's why (A) is right. If the explanation doesn't actually apply, if tuition/fees aren't actually too low, then the conclusion that we need to raise them does not follow.

(B) is incorrect because the argument is actually not about quality; the idea is that tuition is related to perceived quality.

(C) is tempting, but it's not a necessary assumption. Why? Because even if were not true, the university president could still be right that we need to raise tuition and fees. Even if that wouldn't guarantee a larger applicant pool, it could still be a necessary step.

(D) is out because the issue is not how many explanations are possible, it's which explanation is correct.

(E) is totally irrelevant. Whether it has increased or not doesn't impact whether it's too low and needs increasing.

Does that answer your question?


#officialexplanation

[hwsitgoing]

I'm having trouble eliminating A and C. If they were assumed wouldn't they also assure the conclusion is valid?

[asimon623]

Can anybody shed some light on this one?
I chose D too --the phrase "we need to raise our tuition and fees" led me there.

Knowing that it's A, my best explanation is that that the "we need" is actually the conclusion from the argument...

Is that possible?

[hwsitgoing]

I'm not sure if this is completely right, but I discarded D because like you said it is not a necessary assumption like the question stem asks for. If you negate D and say there are other explanations for the university's shrinking applicant pool it does not destroy the conclusion. It still may be necessary to raise fees even if there are additional ways to further increase the size of the applicant pool.

[demetri.blaisdell]

Great explanation, hwsitgoing. You are exactly right. It is not necessary that there be no other explanation for the drop in students. What if people are having less children than before? That larger demographic trend is part of the problem, but it is well beyond the capabilities of a university to deal with it. That wouldn't destroy the argument that they should try the fee-raising to address the concerned parents.

If you negate (A), you're left with "the proposed explanation does not apply here." Well that is almost a textbook definition of destroying your argument.

Let me know if there are any lingering concerns on this.

Demetri

[lhermary]

Please go into more detail as to why C is wrong

[chike_eze]

Wow, (D) is so close. I think this would have been a right choice if (D) was "there is no alternate explanation for the univ's shrinking applicant pool" -- Please let me know if this is correct.

[timmydoeslsat]

This is tough as the language starts to become ambiguous. If I say that there is an alternative explanation, does that imply that this explanation is correct? The president can still believe and have it be true that there are alternative explanations - so long as those explanations are not correct.

To me, the answer to your question cannot be truly answered because I believe an alternative explanation can exist only if it is not true.

If the answer choice implies that the alternative explanation is in fact correct, then it would be a valid assumption this argument makes.

I just do not know if such an implication is reasonable. Our job would be much easier if it said "There are no possible alternative explanations." On that one, we could easily say that this is not a necessary assumption of the argument. There can be possible alternative explanations.

"There are no alternative explanations" --- Open to interpretation.

[shirando21]

down to A and D, still don't understand why D can't be right, as if we negate D, I don't feel like we can reach the conclusion that we need to raise our tuition and fees.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Ah! This one is definitely interesting!

The key word in answer choice (D) is "additional." It does not say that there is no alternative explanation, but rather that there is no additional explanation. If there were an additional explanation, the explanation offered by the university president could still be right and so the measures advocated would still be needed.

Hope that helps!

[shirando21]

Ah! This one is definitely interesting!

The key word in answer choice (D) is "additional." It does not say that there is no alternative explanation, but rather that there is no additional explanation. If there were an additional explanation, the explanation offered by the university president could still be right and so the measures advocated would still be needed.

Hope that helps!

wow, that really helps.

and if it says " there is no alternative explanation", D could be correct?

[nicolauria]

Originally chose (C) but after looking at the argument again several times I see that it does not have to be true.

It could be the case that the president's argument is 100% true and valid but taking his proposed action does not result in a larger applicant pool.

Example - His proposal is enacted. The city which normally has 10,000 applicants per year only has 5,000 this year. Instead of the normal 10% (1,000) of the applicant pool that his University gets, they receive 15% of this years pool (750) as a result of an increase in tuition and fees.

So one alternative scenario is that his proposal is passed, and works, but doesn't guarantee a larger applicant pool.

Kind of long and drawn out... but it helps me to understand it better.

[samiraa180]

Some interesting points were made earlier, but I'm a little confused about a a few things:

my core :

P: pool shrinking ------------------->
P: charging too little tuition ---->. C: need to raise $$
P: quality of education ------------->


So B and E can be easily eliminated. The other two answer choices are tricky because they often appear as the right answer choices on other assumption questions.

A: this seemed like the right answer choice because the explanation is the reason for proposed hike in prices, so if the explanation is no longer valid then how can the increase in tuition be justified, right?
After reading the discussion, I know this is the right thinking, but the other two answer choices are problematic.


C: as I was writing an explanation, I realized I'm a little unclear on what guarantee means. Is it a sufficient or necessary term. I know that the guarantee in a conditional statement appears on the left side, but I'm not sure how it's being used in this sentence. Does the meaning change depending on context?


D: because the conclusion uses the word need, it was clear there was a scope shift from "one possible explanation" to a certainty.

Now Matt Sherman pointed out that the answer choice says additional instead of alternative, but isn't an additional reason an alternative possibility? If there is an additional reason for why the applicant pool is shrinking, then raising the tuition isn't going to solve the problem, which would seem like the right answer.

In writing out my reasoning, I think I realize why D is wrong. By saying additional explanation, it's possible that the original reason is true, which doesn't hurt the argument, right?

Thanks in advance!

[samiraa180]

following up with my earlier question about the word guarantee, in the conditional logic tutorial, the statement, ' if Canada---> North America is explained as, "being in Canada is sufficient to guarantee that I am in North America." And "being in North America necessarily follows from being in Canada." So this is another example where the word guarantee shows on the sufficiency side. So will the word guarantee ever be used to denote a necessary clause?

Thanks!

[christine.defenbaugh]

Great question, samiraa180!

I think what's confusing you about the word "guarantee" is that it can actually be used on either side of the conditional - it's just used in different ways.

Think about the following statements:

Hard work guarantees that you will get an A.

As long as you work hard, an A is guaranteed.

Both of these sentences translate to the conditional

If hard work --> get an A

The first one looks a bit like the word 'guarantee' is hanging out with the sufficient condition (hard work). But the second one looks like the word 'guarantee' is hanging out with the necessary condition (getting an A). And yet, they translate the same way! So what gives!?

Notice that in the first example [hard work] is DOING the guaranteeING. However, in the second example [getting an A] was BEING guaranteED. Not to go full grammar nerd on you, but this is the difference between an active and a passive verb. Let's think about how that changes the sentence.

In the first example we have: [hard work] GUARANTEES [getting an A]
In the second example we have: [getting an A] is GUARANTEED BY [hard work]

These are saying the same thing, just grammatically backwards! I can say "I read the book" or "The book was read by me" and they mean the exact same thing.

So what can we take away from all this? The sufficient clause, or if-trigger, will always be the thing that is doing the guaranteeing (active verb), while the necessary clause, or then-result, will always be the thing that is being guaranteed by something else (passive verb).

The SUFFICIENT clause will always guarantee the NECESSARY clause. The NECESSARY clause will always be guaranteed by the SUFFICIENT clause.

This is a really critical concept in the world of sorting out conditional statements! When translating a weird statement, even without the word 'guarantee', you can always look for 1) who is doing the guaranteeing and 2) what is the thing being guaranteed here. Knowing those two things allows you to build the appropriate conditional relationship.

Does that help clear this up a bit?

[ttunden]

through blind review I chose A but during the test I was down to A and B

when I saw this question during the test, it appears that the president is assuming that if they increase tuition they can improve the perceived quality of education. That explains why the president used that example of the prospective students following the possible explanation.

During review however, it looks like B is stating something different. It's basically saying Quality of uni education--> amount tuition charged by uni

The president isn't saying or assuming this type of relationship. If you follow my line of reasoning that I stated earlier, it appears that the president is assuming amount of tuition --> quality of education, so they are positively correlated. B reverses this relationship. I think that is why B is wrong.

to add further: B is talking about actual quality, whereas the president is thinking of perceived quality. so B is not absolutely required for the president to derive his conclusion

[btwalden]

I still don't really get how the use the of the word "need" doesn't automatically make the answer D.

"So, if we want to increase the size of our applicant pool, we NEED to raise our tuition fees"


A - "The proposed explanation...applies...."

Great, but if other explanations also apply, we don't NEED to raise tuition fees. We could, and it would work too, but we don't NEED to.

D - "There is no additional explanation..."

This is stronger wording, not only does it apply, but nothing else applies, so we do NEED to raise tuition fees.

[Mikey]

I was stuck between A and C but chose A because C sounded like a conclusion booster. C seems to stay within the conclusions boundaries and doesn't link the phenomena's explanation to the conclusion, which is why I thought C was wrong. Am I right in thinking this way?

[nhahoyt]

President: "One explanation is X. If X then Y."

Correct answer: (A) X needs to be true for it to follow that Y is the result.

I hate this question more than any other because the answer is so simplistic it looked like a tautology and I discarded it immediately. It truly disgusts me.

[JohnZ880]

Pretty confused by this question. "One possible explanation" links the tuition and fees to the applicant pool, but the author leaves the door open for there to be other explanations of the same phenomenon. So his conclusion can still stand even if the proposed explanation for the phenomenon doesn't hold. The phenomenon (increasing tuition and fees resulting in an increased applicant pool) is not destroyed just because one explanation doesn't account for its occurrence. However, negating (C) seems to destroy the argument for me. Here the cause doesn't produce the effect, so the proposed explanation is obviously wrong as well.