Beat The GMAT

heshamelaziry · Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:05 pm

1) Dear Applicant:
Thank you for your application. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you a position in our local government office for the summer. As you know, funding for summer jobs is limited, and it is impossible for us to offer jobs to all those who want them. Consequently, we are forced to reject many highly qualified applicants.

Which of the following can be inferred from the letter?

(A) The number of applicants for summer jobs in the government office exceeded the number of summer jobs available.

(B) The applicant who received the letter was considered highly qualified.

(C) Very little funding was available for summer jobs in the government office.

(D) The application of the person who received the letter was considered carefully before being rejected.

(E) Most of those who applied for summer jobs were considered qualified for the available positions.

2)
Johnson is on firm ground when he asserts that the early editors of Dickinson’s poetry often distorted her intentions. Yet Johnson’s own, more faithful, text is still guilty of its own forms of distortion. To standardize Dickinson’s often indecipherable handwritten punctuation by the use of the dash is to render permanent a casual mode of poetic phrasing that Dickinson surely never expected to see in print. It implies that Dickinson chose the dash as her typical mark of punctuation when, in fact, she apparently never made any definitive choice at all.

Which of the following best summarizes the author’s main point?

(A) Although Johnson is right in criticizing Dickinson’s early editors for their distortion of her work, his own text is guilty of equally serious distortions.

(B) Johnson’s use of the dash in his text of Dickinson’s poetry misleads readers about the poet’s intentions.

(C) Because Dickinson never expected her poetry to be published, virtually any attempt at editing it must run counter to her intentions.

(D) Although Johnson’s attempt to produce a more faithful text of Dickinson’s poetry is well-meaning, his study of the material lacks sufficient thoroughness.

(E) Dickinson’s editors, including Johnson, have failed to deal adequately with the problem of deciphering Dickinson’s handwritten manuscripts.

3)Which of the following best completes the passage below?

One tax-reform proposal that has gained increasing support in recent years is the flat tax, which would impose a uniform tax rate on incomes at every level. Opponents of the flat tax say that a progressive tax system, which levies a higher rate of taxes on higher-income taxpayers, is fairer, placing the greater burden on those better able to bear it. However, the present crazy quilt of tax deductions, exemptions, credits, and loopholes benefits primarily the high-income taxpayer, who is consequently able to reduce his or her effective tax rate, often to a level below that paid by the lower-income taxpayer. Therefore, ______

(A) higher-income taxpayers are likely to lend their support to the flat-tax proposal now being considered by Congress

(B) a flat-tax system that allowed no deductions or exemptions would substantially increase actual government revenues

(C) the lower-income taxpayer might well be penalized by the institution of a flat-tax system in this country

(D) the progressive nature of our present tax system is more illusory than real

(E) the flat tax would actually be fairer to the lower-income taxpayer than any progressive tax system could be

I do not have OAs for the questions; experts might be needed.

Note: unlike what is said about BOLD FACE and COMPLETE the sentence in CR Bible, there is alot of these on the actual test.

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heshamelaziry · Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:16 pm

IMO B E E

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DarkKnight · Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:19 am

Imo ABE

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heshamelaziry · Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:26 am

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Testluv · Thu Oct 29, 2009 4:22 pm

Hi heshamelaziry,

please review the posting guidelines...one question per post!

I will help out with the first question. The correct answer here is choice A. An inference is something that must be true based on the passage. So the right answer to an inference question is something that must be true while the four wrong answers are things that could be false. If a choice could be false, it is wrong. So you can ask of each answer choice: could it be false?

Could choice B be false? Yes, it can. Just because they reject highly qualified applicants, does not mean that this particular applicant was highly qualifed. In order to think that this choice must be true, you would have to assume that there was no other reason (other than the applicant being highly qualifed) for why the letter-writer would tell the applicant that they had to reject many highly qualifed applicants. But there is an alternative reason: civility. The moment you see that you would have to assume something else in order for the choice to be necessarily true is the moment you know the choice could be false, and therefore, wrong.

On the other hand, could choice A be false? Choice A states "The number of applicants for summer jobs in the government office exceeded the number of summer jobs available." If this were false, it would mean that they did not have enough applicants to fill up all the jobs. Can that be the case?

Well, we learn in the passage that "...it is impossible for us to offer jobs to all those who want them." and that "Consequently, we are forced to reject many highly qualified applicants."

So, the reason they are unable to offer jobs to many highly qualified applicants is because there are not enough jobs. Thus, choice A cannot be false...if it were false, then one of the last two sentences in the passage (or both) would be false. And in an inference question we have to treat everything in the passage as necessarily true.

Hope that helps!