GMAT Essays (AWA)

Dear Fellow members,

Can you please rate the following essay & share your 2 cents on the same. You can give the sectional grading to better understand the fallacies & shortcomings in the essay & subsequently indicate a few measures to improve upon.

1. Structure / Organization ( 0-6):
2. Grammar / Sentence construction ( 0-6)
3. Deciphering the argument ( 0-6) :

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Prompt:
Studies suggest that an average coffee drinker's consumption of coffee increases with age, from age 10 through age 60. Even after age 60, coffee consumption remains high. The average cola drinker's consumption of cola, however, declines with increasing age. Both of these trends have remained stable for the past 40 years. Given that the number of older adults will significantly increase as the population ages over the next 20 years, it follows that the demand for coffee will increase and the demand for cola will decrease during this period. We should, therefore, consider transferring our investments from Cola Loca to Early Bird Coffee.

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Essay:

The author has presented the argument for trasfer of investments from Colo Loca to Early Bird Coffee based on numerous unstated assumptions, including but not limited to continuity of past trends over next 20 years, discounting reduction in population on account of deaths, diregarding feasibility of proposals, non establishing credibility of the studies cited & convienently ommitting commercial aspects of proposal. Essentially, the author has overstretched the ambit of the supplied data & derived an overboard conclusion, which can be reinforced by supplementing the argument with followign organized statistics / reasoning.

Firstly, the author has pre-supposed that current & past trends are going to contiue over the next 20 years time span, an ill-defined reasoning to drive the strong proposal for transfer of investment. One may argue that, the trends may not continue even for a one year period as the current civil war has pushed maximum population out of the country. Interestingly, the author has failed to account for these probabilities & put up the proposal. Nevertheless, the proposal can be strengthened by incoporating evidence sufficient enough to substatiate claims pertaining to continuity of trends over next 20 years.

Subsequently, the author has leaned on increase in the population of old persons in the up coming 20 years. Author has not considered the reduction in population on account of deaths / displacement. It can be challenged that, rate of reduction in population surpasses that of the increase in their population, consequently weakening the stand opted by author. Such, vulnerabilities have crippled the argument & hence warrants corresponding weightage to the reduction aspect as well.

Lastly, the author has jumped to propose investment transfer today looking at the trends for next 20 years. If this is to be taken at face value then we light as need to suppose that the company will survive for those 20 years. One one hand author has presented case for existence of his investment compant & on other hand he has overlooked the survival rates of the companies in today's market. Admittedely, such leaps of faith powered by un-substantiated assumptions have made the reasoning flawed. However, the same can be eliminated with due consideration to survival rates. Moreover, the author has entirely relied on the strenght of the studies conducted for 40 years without any credence to the data obtained from the study & the methodology deployed for study. Since, outcome of studies is a function of the methodology implemented to carry out study, it is necessary to shed some light on the credibility / authenticity of the study used to raise the proposal. Additionally, the argument has failed to factor in the technical & commercial competencies of Early Bird Coffee to serve the increased future demand, if any. Such, crucial gaps in the logic of the argument has rendered the argument succeptible to criticisms from multiple avenues & as such keeps the argument open & debatable.

Essentially, the argument requires due deliberation & weightage to support a strong conclusion in favor of tranfer of investment. Accordingly, if the author executes the remedial measures suggested above, the argument can be improved logically & can be made more compelling / convincing.


Thanks,
AB