GMAT Essays (AWA)

Hi All,

Can someone go thru the essays and provide areas of improvement as well as essay rating??

Analysis of an Issue:

"In business courses, professors should teach only factual information and skills, not ethics."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your experience, observations or reading.


The author states that in business courses professors should give importance only to the factual information and development of skills and not building ethics. I disgaree with the author because the author overlooks the role of ethics in a business.

First, the author assumes that unlike ethics factual information and skills have most importance in a business. We know that for a business to be successful there needs to be a proper blend of skills and ethics among the employees of the business. Having good ethics among the employees reflects whether the company adheres to values and rules. For example in a service oriented industry, a business failure can result due to low ethics of the employees despite the company's high productivity. Having good ethics in a company can also bring a strong morale and unity among the employees of the company and thereby improve the productivity of the company.

Second, a fresh graduate will not be having any industrial experience when recurited afresh in a company. The freshers will have little gain in building a good base in industrial ethics while working in a company. So there needs to be a proper training in a business course for ethics along with other essentials. Graduates will have good exposure to the indsutrial standards and ethics through courses in ethics thereby grooming a better employee.

To conclude, I suggest that ethics should also be included in business courses and with proper blend along with development of skills and factual information. Such courses will able to mould better employees for business in future.


Time Taken - 30 mins.


Analysis of an argument:

The following appeared as part of a memorandum from the loan department of the Frostbite National Bank:

"We should not approve the business loan application of local group that wants to a open a franchise outet for the Kool Kone chain of ice cream parlors. Frostbite is known for its cold winters, and cold weather can mean slow ice cream sales. For example, even though Frostbite is a town of 10,000 people, it has only one ice cream - the Frigid Cow. despite the lack of competition, the Frigid Cow's net revenue fell by 10 percent last winter".

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.


The memorandum states that the loan application for Kool Kone should not be approved because of drop in revenues for another ice cream outlet in Frostbite. This argument is seriously flawed because of three major reasons.

First, the bank assumes that cold weather can mean slow ice cream sales but it failed to show a relation between the weather and a crave for ice cream. Even in winter people do have ice creams despite the weather conditions. Moreover, the argument states that Frostbite is famous for its cold winters but it does not mean that Frostbite has cold weather only through out the year. The argument fails to show that no other Frostbite will never have any other seasons such summer, spring during which the sales of ice creams can increase. In addition, the argument does not mention the winter period in Frostbite. It could be possible that winter spans for a few months and summer and spring having a longer span.

second, the bank makes an causal flow in rejecting the loan application. The argument fails to provide a relatio between the weather a drop in ice cream sales in one ice cream outlet - Frigid Cow. The bank strongly assumes that cold weather is the only reason for drop in sales for the ice cream outlet - Frigid Cow. There can be other reaons such as low quality of ice cream served, less variety of ice creams, poor hygiene conditions at the outlet and poor customer service of the employees at outlet. Third, the bank makes an assumption that a drop in revenue in Frigid Cow will reflect for rest of the upcoming ice cream outlets. It may be possible that Kool Kone will provide better ice creams and service to customers thereby having better sales.

In sum, this argument fails to provide proper grounds to reject the loan application. To strengthen the recommendation to loan department needs to provide proper evidence that shows the relation between weather condition and drop in sales of ice cream and that no other reason prevails for the drop.

Time Taken - 28 mins

Thanks,
Jesson George

Read your Issue. Here are few suggestions,or rather my experience at the centre.

1. Time taken for Issue is 30 minutes. Whis is NOT a good sign. See, on the exam day, you will be a bit nervous, which will affect your typing speed and errors on typing. It happened with me. I am a software techie and keyboard is my pen for last 3 years. But, i was so nervous that I could not type that fast during my test. Improve your speed.

Tip: On ur scratch pad, note down the points (each sentence a max of 4-5 words). Keep in mind that if you have 3 points, convert them into 3 paragraphs. How? Pick each point, give ur opinion and state the example. Simple!!!
If you have more points, combine like points and make clear paragraphs. Have atleast 4-5 paragraphs. Include exapmples.

2. Sentence construction in your essay is good. Keep it up.
3. try to increase the overall length by adding quality content. Otherwise the way you handle your issue is good.

Argument
This is exactly the topic I got in my exam.

I wrote about
1. Location factor
2. How is weather linked with icecream use?
3. Taste/flavour factor
4. Nature of residents- prefer making icecreams at home
5. Provided the alternatives
6. conclusion.

Again, content wise and speed, these are the 2 factors you will have to improve. English language usage is absolutely fine.

thnx dude for your suggestions...for the issue i really got stuck up with credible points whereas for arg i think i had enuf points to write down..even i'm software techie and have a pretty good typing speed but your point has some importance. will improve using your points and build up a better base in essays..btw what will be your rating for the essays?? just kinda curious..

My rating would be 5. But, your ideas, if well organized, can take you to 5.5 easily.

thnx pahwa for ur feedback...i'm trying to have a kinda fixed tempelate for the arg part, which i think will improve my rating in the arg part...let's c how the new method works out..