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A recent university study

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A recent university study

by sairakesh » Mon Jul 06, 2009 2:25 am
A recent university study indicated that students who receive full scholarships tend to maintain higher grade point averages than do students who must take out loans or work to finance school. The study concluded that scholarships enable students to achieve high grade point averages by alleviating the stress related to financial concerns and freeing up students' time to study more.
The study's conclusion depends on which of the following assumptions?
(A) Students who take out loans maintain higher grade point averages than those who work to finance school.
(B) Finance-related stress affects student performance in a manner similar to that of restricted study time.
(C) Students who must work to pay for their studies cannot maintain high grade point averages.
(D) High grade point averages were not the primary criterion upon which the scholarship awards were based.
(E) Controlling stress level is less important to student performance than is intensive studying.
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by keepsmilinyaar » Mon Jul 06, 2009 2:53 am
IMO B
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ans

by sairakesh » Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:13 am
IMO D
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by graghukalyan » Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:37 am
I would like to go with B.

@sairakesh,
Can you pls explain for going with D.


Will the criteria for scholarship have a role here ? The only assumption which we can think of is because students who get scholarships are generally more smarter than those who did not which ultimately is one of the reasons for getting a high performance in the courses.

But i feel that we might be crossing over the scope of the CR too much !

Experts , pls pour in your thoughts.
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by hk » Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:05 am
The conclusion here is that Students with the financial stress have less time to study, and scholarships take that stress away.

Hence the assumption is one that relates financial stress with a result of less study time. Therefore i'd go with B

D could have been the assumption if the conclusion were "Thus, scholarship to a student always results in a high GPA" in this case the D states that the infact the result of the conclusion is NOT the cause. But this is not the case here as the conclusion differs in intent here.
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by ssmiles08 » Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:12 am
IMO it looks like it is a clear B.

conclusion is that scholarships = less worries = free time = higher GPA.

author assumes that financial stress = less free time = lower GPA.
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Re: A recent university study

by vishal1702 » Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:42 am
I wld go with D....

An assumption has 2 b d missing part of the argument that is needed to connect the evidence to the conclusion, & in whose absence the argument falls apart. It cant already b explicitly stated in the conclusion as it has been done here in case of B ("scholarships enable students to achieve high grade point averages by alleviating the stress related to financial concerns and freeing up students' time to study more").

If we say high grade point averages were the primary criterion upon which the scholarship awards were based, then the study's conclusion falls apart. So D.

OA??
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by mehravikas » Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:06 pm
It should be - D the conclusion is scholarships helps students to achieve higher grade points, therefore it can be assumed that higher grade points were not the sole criterion to award scholarships.
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Kaplan explanation

by sairakesh » Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:22 pm
The evidence of the study indicates that students on full scholarships maintain higher grade point averages (GPAs) than do students who work or take out loans. From this evidence, the study concluded that the scholarships "enable" those students to earn higher GPAs by alleviating financial stress and freeing up the students' time. Notice how the evidence links scholarships and higher GPAs, but the conclusion jumps into the realm of cause and effect—a common GMAT shift in scope. The word enable is your clue that the author is now speaking of a causal mechanism.

The author assumes that the only possible reason for the association is the causal mechanism cited in the conclusion, and the correct answer will very likely bolster this notion by eliminating an alternative explanation. Choice (D) hits on the right issue, and it should remind you of Nietzsche's Cornaro example presented earlier. It's possible that the author of this argument got the causal mechanism backwards. She argues that scholarships lead to high GPA's, but maybe the opposite is true: high GPA's lead to scholarships. The argument won't work if there's another reason for the correlation cited in the evidence. If high GPAs are the primary criterion for the scholarships in the first place, then it's not surprising that scholarship holders tend to earn higher GPAs than others. The students must generally be of otherwise equal ability before the conclusion can safely be drawn. (D) is the answer because it eliminates a very plausible alternative explanation for the correlation cited in the first sentence, and thus is the assumption on which this conclusion depends.
(A) offers an irrelevant comparison that does not make the study's conclusion any more likely. Even if students who take out loans do not maintain higher GPAs than those who work to finance school, students with scholarships can still maintain higher GPAs than both of the other groups.
(B) is irrelevant to the argument because it makes a comparison between the positive effects of scholarships. The argument concludes that more time and less financial worry together enable students to maintain higher GPAs. The conclusion does not rely on any particular distinction between these factors.
(C) is in no way required by the argument. Even if students who must work to pay for their studies can maintain high GPAs, the GPAs of scholarship students can still be higher.
(E), like choice (B), makes an irrelevant comparison. Stress and study time are two factors that may influence student performance, but there's no specific comparison of their relative importance that's necessary for this argument to work. Scholarships may still confer an advantage in the manner cited no matter what the relative importance of these factors may be.


still i didnot understand the explanation from kaplan. why the ans is D instead of B
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by arunpp » Tue Jul 07, 2009 1:16 am
Clearly IMO, D is the answer. If scholarships were awarded based on GPA, then the conclusion can not hold good. So, it should be assumed that GPA did not qualify as a criteria to award scholarships.
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by khanshainur » Sun May 15, 2016 11:55 pm
I'd be shocked if it wasn't D
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by Eric77Gorm » Sun May 15, 2016 11:59 pm
I will go with option D this case.
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