manasgoswami1 wrote:Hi,

in the below CR question i opted for b. Why is that not correct??

Dear manasgoswami1
I'm happy to help with this.

This, it seems to me, is a super-tricky, nit-picky, borderline deceitful question. This question plays on various semantic distinctions, to a far greater extent than do real GMAT CR questions.

The prompt:
Everyone who has graduated from TopNotch High School has an intelligence quotient (IQ) of over 120. Most students with an IQ of over 120 and all students with an IQ of over 150 who apply to one or more Ivy League universities are accepted by at least one of them.

The statements above, if true, best support which of the following conclusions?

a)Every graduate of TopNotch High School with an IQ of 150 has been accepted by at least one Ivy-League university.
Not necessarily true --- maybe none of them applied to any Ivy's --- they applied to Stanford & Berkeley and schools such as that instead. It's hard for statements will extreme qualifiers (all, every) to be true.

b)If a person is a high-school graduate and has an IQ of less than 100, he or she could not have been a student at TopNotch High School.
Not necessarily true --- maybe our sub-100 friend attended TopNotch for a few months, was legitimately a student for a period, and flunked out, so didn't graduate. Thus, the prompt statement about graduates still would be true, and this statement would be false.

C)If a person has an IQ of 130 and is attending an Ivy-League university, it is possible for him or her to have graduated from TopNotch High School.
It's very hard for "it is possible" statements to be categorically false. Of course, this is possible.

D)At least one graduate from TopNotch high school who has applied to at least one Ivy-League university has been accepted to one of them.
Suppose just one IQ = 120 person applies to an Ivy school. All the other students apply to Berkeley & Stanford. The prompt says that most students in the 120-150 range are accepted, so perhaps this particular student isn't. Then this statement would be false.

E)If a high-school graduate has an IQ of 150 and is not attending an Ivy-League university, then he or she did not apply to one of them.
We know that if someone with IQ > 150 applies to an Ivy, she will get in. BUT, just because someone is accepted doesn't mean they will go. Perhaps this IQ > 150 person applied to Stanford & Harvard, got accepted both places, and chose Stanford. Therefore, this person has the IQ > 150, is not attending an Ivy, but did apply to one. That makes this statement false.

I think this question was written by a lawyer, rather than someone who actually knows the GMAT.

Does all this make sense?
Mike