Critical Reasoning

The Metropolitan Cooking Academy surveyed prospective students and found that students wanted a curriculum that focused on today's healthy dining trends. In order to reverse the trend of declining interest in the school's programs, administrators propose a series of new courses focused on cooking exotic species of fish, alternative grains such as quinoa, and organically produced vegetables.

Which of the following, if true, supplies the best reason to suspect that the proposed new courses will increase interest in the Metropolitan Cooking Academy?

Cooking fish, grains, and vegetables relies on the same culinary fundamentals as does the preparation of other ingredients.
In the food and beverage industry, many employers no longer have time to train apprentices and therefore demand basic culinary skills from their new hires.
Local producers in the area near the Metropolitan Cooking Academy are excellent sources of exotic fish and organic vegetables.
Many other cooking schools have found a decline in the level of interest in their programs.
Many advocates of healthy dining stress the importance of including fish, grains, and organically produced vegetables in one's diet.

OA- E

Ok, Question as us to find an answer choice that will strenghten the argument

Deconstruct the argument

MC academy surv perspective students ---> students wanted a curriculum focusses on healthy dining

Conclusion = to reverse the declining trend --> admin. propose inclusion of courses on cooking fish, grains and org veg

so ideally in the answer choices we should be looking for information that connects healthy dinning to fish, grains and org vegetables

lets examine the answer choices
A) Cooking fish, grains, and vegetables relies on the same culinary fundamentals as does the preparation of other ingredients.
Culinary fundamentals is not in scope - so this option can be discarded

B) In the food and beverage industry, many employers no longer have time to train apprentices and therefore demand basic culinary skills from their new hires.
Again this answer choice talks about expectation of employers so can be discarded

C)Local producers in the area near the Metropolitan Cooking Academy are excellent sources of exotic fish and organic vegetables.
Not concerned about the source of fish and org vegetable, can be discarded

D)Many other cooking schools have found a decline in the level of interest in their programs.
Irrelevant to the argument

E)Many advocates of healthy dining stress the importance of including fish, grains, and organically produced vegetables in one's diet.
It says people who advocate healthy dinning stress on including fish , grains and organically produced vegetables so this should be our pick !! correct answer

hi Aman


I would urge you to read the question.

RAJAT

Hello Friends,

I do not understand/agree with the Official Answer.

Which of the following, if true, supplies the best reason to suspect that the proposed new courses will increase interest in the Metropolitan Cooking Academy?

A. Cooking fish, grains, and vegetables relies on the same culinary fundamentals as does the preparation of other ingredients. This might be the answer choice but I'm not fully convinced. If cooking fish, grains and veggies relies on same culinary fundamentals as does the preparation of other ingredients, which the people in survey don't desire, there might be a reason to suspect. But this option is making additional assumptions
B. In the food and beverage industry, many employers no longer have time to train apprentices and therefore demand basic culinary skills from their new hires. Strengthens
C. Local producers in the area near the Metropolitan Cooking Academy are excellent sources of exotic fish and organic vegetables. Strengthens
D. Many other cooking schools have found a decline in the level of interest in their programs. Out of scope/ we don't care.
E. Many advocates of healthy dining stress the importance of including fish, grains, and organically produced vegetables in one's diet. Strengthens. Or just because this is the official answer, do I need to assume that 'including' is not same as 'cooking'??

Had this been in Real GMAT - I would've gone with A

Can experts come in here please.

Hey ppl! I agree with Charu for the most part. The question asks "Which of the following, if true, supplies the best reason to suspect that the proposed new courses will increase interest in the Metropolitan Cooking Academy?"

Since we are supposed to suspect the new course's success shouldn't we choose an option that would weaken the Academy's Plan? If so,

A- Cooking fish, grains, and vegetables relies on the same culinary fundamentals as does the preparation of other ingredients. Students want to focus on healthy dining trends. It shouldn't matter that culinary fundamentals are the same as long the students are taught to use the fundamentals to cook healthy trends. Incorrect IMO

B -In the food and beverage industry, many employers no longer have time to train apprentices and therefore demand basic culinary skills from their new hires. If the courses focus on cooking exotic dishes rather than focusing on teaching its students the basics, graduates may not get jobs in the industry. (I may be connecting too many dots here, but this seems like the right option to me)

C - Local producers in the area near the Metropolitan Cooking Academy are excellent sources of exotic fish and organic vegetables. This would help the Academy and gives us no reason to suspect the success of its new course.

D.- Many other cooking schools have found a decline in the level of interest in their programs. So?

E - Many advocates of healthy dining stress the importance of including fish, grains, and organically produced vegetables in one's diet. This again, leads us to believe that the new course would be successful. The students want to focus on healthy dining trends and advocates of healthy dining stress the importance of fish,grains etc.


It would be helpful if the Experts could weigh in on this...

hey shenoy...


i thought on the same grounds and chose that option.


rajat

Rajat,
What is the source of the question? Did they explain the logic behind the OA?

"Suspect" only means to think. A "suspect" is the person that we think did it. Now suspect is often used to express a doubt, such as "I suspect that you are wrong." But you can replace this with "think" and say "I think that you are wrong."

So the question really says, "Which of the following, if true, supplies the best reason to THINK that the proposed new courses will increase interest in the Metropolitan Cooking Academy?

So this is a strengthen question!

Try it again with this in mind. amandeep.hora has given a nice explanation above by the way!!

David, I do not mean to offend, because you are an expert... but don't you think, 'Think' has a positive tone and 'Suspect', negative.
As far as I know, to suspect means to question. Please see attachment.
If this is the case, I still do not understand the question.

Thank you for posting the definition!

Suspect is used here as a verb, clearly, and not a noun. The definition of the verb (from your posting) is:

"Have an idea or impression of existence, presence, or truth of (something) without certain proof."

This is exactly the definition of think! If I "think" that something is true I have an idea or impression that it is true but I do not have certain proof of it.

The noun and adjective uses of "suspect" are in fact negative - as in "he is a suspect." But you can see that this question stem says "supplies the best reason to suspect that" so this is the verb form and can be replaced with "think."

Now, if this word were found to be culturally unfair - as in non-native English speakers missed the question at higher rates, then on the official GMAT you might not see this word. I cannot say for sure if this word is one that would be considered fair on the actual test or not. After all the GMAT is not a vocabulary test and I am certainly not going to be telling you that if you miss the subtle definition of one word you should miss the question.

Remember that the writing of a good question is actually the "editing" of that question. When I write a question I fully expect to have to edit it in response to the statistics that I get back in terms of which answers are being chosen and whether or not the question is truly separating ability levels or not. I did not write this question and I have never used the word "suspect" in a question stem. This question may well need to be edited so that this word "suspect" is removed from the question. It may be unfair to certain groups.

If this is from the Veritas question bank I can get the statistics and if people are indeed confused (for example if A is chosen more than E) then I will see that it is edited.

Thanks David for your views and explanation.

I will see if this is in the question bank and if it indeed has unfair results. It will be interesting to know if using a "suspicious" word like "suspect" has thrown off lots of people!! It seems like it has since so many studious people here on BTG thought the same thing.

If everyone thinks it is a weaken it is no good for us to just say "gotcha!" we need to change it. I will let you know what I find.

Thanks to everyone for pointing this out. You are very helpful to us when you let us know about this problems.

hi David

This Q is from question bank.

rajat

So I have the statistics for this question. A large number of people have tried it and choice E is chosen more than twice as often as A. However, I do not like the "fit curve" it takes a dip showing that people who normally do very well on critical reasoning do often miss this one. While other groups (who are not as good at Critical Reasoning in general) seem to get it right.

It may be that this one word "suspect" is responsible for this.

I will ask to have the question changed and perhaps then it will show different results!

Thanks to all!

Thank you David for the prompt replies and the updates on the statistics for this question. Nice to know that Veritas keeps updating and editing its questions depending on our feedback.



Final clarification: If i see the word 'suspect' on the GMAT and it is used as verb and in a similar context as in this Veritas question, I should take it to mean 'think' right?