full scholarships tend to maintain higher grade point.....

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cherry yeung: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 2; Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2016 6:39 am

by cherry yeung » Wed Dec 28, 2016 7:05 am

HI,

I have been trying hard to understand the explanation in the book but still don't get it at all. Could anyone please help to explain why the answer is D?

4. 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 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.

Please see attached picture taken from the book on explanation...

Source: Beat The GMAT — Critical Reasoning | Wed Dec 28, 2016 7:05 am

DavidG@VeritasPrep: Legendary Member; Posts: 2663; Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:25 amFollowed by: 128 members; Location: Boston, MA; Thanked: 1153 times; GMAT Score:770

by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Fri Dec 30, 2016 12:04 pm

cherry yeung wrote:HI,

I have been trying hard to understand the explanation in the book but still don't get it at all. Could anyone please help to explain why the answer is D?

4. 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 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.

Please see attached picture taken from the book on explanation...

This is a causality argument. The conclusion is that having a scholarship causes students to get higher grade point averages. As an arrow diagram it would look like this: scholarship ---> high GPA

This argument assumes that it's not the other way around. If scholarship students don't have high GPA's because having a scholarship affords them more time to study, but because the students only received a scholarship as a result of their high GPA's, then the conclusion would be incorrect. In other words, it might be the case that it's not scholarships that are causing high grades, it's high grades that are qualifying students for scholarships. This is what D is addressing.

To see this more clearly, if we negate D we get, "High grade point averages were the primary criterion upon which the scholarship awards were based." Well if high GPA's were the only criterion on which scholarships were based, then the argument no longer holds - it's not scholarships causing high grades, but high grades causing scholarships. Because the correct answer, when negated, undermines the argument, we can see that D is correct.

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