GMAT Essays (AWA)

ARGUMENT:
"Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, they become more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3 by 5 inch print fell from 50 cents for five day service in1970 to 20 cents for one day service in 1984. The same principle applies to the processing of food. And since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its 25th birthday, we can expect that our long experience will enable us to minimize costs and thus maximize profits."

RESPONSE:
This argument states that since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its 25th birthday, we can expect that our experience will allow us to minimize costs and maximize profits. This conclusion is based on the premise that over time, the costs of processing decrease, because as an organization learns how to do things better, they become more efficient. However, this argument lacks several pieces of key information to support this conclusion.

To begin, the argument states that color film processing costs decreased from 50 cents for five day service in 1970 to 20 cents for one day service in 1984. This supports the statement that as an organization gets older, the organization learns how to do things better, thus lowering costs and maximizing profits. However, it fails to explain how food prices and the price of developing film are related. Developing film uses a dark room, special paper, and ink, while processing food uses food, soil, water, pesticides, etc. As you can see, the use of film processing as an example is irrelevant to the overall conclusion of this argument.

In addition, the argument lacks key information as to why the costs of processing food will have decreased in 25 years. The argument does not provide concrete facts such as the cost to package food has decreased, that land prices have gone down, or any other information of this nature. Therefore, we have nothing to base our judgment that costs associated with processing food will be minimized and increase profits.

Lastly, this argument fails to address any of the other costs associated with preparing food. We need to take into account the price of land, soil, water, pesticides, and all of the human labor that goes into processing food and getting it ready to be sold to the consumer. This argument does none of that. Olympic Foods might have become more efficient at how they process food and package it, however if the price itself of many of the key components has increased, they still will not be maximizing profits.

All in all, while the author does have some premise for his argument, he lacks substantial support for anyone to make a conclusion based on the information he provides. If the author wishes to improve his argument he needs to provide factual data about the prices of processing food over the course of several years, as well as prices of foods for the consumers, and provide an example that is more closely related to food prices instead of the film processing one. Without these things, his poorly reasoned argument will not convince many people.

Great essay. Overall I would rate it a 6.

- Good use of a templatized response.

- No grammatical/spelling errors.

- Cogent argument which attacks each point of the argument.

- Good use of keywords (which is also an important factor for the eRater software)

Just 1 point here. You seem to "write" as you "think" and so the long sentences. Sample this:
"Olympic Foods might have become more efficient at how they process food and package it, however if the price itself of many of the key components has increased, they still will not be maximizing profits."
Change to:
"Although Olympic Foods might have become more efficient at processing and packaging the food, they still will not be maximizing profits if the price of the key components has increased.

Also some of the sentences are better off being broken up into smaller ones. Sample this:
"If the author wishes to improve his argument he needs to provide factual data about the prices of processing food over the course of several years, as well as prices of foods for the consumers, and provide an example that is more closely related to food prices instead of the film processing one."


Arun

thanks for your input