If anyone is curious, here's my exchange with GMAC. (Especially interesting to note is the way their psychometricians evaluate the questions. Fun stuff.)
My email:
To Whom It May Concern,
I am a GMAT instructor, and I recently received a question from a student regarding the following problem from one of the GMATPrep exams:
To be considered for inclusion in the Barbizon Film Festival, a film must belong either to the category of drama or of comedy. Dramas always receive more submissions but have a lower acceptance rate than comedy. All of the films are either foreign or domestic. This year, the overall acceptance rate for domestic films was significantly higher than that for foreign films. Within each category, drama and comedy, however, the acceptance rate for domestic films was the same as that for foreign films.
From the cited facts it can be properly concluded that
(A) significantly fewer foreign films than domestic films were accepted.
(B) a higher proportion of the foreign than of the domestic films submitted were submitted as dramas.
(C) the rate of acceptance of foreign films submitted was the same for drama as it was for comedies.
(D) the majority of the domestic films submitted were submitted as comedies.
(E) the majority of the foreign films submitted were submitted as dramas.
The correct answer, B, is obviously true, and A, C, and D, clearly need not be the case. But the more I dwell on E, the more convinced I am that this is also true.
Here's my reasoning: if E is, in fact, wrong, then it need not be the case that a majority of the foreign films were submitted as dramas. If there aren't a majority submitted as dramas, then, at most, 50% of the foreign films were submitted in this category. Because we know that a higher proportion of the foreign films than of the domestic films were submitted as dramas (the correct answer), we know that if exactly 50% of the foreign films were submitted as dramas, then less than 50% of the domestic films were submitted as dramas. But if 50% of the foreign films were submitted as dramas and less than 50% of the domestic films were submitted as dramas, then dramas, overall, would have received fewer submissions than comedies. This violates the argument's premise that "Dramas always receive more submissions." Thus, if E is not true, we'd have to violate one of the premises of the argument, and so, logically, E must be true. Am I missing something here?
Sincerely,
Dave
And their thoughtful response:
Hello David,
Upon a careful review of the question by our question writers, we agree with you: both B and E are viable responses and the question is confusing. We are in the process of making upgrades to the GMATPrep software and we will remove it from the new version.
To provide you with a bit more background: as you probably know, we conduct analyses for all questions that appear on the test, and the analysis for this question showed that it was performing as expected - with high ability candidates either selecting answer choice B to get it right or selecting answer choices other than E in getting the question wrong. Answer choice E was actually the least selected amongst all options. Based on the results of the analysis, it was included on the GMAT exam and, subsequently, in GMATPrep.
As a result of your query, we will remove it from GMATPrep when the new version launches. Thank you for raising this issue.
