PrepTest 110, Section 3, Question 4
A group of 1,000 students was randomly selected(68 more words not shown)
The reasoning of the argument(6 more words not shown)
- Afails to justify(9 more words not shown)
- Battempts to draw(9 more words not shown)
- Coverlooks the possibility(15 more words not shown)
- Dcontradicts itself by(21 more words not shown)
- Etreats high school(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Three schools in one city don't automatically speak for the whole country.
The students were selected randomly, which helps within the group being sampled. But the pool was still limited to those three schools. What if they're unusually well-funded schools? What if the city places an unusually high value on finishing school? A random selection from an unusual group can still give us an unusual result.
There's also a question about who is missing. Students who have already dropped out won't be among the students still attending those schools. If we're trying to understand dropout decisions, their views could matter too. The survey's 89-plus percent is a fact about the students who answered, not a complete picture of every teenager's intentions.
Then the author reaches a national conclusion. Perhaps desire to finish school is lower elsewhere. We haven't been given a reason to take these local responses as typical of students nationwide.
What we’re looking for
That's what I want the flaw answer to identify: the argument uses a limited local sample to make a claim about the whole country.
Working the answers
- A
More than 89 percent is certainly a large majority. We could debate exactly how large a majority has to be before calling it overwhelming, but that wording isn't what undermines the national claim. Even a 100 percent response in these three schools wouldn't establish what students across the country want.
- B
The two claims aren't in conflict. Saying that most students want to finish school fits with saying that a high dropout rate wouldn't be caused by a general lack of that desire. The problem is whether the survey supports those claims about students nationally, not whether the claims contradict each other.
- C
The argument says that if the national dropout rate is high, lack of desire can't explain it. That's a conditional claim; it doesn't require the author to establish that the rate actually is high. A low dropout rate wouldn't fix the unsupported move from this city to the nation.
- D
Students could want to finish school and still drop out. They might face circumstances that prevent them from doing what they want. So a high dropout rate and a widespread desire to graduate can both be true. A contradiction would require claims that cannot both be true, such as saying every student in this sample answered yes and also that none of them did. That's not what happens here.
- ECorrect
The author treats the students in one medium-sized city as representative of students nationwide. Nothing establishes that they are. Randomly choosing students from three schools doesn't solve that problem: students elsewhere might have very different intentions. The national claim goes beyond what this survey can support.
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