definatey E)..

The list of African American Entrepreneurs has grown exponentially in the last decade. Just read Forbes Magazine or Ebony Magazine and you'll find out about them.
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African American Entrepreneurs

[quote="zz0vlb"]Some of the greatest American entrepreneurs of the 20th century started their business ventures while they were still in college, and could not complete their education as a result. It is possible that had they started their businesses any later, they would not have been as successful.

From the above two statements, it can only be proven that

(A) sometimes, it can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.

(B) education is not always useful.

(3) it pays not to complete an education.

(D) entrepreneurs who start their ventures after completing their education are not as successful as those who start off while still in college.

(E) you do not have to be educated to be an entrepreneur.



Options B, C can be directly eliminated as these hold strong views which is not at all stated in the given statements.
In option D, author is nowhere mentioning the entrepreneurs who start their ventures after completing their education so can be eliminated.

Confusion is between A and E but as per statements , only A can be concluded more precisely.

Answer is A

Try and fail but never fail to try

Even i feel its E. Initially i was confused between A and E, but since we have to assume certain things in A, I chose E. Can any of the experts help us with this?

I've edited this post

(A) sometimes, it can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.
this statement is very general and have less synchronization with the given argument-incorrect

(B) education is not always useful.
education for some people might not be, doesn't mean it is not always useful-too strong-incorrect

(3) it pays not to complete an education.
incomplete education for some people might be fruitful, doesn't mean it is not always useful-too strong-incorrect


(D) entrepreneurs who start their ventures after completing their education are not as successful as those who start off while still in college.
education for some people might not be good enough to be entrepreneur , doesn't mean it is not always true, are all entrepreneurs not educated?-too strong-incorrect

(E) you do not have to be educated to be an entrepreneur.
this has the best answer choice here- this gives the exact idea asked -correct
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Thank you daagh! There has been lotta discussion about this question, Just wanted to ask whether such controversial questions can appear in actual GMAT or not?

Well, I think E is the best choice among the lot, but I also think it's a terrible practice question and you should ignore it. The wording is so vague all you can do is try to guess what the question writer means. In answer choice E, for example,

(E) you do not have to be educated to be an entrepreneur.

what does it mean "to be educated"? If that means "to complete college", then E is clearly correct. If that means "to attend school at some point", then E is not something we can prove from the passage. So we can't tell if E is a good answer because the use of language is too imprecise.

Still, I think E is the best choice, if only because all of the other choices are clearly wrong. I guess a lot of people arrived at answer A:

(A) sometimes, it can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.

and I imagine people construe the "immediate gain" to be "completing a college education", and the "larger benefit" to be "becoming a great entrepreneur". It's not clear to me why that should be so; why is not completing education the "larger benefit"? But the bigger problem is the use of the word "worthwhile", which introduces a value judgment about entrepreneurship. Perhaps many readers of the question will think it is "worthwhile" to become a "great entrepreneur", but we are asked specifically what can be proven from the passage. You can't prove from anything within the passage itself that it's "worthwhile" to become a great entrepreneur. So A is not a good answer.

Now, I would not be at all surprised to learn that A is the answer given in the book which presented this question. But it's a bad question, so I wouldn't be surprised if it also had a bad OA.
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Fame,
First of all, this is an atrocious question. I don't know the source, but this question looks like it was written by a teenager. The prompt "it can be proven that" is not at the GMAT level of formality, and the diction, especially use of the pronoun "you", is abysmal. I'll say, in passing, both (B) & (E), for which many on this page fell, play on the distinction "education" vs. "a complete college education" ---- somebody who completes high school and finishes the first couple years of college has plenty of education, more than the majority of people on the planet. Yes, they didn't need to complete their college education to be a successful entrepreneur, but that doesn't say that the education they got didn't help them. Playing on an old book title, "Everything I needed to know about being an entrepreneur I learned in high school" --- that refutes both (B) & (E).

Choice (D) is easy to dispatch with the FACT test. The prompt contains the word "SOME" --- that word should leap out at you like a lightning bolt. The very fact that "some" entrepreneurs follow this pattern suggest that others follow another pattern. If some entrepreneur out there finished college, got two academic masters degrees, an MBA, a JD, and then a Ph.D, and then went on to found a multi-billion dollar technology company, that would not contradict anything in the passage (which is only about "some" entrepreneurs, not all!), but it blatantly contradicts (D).

Let's consider the opposite of (A). The opposite of "sometimes" is "never". Thus, the opposite of (A) would be:
It never can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.
In addition to being a patently absurd statement on its own, this statement directly contradict the passage ---- those folks sacrificed the immediate gain of completing a college education, a readily attainable goal in their environment, and took the risk of pursuing a larger possible benefit, a successful company.

Admittedly, the wording is not perfectly clear. This question is really well below the standards set by the GMAT.

Does all this make sense?
Mike
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Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test Prep