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Adding my two cents on D vs E.

IMO, choosing D is a more critical mistake than eliminating E in this question. Because D said some reason to increase likelihood of college acceptance and not likelihood of attending college, as per conclusion.

Option E is quite interesting. On first glance, the option seems to give a reason for the stats ie 30% public students pursue farming. If we are little on time, we go, who cares, how does explaining the stats weaken the conclusion and eliminate this option. But, if you read till the end, the last bit changes everything "rather than apply to colleges." This rejects the notion that this is a explainer of stats and modifies the stats against conclusion. Since 30% never applied because they know they go into farming, the real likelihood of continued education is 100*65/70 ie 93% in public schools, and this weakens the conclusion.

If E said on the lines of "30% graduates go farming despite them wanting to go to college", then the conclusion stands.
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CONCLUSION: Parents should send their children to private schools to increase their likelihood of attending college.

LINE OF REASONING:
Generalization: Aggregate School Placement Percentages -> Individual Student's Baseline Likelihood
Cause-Effect: Enrolling in Private School -> Directly Causes Increased Likelihood of College Attendance

CORE ASSUMPTION: The lower percentage of college-bound students in public schools is caused by a failure of the school environment, rather than students making a deliberate, alternative career choice.

WEAKENING APPROACH: Provide an alternative explanation that shows a significant group of public school students voluntarily choose not to go to college, proving that the public school system itself isn't to blame for the lower rate.

OPTION ANALYSIS:
(A) Incorrect. This strengthens the argument by providing a reason why private schools might be more successful at securing college admissions.
(B) Incorrect. Cost and affordability are practical barriers for parents, but they do not challenge the actual likelihood of a student attending college based on the school they attend.
(C) Incorrect. Financial aid distribution metrics do not explain the gap in the initial college enrollment percentages between the two school types.
(D) Incorrect. Mentioning sports opportunities does not explain away or neutralize the 90% vs 65% performance gap noted in the study.
(E) Correct. This breaks the causal connection. If 30% of public school students choose not to go to college because they are pursuing farming, it demonstrates that the lower rate is driven by career preference, not by a lack of school efficacy. For students who actually want to go to college, the public school rate is incredibly high, making the author's recommendation to switch to private school invalid.
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There is a logical deduction (conclusion) that going to private school increases the likelihood of children attending college from the given stats

Assumption is that something in private school is such that it increases the likelihood of attending college.

To weaken, we need some information that can break/weaken this link like children who attend private schools also go for extra tuitions that enable them to be successful.

A. This is one more parameter for students doing better on exams from private college. It does not weak the linkage in any way. Incorrect

B. This option tries to create a trap through conditioning bias. It can seem related because of our own bias that if fee is high for private colleges, they should also have more opportunities but this can not be deduced based on the information given to us in the scenario. Incorrect

C. Incorrect

D. This definitely seems like a good weakener. The only problem is it provides information that is actually inconsistent with the stats given (according to this, public schools should have higher graduation rates). It does nothing to explain the higher graduation rates of private schools.

E. Here, we get that alternative explanation. A big percentage of students are choosing to not pursue higher education from public schools. So, it's the background and aspiration of students that is contributing to the low graduation rate of public schools
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