I took the full, free CAT from
Manhattan GMAT yesterday and scored a 720 (43Q, 45V). The verbal is up to where I want it, but the quant slipped. :/
It looks like the intensive SC studying DID help. My verbal breakdown was:
SC: 11/15
CR: 12/14
RC: 7/12
ALL of the questions I got wrong were 700-800 level. On previous exams, I was getting about half SC wrong, and not even at the same difficulty. The CR is the most consistent section for me.
I would also like some feedback on the AWA, if you don't mind. The prompt:
“The inflow of immigrant workers into our community has put a downward pressure on wages. In fact, the average compensation of unskilled labor in our city has declined by nearly 10% over the past 5 years. Therefore, to protect our local economy, it is essential to impose a moratorium on further immigration.”
My analysis:
Quote:
This editorial has several flaws. It assumes a causation between immigration and depressed wages. We would need more information to strengthen this argument.
For instance, we are not told when the influx of immigrants started in this community. Has there been a higher immigration rate recently than there had been historically? Additionally, it would be helpful to know the wage trend for unskilled labor in this community going back further than 5 years. If we had more data on long-term trends for both immigration and wages then we could better see a correlation: whether wages dropped before, during, or after immigrant workers increased.
Furthermore, correlation by itself is not enough for one to reason causation. There are other factors that need to be considered. We do not know whether the immigrants are taking unskilled labor, even though they are blamed for depressing its wages. It is possible that the new immigrant workers are highly skilled and have no impact on the jobs with declining wages. The lower-skilled jobs might be losing compensation because demand is plummeting, and not at all due to changes in supply. It would also be helpful to know whether these trends hold in communities without a large inflow of immigrant workers.
Finally, the impact of the proposed solution is questionable; the author presents no evidence that it will be effective. Even if we could demonstrate a likely causation - which has not been done - we have no reason to believe that a moratorium on immigration would actually reduce the number of immigrant workers. It may make immigration only likely to happen illegally.
Thanks!