Everyone who has graduated from TopNotch High School has an intelligence quotient (IQ) of over 120. Most students with an IQ of over 120 and all students with an IQ of over 150 who apply to one or more Ivy League universities are accepted to at least one of them.

The statements above, if true, best support which of the following conclusions?

1]Every graduate of TopNotch High School with an IQ of 150 has been accepted to at least one Ivy-League school. We don't know if every graduate with an IQ of 150 applies to Ivy-League schools
2]If a person is a high-school graduate and has an IQ of less than 100, he or she could not have been a student at TopNotch High School. Graduates of TopNotch are the relevant population.
3]If a person has an IQ of 130 and is attending an Ivy-League school, it is possible for him or her to have graduated from TopNotch High School. Since the stimulus says that most graduates of TopNotch who have an IQ above 120 and apply to Ivy-League schools get in, this is the best answer choice.
4]At least one graduate from TopNotch high school who has applied to at least one Ivy-League university has been accepted to one of them. We don't have enough information to say this.
5]If a high-school graduate has an IQ of 150 and is not attending an Ivy-League school, then he or she did not apply to one of them. We are discussing TopNotch high-school graduates.

what is the best approach to solve problems like these.
I always find multiple options correct in these kind of questions and it is very diffucult to select correct one within 2 mins.
Anybody can put down a sound approach to tackle problems like these ??
Thanks in advance.
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Hi EMPOWERgmatRichC

Could you please provide your comments on this.

I want to know what is the issue with option B?


Regards

Hi PathFinder007,

This is an Inference question. To be 100% clear on our assignment with this question, we have to be able to look at the correct option and say, "yup, I know that for an absolute fact."

Let's pull up the salient points:
Everyone who has graduated from TopNotch High School has an intelligence quotient (IQ) of over 120. Most students with an IQ of over 120 and all students with an IQ of over 150 who apply to one or more Ivy League universities are accepted to at least one of them.

The statements above, if true, best support which of the following conclusions?

B) If a person is a high-school graduate and has an IQ of less than 100, he or she could not have been a student at TopNotch High School.

Is it possible that TopNotch could have had STUDENTS (not graduates) with IQs of less than 100? Yes. From the information we're given, we can't rule out that possibility. For all we know, TopNotch could have had a student with a 99 IQ who got booted from the program and never graduated. That means we have to get rid of option B.

Bigger Picture: There's a reason why this question is rated at a 95% difficulty quotient. The granularity of these options, particularly B, reaches an unusual level.
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Here is why:

Argument:
Everyone who graduates from topnotch high school has IQ > 120.
Most > 120 IQ and all > 150 IQ students who apply get accepted to at least one Ivy league university.


4]At least one graduate from TopNotch high school who has applied to at least one Ivy-League university has been accepted to one of them.
Not necessary. It is possible that no student from top notch has IQ > 150 or even if there are students with IQ > 150, they may not have applied. We know that most students with IQ > 120 who apply get accepted but it is possible that all those who applied from top notch (and hence had IQ>120) got rejected. (Number of people who applied from top notch could be a very small % of the total number of people with IQ > 120 who applied)

Say this year 1000 students with IQ greater than 120 applied to Ivy League universities. Say only 20 of them did not get accepted to any university so most got accepted.
It is possible that all students of Top Notch who applied fall in this 20. What if only 5 of Top Notch had applied and all 5 are in this 20? Then (D) is not true.
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