dpvtank wrote:
yavasani wrote:
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?
(A) Every graduate of TopNotch High School with an IQ of 150 has been accepted to at least one Ivy-League school.
(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.
(C) 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.
(D) 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.
(E) 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.
Student of
e-GMAT here. I used their process to come up with the correct answer. However, it definitely took me over the 2 min mark (at around 3 mins and 30 seconds) and this was difficult due to its tricky wording. Nevertheless, here's my process.
Conclusion: MOST students (not all) with an IQ of 120+ and ALL students with 150+ who apply to one or more Ivy League universities get accepted to at least one Ivy League university.
Phew...kinda long, but makes a lot of sense.
The only premise we have to work with is that TN Highschool has students with IQs of over 120. Which means that if these students apply to 1+ Ivy league universities, most of them are likely to get into at least one of them.
Basic pre-thinking: I won't lie here, but this was somewhat challenging for me. I came up with some flimsy assumptions in this. I'd love to see what you guys think about them.
- IQ is the only factor required here for university admissions with 150+ scores
- Students are likely to apply to Ivy league university. (I quickly realised that this was a false assumption and scratched it off).
Alright! With some pre-thinking, I at least had a better idea of the argument, so I could move onto the answer choices.
A. This does not have to be true. Some students may not have applied to an Ivy league university (or any university to begin with). Out.
B. Not necessarily true. What if IQ goes down with age? I was great at tennis 10 years ago as a kid, but now I absolutely suck at it (even when playing with a 12 year old). No where in the argument does it state that IQ remains stable with age.
C. Yeah. This seems right.
D. Well maybe. Let's say that there are 100 students at this school. 99 students decided to start working after high school. The remaining student applied to only one Ivy league university and his score happened to be 125. Although it is likely that he'll get accepted, it is not certain that he will.
E. She could have applied but decided not to go.
C is the right choice.
I definitely struggled with B and D. First in comprehending what they were saying and then in thinking of cases where the statements could fall apart.
Hope this thorough breakdown of my process helps others.
Hi,
Amazing job here!
You reasons for rejecting all the four incorrect choices are right on the mark. It is very encouraging to see this since even though a lot of students do mark the correct choice but they do not reject the incorrect choices for valid reasons. However, that is not the case with you. Good job!
I just want to clarify one thing in the prethinking part.
When you do prethinking for inference/conclusion questions, you need to prethink the inference, not the assumptions. For all other questions (strengthen, weaken, evaluate etc), you need to prethink assumptions but not in the case of inference questions.
In inference questions, you need to prethink the inferences possible.
So, in this questions, you might have done prethinking by understanding the information as below:
1. First thing that comes out is that the 2nd statement is only about those students who apply to at least one Ivy league university. Therefore, any inference which talks about students who did not apply to Ivy league universities is straight out of the way. (read point 2 for an exception to this)
2. Second thing is that
Everyone from TN has IQ over 120. Now, one thing we can easily infer from this statement is that anyone studying at Ivy league who had an IQ below 120 when joining the university cannot be a student of TN. Isn't it?
So, you have arrived at one possible inference just from the first statement of the passage. Now, you can also arrive at another possible inference by combining statements 1 and 2:
If all the students from TN schools apply to Ivy league schools, most of them would be accepted to at least one of them. (Here we are combining the information that every student from TN has IQ over 120 and most students with IQ over 120 gets accepted to at least one of the Ivy league universities.)
Thanks,
Chiranjeev