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GMAT in 3 days - Rate my AWA “In general, people are not as concerned
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04 Aug 2020, 20:37
I have read the AWA guide and skimmed some example essays, but if someone would be willing to look over my AWA attempt, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!
Prompt:
The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles:
“In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart’s Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960’s, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners ofthe new House of Beef across the street are millionaires.”
My response:
The argument presented in the magazine article is that people are less concerned than they were 10 years ago about limiting meat and cheese in their diet. The author supports this claim by showing that a certain store that sells fatty cheeses in incredibly successful, while the vegetarian restaurant next door is considerably less well-off. Stated in this way, the argument is unconvincing, and its claims are flawed and unsupported. The argument makes unreasonable assumptions, makes illogical comparisons, and, most importantly, provides insufficient evidence.
The first glaring flaw in the argument is the lack of data or evidence from ten years ago. The basis of the conclusion is that there has been a significant change in customer preferences over the last ten years. However, the only examples provided are from right now. Even the author was able to prove that people currently are not at all concerned about limiting meat and cheese, it would be insufficient to prove any sort of trend over the last ten years. The argument would be far more convincing if data about consumer preferences ten years ago were provided. For example, the argument would be much more convincing if the article included, “ten years ago, grocery stores had a miniscule selection of fatty cheeses and red meats, because they were in such low demand due to health concerns”.
The second flaw in the argument is that the evidence that is provided is weak and anecdotal at best. Instead of providing survey data, meat and cheese sales numbers, or even information about general public sentiment, the article only provides qualitative information about two seemingly random stores. The information about these stores is simply that one sells fatty cheeses and the other is vegetarian; the author does not even state if the grocery store sells red meats or if the restaurant sells fatty cheeses. This is clearly completely insufficient to prove anything about current customer preferences, much less the trend in customer preferences over the past 10 years. The argument would be more convincing if it used better data; for example, the author should have used sales data from a store that sold both fatty cheeses and red meats.
The third flaw in the argument is that the comparison between the grocery store and the restaurant is completely illogical. First, they have completely different business models and are in different industries. It makes very little sense to compare the financial performance of a grocery store and a restaurant, considering they sell different things and sell to different people. For example, maybe the data was taken during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis when restaurants were doing poorly, and grocery stores were selling out. Their financial performance had nothing to do with whether they sold meat and cheese, but rather the industry they were in. The article also does not take into account the businesses’ sizes, ages, or other differentiating aspects. It falsely assumes causality between the presence of a certain food and the financial success of the business. The argument could be vastly improved by using specific sales data from two similar stores.
In conclusion, the argument is severely flawed, primarily due to its lack of evidence. The author tries to use weak, qualitative, and anecdotal examples to extrapolate a trend over the past 10 years and fails to do so. In order to make the argument convincing, the author would need to find relevant, specific, and comprehensive data both from now and from ten years ago.