Hello Everyone,
I recently gave my GMAT and used 'Chinese burned' strategy for for AWA. I got a score of 5. I am would like to have a perfect 6 on my awa. Typically my essays are >450 words in length. I am curious to know if GMAT is deliberately not give a full 6 for people who use chinese burned strategy anymore. Can recent test takers who used this strategy kindly share their experience? Also, here is a sample of an essay i recently wrote. I would greatly appreciate any feedback which will help me move from 5.0 to 6.0
Kudos guaranteed for ALL responders
Argument (as best as i could reproduce, accuracy close to 90%): A recent nationwide study on high schools reveals that the percentage of students who graduate from high school on time is greater for private schools than for it is for public schools. Therefore Bedford Falls parents should send their kids to private schools if they want their kids to graduate on time.
My response:
The argument claims that parents in Bedford falls should send their children to a private school and not to a public school, if the parents want their children to graduate on time. The argument concludes this based on a nationwide survey. However, the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions and fails to provide enough evidence to support its conclusion
First, the argument claims that percentage of students who graduate on time is greater in private schools than in public schools. Information in the form of percentage is not very informative. For example, consider the following. A private school 'V' has ten students. Even if five students graduate on time, the pass percentage comes to 50%. A public school 'U' has 500 students. Even if 490 students graduate on time, its pass percentage is still 49% which is less that the percentage of students graduating on time from the private school. If this happens to be an actual scenario in Bedford Falls, then the parents might as well send their kids to a public school than to a private school. Therefore, its important to know the absolute numbers of total number of students in both public and private schools.Once this information is available, then the percentage data becomes more meaningful and it makes sense to draw conclusions based on the percentage data.
Second, its also important to know the total number of public and private schools surveyed in the study. If 1000 public schools are surveyed against few select private schools, the results of such a survey are not meaningful. Therefore, information about the total number of public schools and private schools surveyed must be made available before we can state that the probability of graduating on time is higher for private schools.
Third, geographical/locality considerations must also be taken into account. There is a possibility that majority of the public schools surveyed are present in rough neighbourhoods or in poor cities while the private schools are well funded, well staffed and attract academically bright students. Therefore, parents in Bedford falls should focus more on the data from public and private schools present in their locality/neighbourhood before choosing to send their kids to private school as suggested by the author in the argument.
As pointed above the argument makes several baseless assumptions and draws a conclusion which cannot be supported by any means. The argument should have presented the data regarding on time graduation, in terms of absolute numbers and not percentages. Also, the author of the argument should have mentioned data on the total number of public and private schools surveyed as well as information pertaining to the location of these schools and the comparison of teacher/student ratios in each of these schools before drawing conclusions on which school the parents of Bedford falls should send their kids to.