In a school, every student who scores above 90% in the final exam receives a Merit certificate. Last year, exactly 9% of the students received a Merit certificate. In the table, select for Students with Merit certificates a value representing the number of students who could have scored above 90% last year, and select for Total students a value representing the total number of students in the school that would be jointly consistent with the given information. Make only two selections, one in each column.

Official Solution: Essentially, we are looking for a pair of options where the value in the first column is 9% of the value in the second column. Starting with the greatest value: 9% of 10,800 is 972. Since 972 is not an option, 10,800 is eliminated. 9% of 1,200 is 108. Since 108 is an available option, Students with Merit certificates could have been 108, and Total students could have been 1,200. Correct answer: Students with Merit certificates "108" Total students "1,200" GMAT-Club-Forum-yoa4z93g.png

1. The students who received merit certificates are 9% of all students. This is less than 10 times. 2. We can sort the answer choices into 3 ranks based on this fact. Rank 1 - 90, 108, and 120. Rank 2 - 1080 and 1200. Rank 3 - 10800. 3. The two answers we're looking for are in consecutive ranks. Let's look at the possible answers for the total number of students: - Rank 1. These are too small, since 10x smaller numbers aren't in the options. - Rank 2. 1080: 108 is 10% and 90 is \frac{90}{1080} * 100\% = 8.33\% , so it doesn't work. 1200: 120 is 10% and 108 is \frac{108}{1200} * 100\% = 9\% , so it does work. - Rank 3. 10800: 1080 is 10% and 1200 is more than that, so it doesn't work. 4. Our answer will be: Students with Merit certificates - 108 and Total students - 1200 .