In each of the first five years of a bachelor degree program of four y

Hello,

At the end of fifth year the second batch will also complete their four years. So technically there will be only 3rd, 4th and 5th year students and the answer should be 4.8S/7, correct me if I am wrong but the answer would be 6S/7 at the start of fifth year.

Yes, I too think so. Experts, what do you think?

Bunuel chetan2u IanStewart ScottTargetTestPrep VeritasKarishma BrentGMATPrepNow GMATinsight

Thank you

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Not well written. I would suggest discarding it.
As Karishma has written, I too found the only reason to include 4th year is due to the words ‘towards the end of the fifth year’, which would mean the year is not yet over. But overall the question requires some improvement in the way it is written.

The question says "... towards the end of the fifth year"
So the fifth year has not ended which means the second year students have not graduated yet. You will take all 4 years into account.

Discussion:

It is clear that the answer is either 6S/7 or 4.8S/7 = 24S/35, depending on whether we include the students who started in the second year. It has already been explained how to get those numbers, so I won’t repeat the procedure here.

The issue here is entirely about the wording of the question. The exact words in the problem are “how many students were studying in the four years of the degree program towards the end of the fifth year?” This sentence is asking for the number of students (in terms of S) before the fifth year is completed. The students who started the program in the second year won’t finish before the end of the fifth year, so they are still there “towards the end of the fifth year.” That’s why I agree with the answer of 6S/7 (though I agree that the question could have been better worded).

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