Hi! If anyone could provide any quick feedback for the gmat essay I wrote, that would be much appreciated. Thank you!
The following appeared in a proposal from the development office at Platonic University:
"Because Platonic University has had difficulty in meeting its expenses over the past three years, we need to find new ways to increase revenues. We should consider following the example of Greene University, which recently renamed itself after a donor who gave it $100 million. If Platonic University were to advertise to its alumni and other wealthy people that it will rename either individual buildings or the entire university itself after the donors who give the most money, the amount of donations would undoubtedly increase."
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The development office at Platonic University argues that if Platonic University were to advertise to its alumni and other wealthy people, that the amount of donations would increase. This would in turn help the university increase revenues. However, there are several reasons why this argument is not well reasoned and unconvincing.
First, the argument is based on the assumption that alumni at Platonic University will react the same way as the alumni at Greene University do. Perhaps Greene University is a school that specializes in engineering, while Platonic University specializes in art history. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau, engineering graduates tend to have a higher income art history graduates. Therefore, Greene University could have produced wealthier alumni who are more willing to allocate their disposable income to their alma mater, resulting in more donors who are willing to donate more money. The argument would therefore be weakened, if some information was provided that displayed that Greene University’s graduates had a much greater income than Platonic University’s graduates.
Furthermore, if Greene University was an a school that specialized in science, there may be more wealthy people that want to dedicate their money to the improvement in science. If Platonic University has a different specialization, some people may simply have less of an interest in donating and improving that subject. The development office therefore is unconvincing in that it tries to compare Greene University and Platonic University without any substantial evidence of their similarities.
Furthermore, the argument readily assumes that Alumni are not yet aware of the fact that Platonic Univesity can rename buildings based on donors. The point of the advertisement is to inform alumni that if they donate money, then they can have buildings named after them. However, in the United States, it is a commonly known fact that many universities name buildings and schools after significant donors. If these alumni already knew this fact, then spending additional money on advertising would not increase the amount of donations.
Lastly, this argument is assuming that the costs of increasing advertising to donors would not exceed the revenues made from donors. The purpose of advertising to Platonic Univerisity’s alumni is to increase revenues to meet the university’s expenses. However, advertising can be costly and ineffective. If the cost of advertising exceeds the revenues made from the donors, then this strategy would be ineffective. Therefore, argument could be strengthened if the development office created an analysis of the potential costs of advertising to its alumni. This evidence would thereby create legitamacy in the proposal and strengthen the office’s argument.
Overall, there were several problems with the proposal from the development office at Platonic University. It was based on several assumptions: that alumni at Platonic University will react the same way as those at Greene University, that alumni do not already know the information advertised, and that the cost of advertising to donors would not exceed the revenues made from the donors. Without further evidence proving the effectiveness of this proposal, or demonstrating more similarities between Platonic Uniersity and Greene University, this proposal remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.