Some of the greatest American entrepreneurs of the 20th century starte

I went with E too. But here are the OA and OE:
Actual Answer : A

Explanation

The question asks you to determine the only valid conclusion of the given two statements.

In this case, the only valid conclusion is the one given in option A.
The usefulness of education (option B) is not in the ambit of the two statements, while option C is too extreme a statement.

You might be tempted to believe that option D is the correct answer; however, it is not a valid conclusion because entrepreneurs who start a venture after their education can be as successful.

Option E is also too strong a statement.

Hence (A) is the correct answer.

In my opinion, option A is generalizing too much and talks in a tone that's much broader than the intended tone of the stimulus. I think option E is a better choice since we are given that there are some entrepreneurs who have been successful without education.

I disagree with A. It should be E.

Even i feel its E. Initially i was confused between A and E, but since we have to assume certain things in A, I chose E. Can any of the experts help us with this?

I've edited this post

(A) sometimes, it can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.
this statement is very general and have less synchronization with the given argument-incorrect

(B) education is not always useful.
education for some people might not be, doesn't mean it is not always useful-too strong-incorrect

(3) it pays not to complete an education.
incomplete education for some people might be fruitful, doesn't mean it is not always useful-too strong-incorrect


(D) entrepreneurs who start their ventures after completing their education are not as successful as those who start off while still in college.
education for some people might not be good enough to be entrepreneur , doesn't mean it is not always true, are all entrepreneurs not educated?-too strong-incorrect

(E) you do not have to be educated to be an entrepreneur.
this has the best answer choice here- this gives the exact idea asked -correct

History is replete with hundreds of great entrepreneurs, who never went to college or dropped out of their schools. The names are so great that the list is mind-boggling. To cite a few among them will be Walt Disney, Steve jobs, Michael Dell, Hershey, Ty Warner and so on, not leaving behind the legendary Gates. So critical thinking suggests that you do not need to have a formal education to be an entrepreneur. This is what opening remarks of the passage explicitly states. In addition, E stops short of any speculation whether such entrepreneurs succeed or not. This is the safety-valve of the choice. So, E is the best answer

Why is a not so strong as E? A is speculating beyond its means. It seems to say that by sacrificing X for Y, sometimes one gains more. This a little far fetched

Well, I think E is the best choice among the lot, but I also think it's a terrible practice question and you should ignore it. The wording is so vague all you can do is try to guess what the question writer means. In answer choice E, for example,

(E) you do not have to be educated to be an entrepreneur.

what does it mean "to be educated"? If that means "to complete college", then E is clearly correct. If that means "to attend school at some point", then E is not something we can prove from the passage. So we can't tell if E is a good answer because the use of language is too imprecise.

Still, I think E is the best choice, if only because all of the other choices are clearly wrong. I guess a lot of people arrived at answer A:

(A) sometimes, it can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.

and I imagine people construe the "immediate gain" to be "completing a college education", and the "larger benefit" to be "becoming a great entrepreneur". It's not clear to me why that should be so; why is not completing education the "larger benefit"? But the bigger problem is the use of the word "worthwhile", which introduces a value judgment about entrepreneurship. Perhaps many readers of the question will think it is "worthwhile" to become a "great entrepreneur", but we are asked specifically what can be proven from the passage. You can't prove from anything within the passage itself that it's "worthwhile" to become a great entrepreneur. So A is not a good answer.

Now, I would not be at all surprised to learn that A is the answer given in the book which presented this question. But it's a bad question, so I wouldn't be surprised if it also had a bad OA.

Fame,
First of all, this is an atrocious question. I don't know the source, but this question looks like it was written by a teenager. The prompt "it can be proven that" is not at the GMAT level of formality, and the diction, especially use of the pronoun "you", is abysmal. I'll say, in passing, both (B) & (E), for which many on this page fell, play on the distinction "education" vs. "a complete college education" ---- somebody who completes high school and finishes the first couple years of college has plenty of education, more than the majority of people on the planet. Yes, they didn't need to complete their college education to be a successful entrepreneur, but that doesn't say that the education they got didn't help them. Playing on an old book title, "Everything I needed to know about being an entrepreneur I learned in high school" --- that refutes both (B) & (E).

Choice (D) is easy to dispatch with the FACT test. The prompt contains the word "SOME" --- that word should leap out at you like a lightning bolt. The very fact that "some" entrepreneurs follow this pattern suggest that others follow another pattern. If some entrepreneur out there finished college, got two academic masters degrees, an MBA, a JD, and then a Ph.D, and then went on to found a multi-billion dollar technology company, that would not contradict anything in the passage (which is only about "some" entrepreneurs, not all!), but it blatantly contradicts (D).

Let's consider the opposite of (A). The opposite of "sometimes" is "never". Thus, the opposite of (A) would be:
It never can be worthwhile to sacrifice an immediate gain for a larger benefit.
In addition to being a patently absurd statement on its own, this statement directly contradict the passage ---- those folks sacrificed the immediate gain of completing a college education, a readily attainable goal in their environment, and took the risk of pursuing a larger possible benefit, a successful company.

Admittedly, the wording is not perfectly clear. This question is really well below the standards set by the GMAT.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

I eliminated all but A and E.
saw the % of successes and thought that there might be a trick here..
A - immediate gain - education -> larger benefit -> become successful entrepreneur. looks good.
E - as well true. but since we are talking about SOME - I though that something fishy is going here..it might be true that only 1 out of 100 could not complete, but the rest completed education..so this makes E incorrect.

A. Sounds good. We sacrifice immediate gain (completing education in college) for a larger benefit (we start our business and in future [sometimes] it pays of)

B. In global maybe. But here we can not conclude it from a passage.
C. It is too extreme in all cases. Wrong.
D. The passage did not say it. It only said that some of the geatest entrepeneurs did not complete their education. But maybe there are other great (greatest) entepreneurs who completed their education in time.

E. Tempting. And true in global. But can not we conclude it from the passage? No.
Maybe they started their business in time, caught a wave, but then understood that it is impossible to be great entepeneur without being educated and finished their education in college 10 years later.
Or maybe they were educated already (education is a global term). They did not finish college but learned other useful staff related to enrepreneurship.

So A is the best here.

The OA is A as shown HERE but the best answer is E as explained by the experts above.

Anyway, since it's a poor quality question I'm locking the topic.