The following letter was sent to a candidate applying for entrance to

[quote="Bunuel"]The following letter was sent to a candidate applying for entrance to Nathford University.

Thank you for your interest in Nathford University. We regret to say that your application for entrance has been rejected. Unfortunately, because of the unusually high number of candidates this year, we were not even able to accept all those with SAT scores of 1000 or above, as has been our practice in the past. We have only a limited number of openings and must accept entering students accordingly.

Which of the following can be validly concluded from the letter?

A. The student receiving the letter had SAT scores of 1000 or above.
B. The student receiving the letter did not have SAT scores of 1000 or above.
C. Nathford University accepted only those students with SAT scores of 1000 or above.
D. Nathford University rejected many students with SAT scores of 1000 or above.
E. Nathford University had constraints other than SAT scores that affected selection of candidates.THIS OPTION IS CORRECT AS THE UNIVERSITY IS EXPLAINING THAT THEY HAD ALREADY TOUCHED THE LIMIT FOR SELECTING STUDENTS ( THIS IS CONSTRAINTS OTHER THAN SAT SCORES )

d and e are confusing.

(we were not even able to accept all those with SAT scores of 1000 or above, as has been our practice in the past.)
It can be inferred that University definitely rejected students who had score of 1000 or more

e states that other constraints affect the selection, which is true because scores of 1000 or more does not guarantee admissions.

e looks more solid, now that I think of, but not sure what d says wrong

What if there were 99 openings and 100 applicants got a score of 1000. In the past, this problem had never arose, but they're only rejecting one person with a score of 1000 not many.

Yes, this makes sense. There could be one or many rejections.

Selected D but after revaluation realized the issue with D, It is one little sneaky modifier that made the option D wrong. Let's look at the option choices

A. The student receiving the letter had SAT scores of 1000 or above. Cant be concluded, as the letter only mentions "we were not even able to accept all those with SAT scores of 1000 or above"
B. The student receiving the letter did not have SAT scores of 1000 or above. Same reasoning as A
C. Nathford University accepted only those students with SAT scores of 1000 or above. Cant be concluded conclusively
D. Nathford University rejected many students with SAT scores of 1000 or above. Selected this one but this is incorrect because of "many", had the option said something like "some" , "at least 1" then it would have been correct
E. Nathford University had constraints other than SAT scores that affected the selection of candidates. Correct answer choice , captures the main point of the argument, or essentially encapsulates the reasoning of "why the author wrote the passage"

One of the most relevant CR passage for test takers.

Crux of the argument is that the candidate was rejected and the reasoning given is that NU wasn't able to accept candidates with SAT >= 1000. However, in the last sentence, which i think is most crucial(only considering the kind of choice which is right in this case), NU mentions that a few openings are left for which it would take steps ACCORDINGLY.
A and B are more or less same to reject as they revolve around a single point i.e. SAT score. C is an easy elimination.
In D, 'many' plays the spoilsport as it may be 2 or 100. I believe this is marked by people if they miss the last sentence of the passage.
In E, 'other than' stands for 'accordingly' in passage. So, the candidates with SAT < 1000 still can expect acceptance by NU.

Answer E.
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VeritasKarishma - Can you elaborate why ans B is incorrect?
Doesnt it seem like that were were not even able to accept all students with SAT score of 1000 and above and hence students with SAT score with less than 1000 have even bleaker chances and hence this mail is written to those students

Or is it like a general information that we were not able to accept all the students with SAT score of more than 1000 because of high no. of applicants

Hi nikitamaheshwari, I am no expert but here are my two cents on the query you asked. The key lies in understanding the phrase "we were not even able to accept all those with SAT scores of 1000 or above" and being very literal with it. The phrase is used to tell us that even those who scored more than 1000 were not accepted but that doesn't mean that no one with a score of 1000 wasn't accepted.

Hope that helps

What the letter implies:
This year, it saw an unusually high number of applications.
In past years, they used to accept all who had SAT score of 1000 or above. And they used to admit some even with score less than 1000 (implied by the use of "even").
This year, they couldn't even admit all who had SAT score of 1000 or above. So at least one person with score 1000 or above was rejected.

Note that it is possible that some people with less than 1000 score were accepted this year too. We don't know what the other constraints are.

What can we conclude?

A. The student receiving the letter had SAT scores of 1000 or above.

The letter doesn't mention anything about the student's score.

B. The student receiving the letter did not have SAT scores of 1000 or above.

The letter doesn't mention anything about the student's score. The use of "even" only goes to show that in the past, they used to accept people with SAT scores of 1000 or more and perhaps some with lower scores too (based on other criteria). But this year, even the score criterion led to too many applicants and hence they couldn't admit all those people.
Also, most likely it is a generic letter sent to all rejected applicants. It needed to mention something specific about the student receiving it to imply anything about her score.
nikitamaheshwari

C. Nathford University accepted only those students with SAT scores of 1000 or above.

Not true as discussed above. The use of "even" goes to show that in the past, they used to accept people with SAT scores of 1000 or more and perhaps some with lower scores too (based on other criteria).

D. Nathford University rejected many students with SAT scores of 1000 or above.

We don't how many students with 1000 or more scores were rejected. Perhaps just 1 or 2. Were many rejected? We cannot say.

E. Nathford University had constraints other than SAT scores that affected selection of candidates.

Yes. In previous years, they used to accept candidates under some other constraints too. This year too, they would have shortlisted candidates based on some other constraints too since too many had a SAT score of 1000 or more.
Correct.

Answer (E)

I don't think anywhere it says that there were any other constraints, there could be other contraints but not surely so. It could be a random selection of students. With that in mind, d looks a better option. wdyt?

D is wrong because there is a possibility that the university did not reject but put students on hold.

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