The trustees of the Avonbridge summer drama workshop have decided to

I will go with 'B'
'D' - This could be the case only if we assume that not all applicants take the qualifying audition.

Fun question! Nverma does a nice job attacking the stimulus and directing your brain to the right answer. I'll just have fun explaining why each wrong answer is wrong.

A. The conclusion of the stimulus deals with offering those with the most highly evaluated auditions, scholarships. What the applicants do after the committee's offer is beyond the scope. Remember, this is a weaken question. This does not attack the conclusion - that the method the committee is employing will ensure the top 10% of each group will receive scholarship offers. What if the committee DID make offers to the top 10% of each? This seems to fail at weakening the argument.

B. The method of assessment is outside the scope of the argument. But let's run with this idea. So, person A comes in. Person A brought with them a lion from the Savannah. The lion fakes eating person A, the whole act blows the judges away, person A exits the stage and is lauded by the judges. Then person B comes up to be evaluated. Person B has a pet mouse. Person B finds it brilliant to use the mouse in his/her routine. The judges aren't thrilled. They went from a lion almost eating someone, to a mouse doing next to nothing. BUT WHO CARES? The conclusion states that the top 10% of each group are OFFERED scholarships. Person B jaded in comparison to Person A. You could probably make the argument that the magnificence of A negatively affected B. But again, who cares? B could have sucked regardless of A - so B shouldn't be offered a scholarship anyway. This is perfectly plausible with the conclusion. Hence, it does NOT weaken.

C. The need of the scholarships is outside of the scope. Curse the LSAT gods for wasting seconds of your life, then move on.

D. nverma explains why this is true. think about relativity. 500 in group a. 100 in group b.
10% of 500 = 50
10% of 100 = 10

However, applications in group A from 400-449 scored 97% on their applications.
In group B - the 10/100 applications scored -- 3, 99%s ; 4 98%s ; but 3, 92%s

Seems to me that those in group a from 400-449 got SCREWED!

E. This is tricky, however outside of the scope. Even though the non locals may be favored, this doesn't necessarily preclude the offering of scholarships to the most highly evaluated candidates.

IMO ANSWER SHOULD BE "D"......
WE ARE SELECTING 10% BEST APPLICANTS FROM DIFFERENT GROUPS AND THEN ASSUMING WE HAVE SELECTED THE BEST OUT OF THE AMALGAMATED JOINT GROUP.....WHICH IS WRONG....POINTS TO FLAW........

THE 10% IN EACH GROUP MAY BE THE BEST IN THEIR RESPECTIVE GROUPS BUT SOME MAY NOT BE THE BEST AMONGST THE WHOLE LOT...
ASSUME ONE GROUP WITH ALL TALENT AND ANOTHER WITH ALL DUDS..........EVEN THE BEST OF THE DUD LOT CANNOT BEAT THE 11TH OF THE OTHER LOT.......HENCE "D" WHICH SAYS----- Some of the applicants who are offered scholarships could have less highly evaluated auditions than some of the applicants who are not offered scholarships .....BRINGS OUT THE FLAW.....
HENCE CORRECT ANSWER....

Which one of the following points out why the trustees' plan might not be effective in achieving its goal

What is goal : Give scholarships to highly evaluated applicants (If they don't want to take it, it will be their problem not trustee's)

Option D correctly states that, because of local and non-local grouping there might be a chance that some of the scholarship baggers will be less evaluated.

Let's see an Example :
Local Got : (100,90,80,70,60,50..,10) Points
Non Local got : (10,9,8,7,6,5..,1) Points
In this case it will be unfair for 90% local as None of non local is highly evaluated than local.

IMO 'D' is correct.

The trustees of the Avonbridge summer drama workshop have decided to offer scholarships to the top 10 percent of local applicants and the top 10 percent of nonlocal applicants as judged on the basis of a qualifying audition. They are doing this to ensure that only the applicants with the most highly evaluated auditions are offered scholarships to the program.

They want to give scholarship to both Local and Non-Local applicants. They want to give scholarships to the most highly evaluated auditions.

Which one of the following points out why the trustees' plan might not be effective in achieving its goal?

(A) The best actors can also apply for admission to another program and then not enroll in the Avonbridge program - Thats okay but their plan of giving to only highly evaluated auditions are still maintained.
(B) Audition materials that produce good results for one actor may disadvantage another, resulting in inaccurate assessment -If that is the case, then actor would not be highly evaluated who performed bad.
(C) The top 10 percent of local and nonlocal applicants might not need scholarships to the Avonbridge program - Thats okay but we are still offering to highly evaluated people.
(D) Some of the applicants who are offered scholarships could have less highly evaluated auditions than some of the applicants who are not offered scholarships - This could be true in the case if we have two different groups of talent pool we want to judge on. Then, we would not offer based on high evaluation criteria.
(E) Dividing applicants into local and nonlocal groups is unfair because it favors nonlocal applicants - But still we cant say that it is affecting the plan trustees have in mind.

Correct Answer D

Difference between (B) and (D)?

Hello, lakshya14. The difference I see between the two answer choices is that (B) focuses on the materials used during the auditions, and that is an independent variable that does not in any way tie into the trustees' plan. The goal of that plan, as outlined in the passage, is to ensure that only the applicants with the most highly evaluated auditions are offered scholarships to the program. In order to weaken that plan, then, we need to find an answer that focuses on the evaluations themselves, not on the audition materials. Choice (D) is exactly what we are looking for:

Because the plan adopts a top 10 percent local/nonlocal split, it could be true that, say, many more qualified (higher-scoring) nonlocal applicants from a pool of 100,000 students might not receive scholarships when applicants from a smaller local pool of maybe 10,000 students might be offered them. We have no numbers to lean on in the passage, but our little scenario here shows that (D) attacks the plan itself, just what we are looking to do.

I hope that helps. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

The trustees of the Avonbridge summer drama workshop have decided to offer scholarships to the top 10 percent of local applicants and the top 10 percent of nonlocal applicants as judged on the basis of a qualifying audition. They are doing this to ensure that only the applicants with the most highly evaluated auditions are offered scholarships to the program.

Which one of the following points out why the trustees' plan might not be effective in achieving its goal?

(A) The best actors can also apply for admission to another program and then not enroll in the Avonbridge program

(B) Audition materials that produce good results for one actor may disadvantage another, resulting in inaccurate assessment

(C) The top 10 percent of local and nonlocal applicants might not need scholarships to the Avonbridge program

(D) Some of the applicants who are offered scholarships could have less highly evaluated auditions than some of the applicants who are not offered scholarships

(E) Dividing applicants into local and nonlocal groups is unfair because it favors nonlocal applicants

One of the possible assumption of the ASDW trustees make is that segregating the applicants would help them chose best auditions - possibly because they might think that auditions are at par to each other.

It can be possible that top 10% of the applicants of either group scores below the top 20% applicants of the other group. This is what D points out.
In B, it's possible that good results for one actor may disadvantage another, but isn't that is what is expected out of auditions i.e. the better one is selected.

Answer D.

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.