At a community college that offers cooking classes, program directors

Question

At a community college that offers cooking classes, program directors have noticed that nearly 75% of registrations occur within the week leading up to the start date for each class. To capitalize on this high level of last-minute demand, the community college plans to offer a new class starting each week.

The success of the plan requires which of the following assumptions to be true?

(A) No other cooking classes will adopt the same strategy of offering a new class every week.
(B) Cooking class students do not make their course enrollment plans well in advance of when they register for a class.
(C) The community college employs enough cooking class instructors to staff the increased number of courses.
(D) Cooking classes are becoming increasingly popular ways for people to spend their money and leisure time.
(E) The cost to offer additional classes will not increase as the community college expands its schedule.

lostin · Answer

As per given stem - Since 75% of registrations occur within the week leading up to the start date, it is expected that starting a new case every week will result in higher enrollment.
Need to find an option that may impact above conclusion.

(A) Out of scope - No mention of competition in the stem.
(B)  Correct  - Stem will hold true only if people are not planning about their course registration in advance. Only in the absence of advance planning - conclusion about weekly class and increased enrollment will hold true.
(C) No mention of capacity of teachers here - Eliminate
(D) Okay this option give some reason about increasing cooking classes increment but no mention of time here so eliminate.
(E) No mention of schedule constants

sarthak952 · Answer

Community college directors notice that a majority of people sign up only a few days before the deadline for cooking classes.

On the basis of the above, the community college concludes it must start classes every week.

We need to find the gap in logic here that will make the conclusion come true.

What exactly led the college to conclude that they should start the cooking classes every week instead of planning it in advance?

The fact that people only register a few days before the class begins!

Hence starting classes every week is likely to help the college capitalise on the last-minute demand!

Another way to look at it

If you still have doubts about why an option should be true, just negate it! If the conclusion still follows, then that answer is probably not the assumption!

Negating B, If cooking class students do enrol in advance, would the college be able to capitalise on the last minute high-level demand? No!

An interesting question comes up - Why is E wrong?

Let us say a company launches a new product in a tier 3 city to capture the market...

Can you assume that the cost to offer the new product will not rise? You can't...

When we apply the same logic here, we can't assume that the cost will not rise when the college tries to capitalise on the demand.

Hence, B should be the answer.

Hope it helps.

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naveenban · Answer

Plan - Looking at the last-minute demand, the community college plans to offer a new class starting each week.

Assumption - The Plan will Work

(A) No other cooking classes will adopt the same strategy of offering a new class every week. -  Out Of Scope. Doesn't specify the reason how the plan will work.

(B) Cooking class students do not make their course enrollment plans well in advance of when they register for a class. -  Correct. If Students don't plan in advance, the weekly new batch plan will work as the students can plan and join a new batch within a week. 
(C) The community college employs enough cooking class instructors to staff the increased number of courses. -  Irrelevant - Doesn't specify how Weekly Batch Plan will succeed. 
(D) Cooking classes are becoming increasingly popular ways for people to spend their money and leisure time. -  Doesn't specify if they'll join the weekly classes. 
(E) The cost to offer additional classes will not increase as the community college expands its schedule. -  Out Of Scope

Taulark1 · Answer

I don't understand why B is an assumption. 
AS per my understanding - Even If Cooking class students  do make  their course enrollment plans well in advance of when they register for a class, the college still could capitalize because the  registration  happens in the week leading up to the class, 
If option B was a strengthener , I understand the answer, but I don't understand how is it an assumption
Could some expert please clarify this ?

Bunuel   GMATNinja

Fdambro294 · Answer

Not an expert, but here is the way I looked at the argument.

The college observed an “effect.” They see that 75% of the people sign up a week before the classes start.

The college concludes that it will institute a Plan to offer a new class each week to “capitalize on the high level of demand” that occurs last minute (a week before the class starts).

One of the assumptions that appears to be a common pattern in a lot of “Plan - to - Goal” type arguments is the following:

The author assumes that the Plan he or she puts into place will not somehow lead to making the problem worse. The author assumes she has perfect knowledge about the scenario and that there isn’t something he or she doesn’t understand about the scenario.

In this case, the author assumes that the reason for 75% of the people signing up a week before class is because these people are procrastinors. (“High level of last minute demand”)

The author believes that the “cause”/“reason” for 75% of the class attendees signing up so late is because there exists a high level of demand a week before classes.

The GAP in this thinking is that the author is conflating two ideas: the idea that if someone signs up late for a class ———> necessarily means that the person did not expect to take the class before that last week leading up to the class.

However, just because a person signs up for a class one week before the class starts does not necessarily mean that the person did so because of “last minute” decisions. The author is assuming that people are making these last minute decisions and that offering a class each week will capitalize on these decisions. (More people will be able to sign up last minute because classes are offered each week)

If the people signing up are NOT making last minute decisions but are instead making long term plans to take a class (at what time you sign up for a class does not necessarily have any bearing on how far in advance you plan), then offering a class each week will not be capitalizing on a “last minute demand” the author believes exists.

For this reason, B is the required assumption.

Posted from my mobile device

tinbq · Answer

Hi there,

Could anyone please explain the impacts of YES and NO for both B and C?
To me, the official key is not persuasive. Thanks

v1987 · Answer

Not an expert, but here is the way I looked at the argument.

(B) Cooking class students do not make their course enrollment plans well in advance of when they register for a class.
 Yes : If students do not make their course enrollment well in advance, it means they register within the week leading up to the class.
Hence the increased demand and it supports the intent of the college to offer new classes each week and being able to CAPITILIZE on increased demand.

No  : If students make their course enrollment well in advance, there wont be nearly 75% registrations within the last week leading upto class.
Hence there wont be increased demand and the conclusion falls apart.

(C) The community college employs enough cooking class instructors to staff the increased number of courses.
 Yes : If the community college employs enough cooking instructors, the classes would work as expected.
The key reason i eliminated this was because of the word "To capitalize" in the argument. It indicated that their intention was in financial terms.
Here we are just talking about whether we can conduct the courses with existing instructors. There is no "FINANCIAL" aspect to these cooking instructors. We are just talking about number of instructors.

No  : If the community college doesn't employs enough cooking instructors,may be the existing instructors would work overtime.But it doesnt break the conclusion.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Engineer1 · Answer

Thanks for posting it.
 Bunuel   bb  can someone please post the official explanation? Thank you.

sayan640 · Answer

KarishmaB  ,  MartyMurray  don't you think option B is going against the premise ?

Can planning be made well in advance even though registrations are done later ? 
If other competitors choose to offer similar classes , the community College won't be able to capitalize as the demand is bound to decrease.

Posted from my mobile device

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At a community college that offers cooking classes, program directors

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