Parents: We have observed that the college does not follow a fair poli

Question

Parents: We have observed that the college does not follow a fair policy while allocating campus housing to its students. A quick look at Block B indicates that it majorly houses international students while most domestic students are allocated Block A. Is it because the college wants to prevent international and domestic students from intermingling?

College Representative: The accusation is not true. While allocating housing, we do not look at any nationality information. Only the students' first names and grades are used while allocating housing. The allocation should hence be random.

Which of the following assumptions forms an inherent weakness in the college representative's response to parents' charges?

A. There is no discrimination against international students. 
B. The policy followed by the college is common policy and is followed by other colleges too. 
C. It is not possible to recognize the nationality of a candidate by looking at his or her first name. 
D. There are no exceptions, whatsoever, in the explained procedure for campus housing allocation. 
E. Grades of international students are significantly different from those of domestic students.

My question is - The way said question is framed makes it sound like a 'weaken' question, but in fact is an assumption question

KarishmaB · Accepted Answer

Parent - Block A has domestic students and block B has foreign students. This is not a fair policy. 
College Rep - Not true. Say, the person who allocates is not given the nationality info. He is given only first name and grade info. He allocates as per that, not nationality. So as per nationality, distribution should be random in both blocks.

What is the assumption here that makes the rep's argument weak? This means we are looking for an assumption that the rep makes which doesn't necessarily hold. So unearthing that assumption weakens the rep's position. This is no different from our regular assumptions. An assumption is a strengthener and when we negate the assumption, it breaks our conclusion. An assumption is a gap in the reasoning, something that the argument is missing. So it is a weakness in the argument. I need to assume "A, B and C" to make my conclusion work. So A, B and C are things that are missing from my argument. I don't know whether they stand and hence they are possible weaknesses for my argument.

A. There is no discrimination against international students.

It is the rep's claim, not his assumption.

B. The policy followed by the college is common policy and is followed by other colleges too.

This is irrelevant. 
 
C. It is not possible to recognize the nationality of a candidate by looking at his or her first name.

Correct. This is an assumption the rep is making. He says that only first name and grade are shared. But if first name can give a clue on nationality, it is possible that this info is enough to discriminate based on nationality. Hence, we cannot say that there is no nationality based discrimination.

D. There are no exceptions, whatsoever, in the explained procedure for campus housing allocation.

This is not an assumption. We don't need to ensure that there are no exceptions to the rule. A rule is a rule if it is applicable to almost all cases. An exception can account for few cases only. If block A has domestic and block B has foreign students, an exception cannot account for this split.

E. Grades of international students are significantly different from those of domestic students.

This is not an assumption made by the rep. An assumption is necessary for the conclusion to hold. But does this need to be true? No. What if the names of foreign students begin with letters from S to Z and allocation is done alphabetically? Then it needn't be true that grades of the two categories are different.

Answer (C)

shreyasharma1206 · Answer

The way said question is framed makes it sound like a 'weaken' question, but in fact is an assumption question

raunakd11 · Answer

Hello guys! The question seemed nice. It expects us to find the reason behind the college representative's response and weaken it in order to locate the fallacy involved in the college representative's response. Using Process of Elimination (POE), Eliminate Option A , this option does not weaken the representative's statement, instead just asserts the above. Eliminate Option B , does not weaken. Option C seems fine as of now, so, let's keep it! Eliminate Option D , this is similar to A because it does not give any new information. Option E seems close because the college representative mentioned this- Only the students' first names and grades are used while allocating housing. Option C vs Option E , Option E only helps us to know regarding the grades, but fails to explain at a holistic approach. Option C is apt because it serves the root cause and establishes the solution regarding the same. Official Answer:- Option C Hope this suffices the explanation. shreyasharma1206 Thank you! Regards, Raunak Damle

SiffyB · Answer

The question statement is confusing. Can we expect this sort of question on the GMAT?

Gemmie · Answer

To determine the inherent weakness in the college representative's response, we need to identify the assumption that weakens the argument that the housing allocation is random and not influenced by nationality.

A. There is no discrimination against international students. 
This statement asserts that there is no bias or unfair treatment towards international students. While relevant, it does not directly address the randomness of the housing allocation based on first names and grades.

B. The policy followed by the college is common policy and is followed by other colleges too. 
This option states that the policy is standard practice, but it doesn’t address the specific issue of whether the allocation method is truly random or if it might be influenced by nationality.

C. It is not possible to recognize the nationality of a candidate by looking at his or her first name.  
This assumption is crucial because it suggests that the college's method of using only first names and grades should not reveal nationality. However, the reality is that many names are strongly associated with specific nationalities, which could inadvertently affect the allocation process.

D. There are no exceptions, whatsoever, in the explained procedure for campus housing allocation. 
This statement would reinforce the idea that the process is strictly followed without any deviations. It is a critical assumption, but it doesn't directly address the core issue of whether the allocation is influenced by nationality.

E. Grades of international students are significantly different from those of domestic students. 
This option concerns the academic performance difference between international and domestic students. While relevant to the allocation criteria, it doesn’t directly undermine the claim that the allocation process is random.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

To be fair, the question does explicitly ask for an assumption. It's just further stating that the assumption "forms a weakness." This would certainly be the case if the assumption were mistaken, although all assumptions technically indicate weak points in the argument, since by definition (at least in the context of the GMAT) we don't know if they are true.

Having said that, would the GMAT phrase things this way? Probably not. Also, the GMAT would not wade into the concept of whether you can tell someone's nationality from their name. I get the idea that bias can be applied when we look at people's names, but we shouldn't have to get into that. Besides, we definitely can't be sure one way or another. If you saw applications from me and my uncle Michael, would you guess that I was from the US and he was from Europe? Perhaps not . . .

quialias · Answer

Nice explanation, but here the question says, which assumption forms inherent WEAKNESS to CR's response. Its not asking what assumption CR made, which in that case C would have been correct, here E makes more sense

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

That's just not correct. The question explicitly asks for an assumption, so we can take that literally. As I explained above, ANY assumption made by the author represents a weakness in the argument. E is not an assumption that the rep made, so it cannot be the answer to the question. In general, be careful when you feel like one answer "makes more sense." One answer should correctly answer the question, and the others should not.

quialias

Nice explanation, but here the question says, which assumption forms inherent WEAKNESS to CR's response. Its not asking what assumption CR made, which in that case C would have been correct, here E makes more sense

nihilre · Answer

is C not the opposite of what the question is asking  MartyMurray   bb   Bunuel   KarishmaB

egmat · Answer

The Representative's Argument: 
"We don't look at nationality - only names and grades. So it must be random!"

The Hidden Assumption: 
The representative is assuming that first names DON'T reveal nationality.

Why This Is a Weakness: 
Think about it - can you guess where someone named "Raj" or "Sven" or "Takeshi" might be from? Of course you can!
So even without a "nationality" checkbox, the person allocating housing could easily tell who's international just from names. The representative's defense has a giant hole in it.

Answer C states this assumption - and that's exactly what makes it the weakness.

You thought: "C sounds like it helps the argument, so how can it be the answer?"
The truth: C describes what the argument NEEDS to be true. But that assumption is shaky and easily attacked - which is exactly why it's a WEAKNESS.

MartyMurray · Answer

You won't see such a confusing question stem on the GMAT.

That said, we do have to be careful in reading CR question stems since they do sometimes use wording that is a little unexpected or unfamiliar, though not very confusing if carefully read.

KarishmaB · Answer

We are not looking for a weakener here. We are looking for an assumption. 
 "...assumptions forms an inherent weakness..." is just another way of saying "is an assumption." By the very fact that an assumption is not explicitly stated, it becomes an inherent weakness of the argument. Whether it is true or not is not given. So "weakness" is used in that context. We are looking for a regular assumption of the argument.

mkishwar32 · Answer

Does C not strengthen the college representative???s statement? It shows that he is telling the truth, so his statement is strengthened in response to the parents.

guddo · Answer

Yes, (C) would strengthen the representative’s argument if it were  established  as true. The weakness is that the representative simply  assumes  it.

His reasoning works only if first names do not reveal nationality. If they can, then the college could still distinguish international from domestic students without looking at an explicit nationality field.

That said, I think the question is a little loose, because grades could also correlate with nationality. Still,  among the choices , (C) is the clearest assumption the representative relies on.

Parents: We have observed that the college does not follow a fair poli

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GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Parents: We have observed that the college does not follow a fair poli

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