#22 - The trustees of the Avonbridge summer drama workshop

[yrivers]

And does the "who are not offered scholarships" in choice D refer to candidates who have submitted auditions? As I read D, I understood it as "some applicants who are offered scholarships could have less highly evaluated auditions, in comparison to those who had good auditions but don't need a scholarship." Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for asking, Yaesul, and we're glad that the prior thread proved helpful to you.

To start with, while we have been evaluating this question as a weaken question, it can also be viewed as a Flaw in the Reasoning question. The stem asks us to point out what's wrong with the trustees' plan, not to hurt the plan. In other words, the problem is already in there - we don't need new info. Ultimately, though, most Flaw and Weaken questions are closely related anyway, and we shouldn't get too hung up on the difference. Flaw asks "what went wrong" and weaken asks "which one hurts", which is sort of the same as "which one takes advantage of what went wrong?"

The problem I have with answer C, and with your evaluation of answer D, is that need is not relevant to the plan. We don't care which students need scholarships! We only care about which students we are going to offer them to, whether they need them or not, whether they want them or not, whether they will accept them or not.

There is a numbers/percentages element to this problem that hasn't been discussed, and putting some numbers to it might help. Let's assume that 100 local people audition, and another 100 non-local people audition. Every audition is scored on a 100-point scale. As it happens, the local group does very well - their score range from scores a low of 70 up to several that get perfect scores of 100. The top 10% (10 people) get scores ranging from 96-100. They rock! Even the next 10% below them score in the range from 90-95. These are high scoring actors!

The non-local group doesn't do so well. In fact, their scores range from a low of 35 up to a high of 85. The top 10% in this group (10 people) scored between 75 and 85.

Now, if we follow the Trustees' plan, we will be offering scholarships to the folks in the local group who scored between 96 and 100, but also to the folks in the non-local group that scored between 75 and 85. Will we have offered scholarships to "only the applicants with the most highly evaluated auditions", as the trustees claimed would be the case? Not even close! We offered scholarships to non-local actors who scored 75-85, and not offered scholarships to a bunch of actors who scored much better than that (the locals who scored in the 90-95 range). Whoops!

This is exactly the flaw that answer D points out. The trustees have failed to consider that the two groups might have very different score ranges!

None of the other answers captures the simple numeric problem that was at the heart of the flawed argument here. That's why we eliminate them.

Try looking at it as a numbers/percentages flaw question, and see if that doesn't clear it up for you.

Good luck, keep at it!

[yrivers]

So helpful. Thank you!

[kevin.hussain24]

Hi,
I was between B and D, but do not understand why D is wrong is it because it compares students who are not offered scholarships?

Thank you
Kevin H

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Kevin!

First I want to clarify because I'm not sure if there's a typo in your question, but answer choice (D) is the correct answer.

Essentially, taking the top 10 percent of local applicants and the top 10 percent of nonlocal applicants does not guarantee that only the applicants with the most highly rated auditions will be offered scholarships. It's possible that some of the applicants who are not in the top 10 percent of one of those groups, could still have had a more highly evaluated audition than someone in the top 10 percent of another group.

For example, let's say we have 50 local and 50 nonlocal auditionees. So we're taking the top 5 from each group. Let's say their auditions were given a score out of 100.

Here are the hypothetical scores for the top 7 nonlocal:
1. 100
2. 99
3. 98
4. 97
5. 96
6. 94
7. 93

Here are the hypothetical scores for the top 7 local:
1. 80
2. 79
3. 78
4. 77
5. 76
6. 74
7. 73

Only the top 5 of each group get scholarships so that means #6 and #7 in the nonlocal group are out of luck even though they scored higher than everybody in the local group. This example shows how when you are giving scholarships to the top 10 percent local and the top 10 percent nonlocal, it's possible that some of the applicants who get scholarships could have had less highly evaluated auditions than some of the applicants not offered scholarships, which is what answer choice (D) rightfully points out.

Answer choice (B) is incorrect because the accuracy of the assessments is irrelevant to this conclusion. The conclusion is just that only the applicants with the most highly evaluated auditions will be offered scholarships, not that those auditions will have been evaluated accurately. You could have a bunch of inaccurate assessments but still give scholarships to the candidates who scored the highest on those assessments.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[abullard]

Thanks for asking, Yaesul, and we're glad that the prior thread proved helpful to you.

To start with, while we have been evaluating this question as a weaken question, it can also be viewed as a Flaw in the Reasoning question. The stem asks us to point out what's wrong with the trustees' plan, not to hurt the plan. In other words, the problem is already in there - we don't need new info. Ultimately, though, most Flaw and Weaken questions are closely related anyway, and we shouldn't get too hung up on the difference. Flaw asks "what went wrong" and weaken asks "which one hurts", which is sort of the same as "which one takes advantage of what went wrong?"

The problem I have with answer C, and with your evaluation of answer D, is that need is not relevant to the plan. We don't care which students need scholarships! We only care about which students we are going to offer them to, whether they need them or not, whether they want them or not, whether they will accept them or not.

There is a numbers/percentages element to this problem that hasn't been discussed, and putting some numbers to it might help. Let's assume that 100 local people audition, and another 100 non-local people audition. Every audition is scored on a 100-point scale. As it happens, the local group does very well - their score range from scores a low of 70 up to several that get perfect scores of 100. The top 10% (10 people) get scores ranging from 96-100. They rock! Even the next 10% below them score in the range from 90-95. These are high scoring actors!

The non-local group doesn't do so well. In fact, their scores range from a low of 35 up to a high of 85. The top 10% in this group (10 people) scored between 75 and 85.

Now, if we follow the Trustees' plan, we will be offering scholarships to the folks in the local group who scored between 96 and 100, but also to the folks in the non-local group that scored between 75 and 85. Will we have offered scholarships to "only the applicants with the most highly evaluated auditions", as the trustees claimed would be the case? Not even close! We offered scholarships to non-local actors who scored 75-85, and not offered scholarships to a bunch of actors who scored much better than that (the locals who scored in the 90-95 range). Whoops!

This is exactly the flaw that answer D points out. The trustees have failed to consider that the two groups might have very different score ranges!

None of the other answers captures the simple numeric problem that was at the heart of the flawed argument here. That's why we eliminate them.

Try looking at it as a numbers/percentages flaw question, and see if that doesn't clear it up for you.

Good luck, keep at it!

This was extremely helpful. However, in the thick of the exam when your heart is beating in your ears and you're in full panic mode, the correct answer choice, which seems abstract, but actually isn't, seems very difficult to apply to the stimulus. Do you have any ideas on how to discern the abstractness of the answer choices and apply them to the stimulus?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi abullard,

Your observation, "in the thick of the exam when your heart is beating in your ears and you're in full panic mode," perfectly captures one of the reasons that the LSAT can be so difficult to take, especially when you are taking it for real.

It can feel like a very high stakes, high stress situation, somewhat similar to performing a musical instrument or an athletic competition in front of an audience, or to public speaking.

The key to optimal performance, for the LSAT (and likely for those other activities), is sufficient practice before you get to taking the LSAT. Long before you take the LSAT, you should be studying/practicing each of these concepts, question types, etc. untimed at first. Start by learning the correct way to approach each question. Speed is the last thing that comes, so first worry about accuracy and understanding.

When you do get to timed sections, it's important not to deviate from the correct way that you have been practicing. Unfortunately, some students panic when they take their first practice test after having done a lot of studying, and they throw out everything that they've learned/practiced because they are so worried about the time pressure. It's better to do the questions correctly even if you don't finish the section than to try to rush and not follow your game plan.

In this question, for example, before you even look at the answers, ideally you should have a solid prephrase of what is wrong with their plan. If the goal is to offer the scholarships to the most highly evaluated auditions, then why aren't they just offering the scholarships to the top 10% of the auditions? Splitting the scholarships between local and non-local doesn't make any sense. The locals could be terrible, for example, and they are winning scholarships over Broadway actors!

While D may be worded differently than our prephrase, it's important to slow down when reading each answer and not rule out an answer that is confusing. If you're not sure about an answer, leave it as a contender. Then, once you're just left with any remaining contenders, then really compare them and see which is best. There are times where you may correctly select the right answer without even being 100% sure what it means as long as you did feel confident that the other answers were not what you want.

As for test anxiety itself, here is a link to a list of great resources on test mentality.

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/the-ul ... urce-list/