#11 - To be considered for this year’s Gillespie Grant

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[medialaw111516]

So I narrowed this one down to C and D and ultimately chose C because my prephrase was that it had to be a timing issue, but I'm not sure that is the best way to think about it or if there is some glaringly obvious reason that D should be eliminated.

[James Finch]

Hi Media Law,

This one is a little tricky, as it testing a precise reading of the language in the stimulus (a vital skill for lawyers to have). You're correct in that this is a timing issue, but not necessarily the one that it looks like at first glance. The stimulus concludes that the only way Mary can be considered for the grant is if she mails her application 10 days before the deadline, which here means exactly 10 days, nor 10 days or more. All we have to base that conclusion on is that mail may take up to 10 days to arrive from Mary's town to the grantor's location. So what the question's author is looking for is for test takers to identify the assumption being made that the mail will take exactly 10 days, no more (as explicitly stated) and no less (this is the missing assumption we need to identify). The stimulus is assuming that the minimum mail delivery time is 10 days.

Editorializing a bit, this question is somewhat unfair because in plain English, many if not most people would read "mail 10 days before" as "10 days or more before." And since it could be read that way, the stimulus wouldn't necessarily be making the assumption about minimum delivery time. It would have been better had the conclusion read as "...only if her application was mailed exactly ten days before the due date."

Hope this helps!

[medialaw111516]

Wow that's crazy, but yes, that made it much more clear. The wording of the correct answer is definitely misleading, but your explanation coupled with the fact that the rest of the answer choices seemed worse (except D which was deceptive because it's another common flaw and it seems like the common sense answer, but not the logical one which is why I just felt it was wrong ). Thank you so much!

[AspenHerman]

Hi Media Law,

This one is a little tricky, as it testing a precise reading of the language in the stimulus (a vital skill for lawyers to have). You're correct in that this is a timing issue, but not necessarily the one that it looks like at first glance. The stimulus concludes that the only way Mary can be considered for the grant is if she mails her application 10 days before the deadline, which here means exactly 10 days, nor 10 days or more. All we have to base that conclusion on is that mail may take up to 10 days to arrive from Mary's town to the grantor's location. So what the question's author is looking for is for test takers to identify the assumption being made that the mail will take exactly 10 days, no more (as explicitly stated) and no less (this is the missing assumption we need to identify). The stimulus is assuming that the minimum mail delivery time is 10 days.

Editorializing a bit, this question is somewhat unfair because in plain English, many if not most people would read "mail 10 days before" as "10 days or more before." And since it could be read that way, the stimulus wouldn't necessarily be making the assumption about minimum delivery time. It would have been better had the conclusion read as "...only if her application was mailed exactly ten days before the due date."

Hope this helps!

Hi!

I would like to run through my reasoning for eliminating "C" and could someone please tell me why it's wrong (beyond the obvious "well C is the right answer").

I eliminated C because it doesn't matter what the min time is, if it could take 10 days to get there, then it should be postmarked for 10 days beforehand, just in case? Is my reasoning wrong because my type A/always planning for worst case scenario brain adding too much outside work on this answer?

And, I had chosen D because if she did get her application in on time, but it was missing something, then it didn't matter. But I see this as wrong know because it out of scope? Is that correct?

Thank you very much!
Aspen

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hiya Aspen.

The problem with your reasoning is the nature of the conditional in the stimulus. It says that Mary will ONLY be considered if she mails her application 10 days before the due date. However, we only know that the mail can take up to 10 days. That means that it is possible that the mail can come sooner than 10 days. So if Mary mails it 9 days before, and it arrives before the due date, it's possible that Mary didn't mail it 10 days before but was still considered for the grant. So the flaw here is that they didn't consider that it was possible for the mail to move faster than the maximum amount of time, which is what answer choice (C) described.

Answer choice (D) is incorrect because the argument doesn't assume that Mary will receive the grant or even be considered for it. It just says that IF she is considered, it must have been mailed before 10 days before the due date.

Hope that helps!