Q4 - One of the requirements for admission

[Multanik.24]

I selected answer choose B for this question. Why is this incorrect and why is D the correct answer choice

[timmydoeslsat]

This is a necessary assumption question stem.

We are told of at least one requirement of admission to this skating club. The president of this club is concerned about possible discrimination against women. The author says that it is proven that the club does not discriminate against women: exactly half of the admits to the club were women.

And this is where we can potential problems with this argument. What if way more qualified women applied than men? That would make our evidence fold at that point. No longer would the author be able to say that it is proven the club does not discriminate.

If you negate choice D, you can see this. By negating answer choices in necessary assumption questions, it can help determine its impact on the link between the evidence and the conclusion.

A) No distinction of men and women here.
B) We are talking about qualified women.
C) Same issue as B.
E) A certain amount of committee members being men has no impact on this argument and brings along an ocean of assumptions.

[WaltGrace1983]

I'll add a bit to this as well.

Half of the applicants admitted to the club this year were women
→
Proves that there was no discrimination against qualified women applicants

There are two things to point out here:
(1) The strength of the conclusion. This is something you often see in "easier" necessary assumption questions. We are not saying that, "this warrants the belief..." or "we could probably assume..."; we are saying this evidence proves this conclusion. This is important.
(2) Who's to say that just because half of people admitted were women leads to the conclusion? Maybe 100 people tried out, 97 women and 3 men, and only one male and one female got in. This situation (which is not ruled out by the stimulus) may lead us to question that conclusion. We should probably look for an assumption that talks about how many qualified men tried out vs. qualified women or something about how the qualified women who were not selected were not accepted for sufficient reasoning, etc.

***Note: if you pay close attention to this argument, notice how it is talking about the requirements of admission. The requirements does not mean a sufficient. It means: Admitted → High Degree of Skill, not the other way around. Why is this important? Well for this question it doesn't seem to be but it is important as food for thought for future questions that will undoubtedly come up with similar issues. With a little bit different information, I can totally see a flaw question pop up that is saying something along the lines of, "what is required for admission is sufficient for admission." This may also be important for weeding out answers in this question. For example, a necessary assumption for this question is not "all highly skilled women were admitted." After all, being highly skilled is just a requirement and not every women who is highly skilled has to be admitted. I'm on a tangent now. Okay lets go.

(A) This stimulus is necessarily dealing with percentages ("half of the applicants admitted..."). We don't care about raw numbers. Couldn't it be that a bajillion applicants were qualified and admitted? Yes because this doesn't change the percentages.

(B) and (C): it doesn't matter how many men or women are in the Lunnville team. Once again, we are talking about percentages. Maybe only there are only 3 qualified women in the past.

[lsatzen]

Hi There,

I actually got this question incorrect under timed conditions (chose A), then chose D during blind review. I was hoping someone could verify that my thought process was indeed the correct way to approach this question.

According to the Cambridge LR Packet, it is a level 1 question and it is Q4 in LR-2, so we can anticipate that it will be on the easier end of the difficulty spectrum.

As I was re-reading the stimulus during my un-timed review, I noticed something that I had glossed over during my real-time pass through the stimulus: the premise states something about women applicants that were admitted this year, whereas the conclusion asserts something about a lack of discrimination against qualified women applicants. Is this a case of a detail creep, in which the item discussed in the conclusion has a qualification attached to it whereas the premise intended to support the conclusion lacks that qualification?

It seems tricky because the line immediately preceding the premise (which I assumed was just background information), "The club president has expressed concern...." brings up the issue of the president's concern of discrimination against qualified women, but the premise clearly does not mention this specific subset of women. Even if we take that into consideration, the president's concern is not used as support for the conclusion so would it even be safe to infer that the main premises used as support was tacitly referring to qualified women mentioned in the background information?

I hope this makes sense.

Using this information, we can pre-phrase an answer that deals with the detail creep by somehow addressing the issue of half of the admitted applicants being qualified women.

Answer choice D seems to give us our assumption by stating that no more than half (50% or less) of the applicants were qualified women - which is exactly what we wanted.

I would love some feedback if anyone is willing to offer it!

[WaltGrace1983]

Hi There,
As I was re-reading the stimulus during my un-timed review, I noticed something that I had glossed over during my real-time pass through the stimulus: the premise states something about women applicants that were admitted this year, whereas the conclusion asserts something about a lack of discrimination against qualified women applicants. Is this a case of a detail creep, in which the item discussed in the conclusion has a qualification attached to it whereas the premise intended to support the conclusion lacks that qualification?

The idea of conclusion discussing "qualified" women gets to the crux of the question.

Half of the applicants admitted were women
→
No discrimination against qualified women

Now I think that, because "qualification" was discussed earlier in the question, you probably could have left it out of the conclusion and just simply said "no discrimination against women." However, "qualification" - whether discussed in the background information, premise, or conclusion is still very much a crucial part of this question.

Either way, let's get back to the idea of "qualification." The author is saying that there is NO discrimination. Why? Because half of the applicants were women!

Now let me play a bit of devil's advocate here. Let's throw a number on this question, just to make it easier. Let's say there were 100 applicants, 50 people admitted, and 25 were women. Now we know that 25 women were qualified and 25 men were qualified. Why? Because being qualified is a necessary component of admission and we know that 25 men and 25 women were admitted. However, what about those 50 other applicants - the ones that were not admitted? What do we know about them?

Nothing! We know nothing about them! What if they were also qualified? Let's say all 100 applicants were qualified and 58 (random number) were qualified women. What would that mean? That would mean that there actually was discrimination. Why though? It is because only 25 women were admitted even though 58 were qualified. That's discrimination if you ask me! Do you see what I mean?

It seems tricky because the line immediately preceding the premise (which I assumed was just background information), "The club president has expressed concern...." brings up the issue of the president's concern of discrimination against qualified women, but the premise clearly does not mention this specific subset of women. Even if we take that into consideration, the president's concern is not used as support for the conclusion so would it even be safe to infer that the main premises used as support was tacitly referring to qualified women mentioned in the background information?

Yea, and I think you are right. The "club president has expressed concern..." is probably "background information." However, it IS important background information. When you see these questions that attack a point (in this question, the author's conclusion attacks the president's point), you can expect that the original point will be fairly pivotal to understand the question.[/quote]

And no. You don't want to assume that the premise IS in fact talking about "qualified women." Are all women "qualified women?" No. Therefore, you cannot make an assumption. It is good to realize that the premise is shifting scope or terms. It goes from talking about "women" to "qualified women." As I said, this is a pivotal thing to recognize and I think you get it now.

Think about it this way. When you read that conclusion and you see that the terms have shifted from premise to conclusion, you should be thinking to yourself, "well why does admitting 25 women mean that there wasn't discrimination against QUALIFIED women?" This is a necessary assumption question and, thus, the argument it is asking about IS flawed. From this question, we can see the flaw: simply admitting women doesn't mean there is no discrimination.

Using this information, we can pre-phrase an answer that deals with the detail creep by somehow addressing the issue of half of the admitted applicants being qualified women.

Answer choice D seems to give us our assumption by stating that no more than half (50% or less) of the applicants were qualified women - which is exactly what we wanted.

I would love some feedback if anyone is willing to offer it!

UNDERSTAND THE BOLDED.

"Qualified." That is the KEY!

[lsatzen]

Now let me play a bit of devil's advocate here. Let's throw a number on this question, just to make it easier. Let's say there were 100 applicants, 50 people admitted, and 25 were women. Now we know that 25 women were qualified and 25 men were qualified. Why? Because being qualified is a necessary component of admission and we know that 25 men and 25 women were admitted. However, what about those 50 other applicants - the ones that were not admitted? What do we know about them?

Nothing! We know nothing about them! What if they were also qualified? Let's say all 100 applicants were qualified and 58 (random number) were qualified women. What would that mean? That would mean that there actually was discrimination. Why though? It is because only 25 women were admitted even though 58 were qualified. That's discrimination if you ask me! Do you see what I mean?

I completely understand where you are coming from by approaching it from a numbers vs percentage perspective. It makes sense. Staying within the bounds of your example, in a case of a 100 applicants, all we know, according to the stimulus, is that half of the admitted applicants were women. What if it was the case that there were a total of 75 women applicants and only 25 male applicants. In this scenario, the acceptance rate for men would be 100%, whereas the acceptance rate for women would be a measly 33%. If this were the case, I think one could make a strong case for discrimination against women, maybe in the form of more stringent requirements placed on women, or maybe there is a sex-based quota on enrollment, who knows. Answer choice D eliminates this possibility by stating that 50% or less of the applicant pool who met all the qualifications were women, thus protecting the argument from the hypothetical situation we made up above.

However, at this point, I was still under the impression that we did not know the status of these women - whether they are qualified or un-qualified. I thought there was still some leeway between "one of the requirements for admission...high degree of skill in roller skating" and being a "qualified" applicant. You could have the necessary requirement of "high degree of skill", but isnt it possible that you could still NOT be a qualified applicant. What if there are many other factors that are needed in order to be considered "qualified". So given the conditional relationship, if someone is admitted, all we really know is that they posses a "high degree of skill", but cannot determine whether they are qualified. Am I being too nit-picky by making this distinction?

Would love your thoughts on this, both WG and MLSAT staff.

[WaltGrace1983]

However, at this point, I was still under the impression that we did not know the status of these women - whether they are qualified or un-qualified. I thought there was still some leeway between "one of the requirements for admission...high degree of skill in roller skating" and being a "qualified" applicant. You could have the necessary requirement of "high degree of skill", but isnt it possible that you could still NOT be a qualified applicant. What if there are many other factors that are needed in order to be considered "qualified". So given the conditional relationship, if someone is admitted, all we really know is that they posses a "high degree of skill", but cannot determine whether they are qualified. Am I being too nit-picky by making this distinction?

Ya know, I was also thinking a bit about whether "qualification" is sufficient or necessary, and I think that is what you are referring to here. (I think) what you are saying is that if "qualification" is a necessary condition, then simply being qualified isn't enough. Therefore, you could still be qualified, not chosen, and there could be nothing wrong with that. However, I think "qualification" may go along the lines of more of "eligibility" rather than a "requirement," thus a sufficient condition. I think that the first sentence has little to do with the rest of the core (maybe a geek could chime in if I am wrong).

If "qualification" is a sufficient condition - which it appears to be - then the correct answer would be still be necessary and make perfect sense.

[maryadkins]

I do think "qualified" here means eligible.

So, the point is that there may have been women who were eligible but not chosen. And the fact that half the admitted applicants were women doesn't mean there wasn't discrimination because we have no idea how many women applied, overall. Maybe 200 qualified women applied and 10 qualified men applied and all 10 men got in and 190 women didn't. That's pretty discriminatory.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Really interesting discussion you are having here guys! Just be careful not to tie yourselves in knots!

First, let's clear up some definitions:

Ya know, I was also thinking a bit about whether "qualification" is sufficient or necessary, and I think that is what you are referring to here. (I think) what you are saying is that if "qualification" is a necessary condition, then simply being qualified isn't enough. Therefore, you could still be qualified, not chosen, and there could be nothing wrong with that. However, I think "qualification" may go along the lines of more of "eligibility" rather than a "requirement," thus a sufficient condition. I think that the first sentence has little to do with the rest of the core (maybe a geek could chime in if I am wrong).

If "qualification" is a sufficient condition - which it appears to be - then the correct answer would be still be necessary and make perfect sense.

If I understand this debate correctly, you're trying to determine whether it's:

if high skill --> qualified
OR
if qualified --> high skill

Is that correct?

Dudes, I think we can safely just equate "qualified" and "high skill" here. You are thinking way, way, way too hard about tiny distinctions that do not matter at all on this question.

Now, goh2, I do commend you for turning up your radar on language shifts and catching that there appeared to be a term shift between "women" and "qualified women". That kind of sensitivity is a great thing to be cultivating.

However, you've also got to pair it with an assessment of whether the apparent term shift actually makes a difference. Because language actually isn't quite math, the LSAT is full of implied words and synonym shifts that mean essentially the same thing, etc. In this situation, this seeming term shift is actually a distinction without a difference.

Why? Because I'm working on the idea that any applicants actually admitted to the club were qualified for admission. If they are letting in people who don't actually meet the requirements, i.e., breaking their own rules, we have a whole different can of worms to deal with. So, if the women who were admitted must have been qualified in order for them to have been admitted, then that premise must actually be saying that half the applicants admitted were QUALIFIED women.

It's strongly implied by the nature of the situation, and unless they give me a red flag that the club might be breaking their own rules on qualification, I'm not going to waste time worrying about that.

So, where does that leave us? Well, it *seemed* like there was a term shift between "women" and "qualified women", but it didn't seem to pan out.

The moral of this story though is far more important. We could probably talk about these nuances and hairsplitting issues you two are delving into for days and days. I could remind you that it's just not that relevant to the question at hand (this IS a question #4...), but it's actually far more dangerous than that.

This is a spin out. And what it does is BLIND YOU to the real issue at play here, which is that the percent of women admitted doesn't mean *anything* if we don't know the percent of women who applied (and had a chance at getting in).

Don't make problems harder than they actually are by overfocusing on the potentially infinite complexities of tiny nuances of language. It's dangerous and counterproductive.

All that being said, I'm thrilled that both of you are engaging so deeply with the material. Just be sure to keep yourselves focused on simplifying logical structures and stripping away unnecessary nuance and complexity, instead of magnifying sideline details over and over like fractals.

[lolitatrekkie]

I chose D through the process of elimination. However, I am struggling trying to negate answer choice D. Would the negated form be "This year less than half of the applicants who met all the qualifications for admission to the club were women"?

Thank you!