Critical Reasoning

Q. Struthers College has built its reputation for academic excellence largely on significant contributions from wealthy alumni who are avid fans of the school’s football team. Although the team has won more national championships over the years than any other team in its division, this year it did not even win the division title, and so Struthers College can expect to see a decline in alumni contributions next year.
The above argument relies on which of the following assumptions about Struthers College?

A. The college’s reputation for academic excellence depends on the performance of its football team.
B. Contributions from alumni are needed for the college to produce a winning football team.
C. Some Struthers alumni contribute to the college because they enjoy seeing its football team win.
D. The college’s football team will continue its losing streak next year.
E. As a group, the college’s alumni will have at least as much discretionary money to give away next year as this year.

Correct Answer: C

Explanation:

The college’s football team lost this year.
Therefore, alumni contributions are about to decrease.

But this argument depends on a cause-and-effect link between the football team’s performance and the level of alumni contributions, doesn’t it? In other words, it assumes that the alumni who contribute to the college are motivated to do so (at least to some extent) by their interest in the football team and its success.

GMAT: Sequence of AWA section in exam

The two AWA sections are administered consecutively and always before the Quantitative and Verbal sections of the exam. However, the two AWA sections may appear in either order.

CAT System Tutorial, Practice, and Demonstration of Competence
Analytical Writing Assessment (60 minutes)

Analysis of an Issue (30 minutes, 1 topic)
Analysis of an Argument (30 minutes, 1 topic)

5-minute break (optional)
Quantitative Section (75 minutes)

Problem Solving (23–24 questions)
Data Sufficiency (13–14 questions)
Total number of questions: 37 (28 scored, 9 unscored)

5-minute break (optional)
Verbal Section (75 minutes)

Critical Reasoning (14–15 questions)
Sentence Correction (14–15 questions)
Reading Comprehension (4 passages, 12–14 questions)
Total number of questions: 41 (30 scored, 11 unscored)

TOTAL TESTING TIME: 3 hours, 20 minutes

GMAT Essay Scoring System

Each human reader will assign a single score from 0 to 6 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6) that will be based on the overall quality of a candidate's writing. The same specific ETS scoring criteria is employed by all readers. E-Rater also scores an essay on a 0-6 scale.

The following are the four steps of determining the AWA scores:

For each of your two essays, E-Rater's score is averaged together with the human reader's score.
For each essay, if E-Rater's score is within 1 point of the human reader's score, then the average of those two scores is your final score for that essay.
For each essay, if E-Rater's score differs from the human reader's score by more than 1 point, then a second human reader will read and grade the essay, and your final score for that essay will be the average of the two human readers' scores.
The final AWA score is the average of the final score for each of the two essays, rounded up to the nearest half-point.