LSAT 147 – Section 1 – Question 11

LSAT 147 - Section 1 - Question 11

September 2016

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT147 S1 Q11
+LR
Point at issue: disagree +Disagr
Value Judgment +ValJudg
A
13%
159
B
0%
151
C
85%
162
D
2%
152
E
0%
152
120
133
150
 +Easiest 147.09 +SubsectionMedium

Nick: The Pincus family and their construction company have supported our university financially for decades. The university should not give the contract for building its new library to the family’s main competitor. Doing so would be disloyal to a friend of the university.

Pedro: Accepting a donation does not oblige the university to give the donor any special privileges. If it did, then it wouldn’t really be a charitable contribution. We should award the contract to whatever company makes the most competitive bid.

Speaker 1 Summary
Nick claims that the university should not grant a contract to the competitor of the Pincus family. This is because the Pincuses are long-time supporters of the university, which supports the sub-conclusion that awarding the contract to their competitor would be disloyal to one of the university’s friends. Nick is also assuming that the university should not be disloyal to its friends.

Speaker 2 Summary
Pedro states that the contract should go to whichever company makes the best bid. Why not consider the Pincuses’ donation history? Because for a donation to be charitable, it can’t come with special privileges—so, the past donations do not warrant special consideration.

Objective
We need to find a disagreement between Nick and Pedro. Their disagreement is about whether the university should consider the Pincus family’s past support when awarding contracts.

A
loyalty should sometimes be a consideration in making business decisions
Nick agrees with this, but Pedro doesn’t necessarily disagree. Pedro clearly thinks that loyalty shouldn’t be a consideration in this particular decision, but he may still think it should be considered in other business decisions.
B
the Pincus family and their construction company donated money for the purpose of acquiring special privileges from the university
Neither speaker makes this claim. Neither Nick nor Pedro brings up the Pincus family’s intentions when making donations, so we can’t know if they agree or disagree.
C
the acceptance of donations places a university under a special obligation to the donor
Nick agrees with this, but Pedro disagrees, so this is their disagreement. Nick argues that accepting donations means the university is obligated to be loyal to the donors. Pedro states that donations do not carry any special privileges.
D
the university should be more grateful to donors with a long history of financial support than to new donors
Neither Nick or Pedro states an opinion about this. The speakers are only talking about one particular long-time donor; they never make a comparison with more recent donors.
E
the Pincus family’s construction company did not make the most competitive bid
Neither speaker actually expresses a position on this point. First, Nick doesn’t talk about competition at all. Second, Pedro talks about competition but doesn’t make a claim about which bid was most competitive or whether the university chose right.

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LSAT PrepTest 147 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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