LSAT 110 – Section 3 – Question 04

LSAT 110 - Section 3 - Question 04

June 2001

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Ask a tutor

Target time: 0:49

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT110 S3 Q04
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Sampling +Smpl
A
1%
151
B
1%
159
C
1%
160
D
1%
160
E
97%
166
120
129
139
 +Easiest 145.976 +SubsectionMedium

A group of 1,000 students was randomly selected from three high schools in a medium-sized city and asked the question, “Do you plan to finish your high school education?” More than 89 percent answered “Yes.” This shows that the overwhelming majority of students want to finish high school, and that if the national dropout rate among high school students is high, it cannot be due to a lack of desire on the part of the students.

Summarize Argument

The author concludes that most students want to finish high school and that if there’s a high high school dropout rate, it’s not due to students’ lack of desire. He supports this with a survey of 1,000 randomly selected students from three high schools in a medium-sized town, where over 89% said they planned to finish high school.

Identify and Describe Flaw

This is a cookie-cutter example of a flawed survey. The author draws a conclusion about all high school students based on an unrepresentative survey. Even though the students surveyed were randomly selected, they were still only chosen from three high schools in one medium-sized town. The author mistakenly assumes that 1,000 students from this town represent all high school students.

A
fails to justify its presumption that 89 percent is an overwhelming majority

The author doesn’t need to justify this presumption because 89 percent is an overwhelming majority. He isn’t making an unreasonable assumption here.

B
attempts to draw two conflicting conclusions from the results of one survey

The author does draw two conclusions— that most students want to finish high school and that a high high school dropout rate wouldn’t be due to students’ lack of desire— from one survey. But these conclusions don’t conflict with one another.

C
overlooks the possibility that there may in fact not be a high dropout rate among high school students

The author doesn’t overlook this possibility. In fact, he explicitly addresses it by saying, “If the national dropout rate...is high...”

D
contradicts itself by admitting that there may be a high dropout rate among students while claiming that most students want to finish high school

The author does claim that most students want to finish high school and he admits the possibility of a high dropout rate. But these statements don’t contradict each other. There could be many students who drop out of school despite wanting to finish.

E
treats high school students from a particular medium-sized city as if they are representative of high school students nationwide

This explains the author’s key flaw. He draws a conclusion about all high school students based on a survey of 1,000 students from a single city.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 110 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply