To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The argument asserts that due to the growth of student enrollment in Buckingham College, new dormitories are needed to accommodate more students. The argument makes a logical sense at first glance, however, there are some specific evidence required to justify its suggestion; otherwise it seems to be specious.
To begin with, the argument mentions that the student enrollment is growing and it will double over the next 50 years. Therefore, new dormitories are necessary. However, a specific evidence is needed to better assess its suggestion. That is, if the growing enrollment is a stable trend or it is just an anomaly happened in recent years. If student enrollment starts to decline, the construction of new dormitories is superfluous and meaningless. Generally, such investment is expensive and time-consuming; therefore, it undoubtedly burdens college’s financial situation. Thus, with the lack of evidence indicating stable student enrollment growth, the argument is fallacious.
Secondly, the argument avers that the off-campus housing is costly and it may be more attractive for prospective student if the college provides a cheaper option. However, the argument fails to consider the cost of constructing new dormitories. The college needs extra spaces for construction as well as hires professional company and purchases new equipment. None of these is simple and easy, the cost may exceed what the college has expected. Moreover, we cannot guarantee that students will choose Buckingham College because of its new dormitories. Usually, students choose schools based on their specialties instead of the housing fee. Therefore, without evidence confounding that how college is going to handle the financial issue and feasibility of attracting new students, the argument is unwarranted.
Finally, it is reasonable to build more dormitories to attract students. However, there are some specific evidence needed to better asses the argument, that is: if the student enrollment growth is stable, if the cost of the investment can be balanced and it can surely attract prospective students.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-appeared…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 320 350
No. of Characters: 1731 1500
No. of Different Words: 157 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.229 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.409 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.959 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.778 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.185 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.889 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.498 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.063 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, therefore, thus, well, as well as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 30.0 55.5748502994 54% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1794.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 320.0 441.139720559 73% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.60625 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.22948505376 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.10581611658 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 161.0 204.123752495 79% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.503125 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 553.5 705.55239521 78% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.9301758673 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 99.6666666667 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.7777777778 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.33333333333 5.70786347227 111% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.258155165479 0.218282227539 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0873591839047 0.0743258471296 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0604621324303 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.152664244182 0.128457276422 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0423269214598 0.0628817314937 67% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.76 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.96 12.5979740519 119% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.67 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.