The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"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.
This memo attempts to explain why new dorms should be built at Buckingham college. The author cites growing enrollment and increasing local apartment prices as sources of increased demand for dorms. They also state that the new dorms would add appeal to prospective students and help them choose Buckingham college. This memo, however, makes many generalizations and omits some necessary facts that are essential to making the argument fully convincing.
The author’s first claim is that student enrollment is growing and will increase greatly in the future. This claim, however, needs to be qualified by some data about the numbers behind these claims. Such numbers would be able to verify that the increase in enrollment is substantial and not just by a relatively inconsequential and manageable few students. The author must also give greater detail about the sources and data behind the claim of enrollment growing by 50% as this claim may come from an unreliable source and therefore may not be a factor to be seriously considered. The author says that these two factors will render the current dorms inadequate but does not give any further information about the status and use of current dorms. Without this information, it is unknown if the current dorms are also new or if they are even fully filled by current students. This also fails to mention the policies of the college that may or may not require or incentivize students to live in dorms, which would affect the current and future demand for dorms. This information must be provided to affirm that these dorms are objectively inadequate to serve future students.
The author continues to discuss that the prices of local apartments are increasing, which would cause more students to want to move into dorms and increase the demand for dorms. They, however, again fail to cite a source for this claim, making this point of questionable validity. In addition, the author does not give the data and numbers behind this increase, making it unknown if the increase is small and relatively unsubstantial to prospective residents. These two pieces of information should be provided to verify the claim that the apartment is having a notable increase in prices.
The author this as well as the prior mentioned factors to claim that these factors will increase student demand for dorms, but they do not provide any information to bolster this claim. Without such information, it could be assumed that students may not want to live in dorms for possibly environmental or social reasons and may in fact be willing to pay more for apartments in order to not live in dorms. The author should provide study or statistical information about the desires of students in order to confirm that students indeed want to live in dorms and would in fact be affected by the factors stated. The author finishes the memo with the added point that new dorms would be able to incentivize prospective students to want to enroll at Buckingham College. This claim, however, requires some potential plans or similar that would show that the new dorms would be of high enough quality to be desirable as well as evidence from prospective students that their opinions would be affected by the potential of living in new dorms.
These pieces of information should be provided in the memo to further bolster the current argument. They would verify the reliability of the stated numerical claims as well as the desires of current and future students, and this information would give full context behind the circumstances and wants of students. Without the addition of this information, the memo in its current state lacks the evidence and support to make this argument unequivocally convincing.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-appeared…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 618 350
No. of Characters: 3058 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.986 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.948 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.608 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 216 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 160 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 102 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.738 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.52 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, so, therefore, well, in addition, in fact, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 27.0 12.9520958084 208% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 27.0 11.1786427146 242% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 82.0 55.5748502994 148% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3122.0 2260.96107784 138% => OK
No of words: 618.0 441.139720559 140% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.05177993528 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.98594081286 4.56307096286 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68809726878 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.360841423948 0.468620217663 77% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 955.8 705.55239521 135% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.5321528605 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.083333333 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.75 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.70833333333 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.131428242017 0.218282227539 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0548716973533 0.0743258471296 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.057901374928 0.0701772020484 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0935778332468 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0599161325084 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.31 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.71 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.