The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee.
"Recently, there have been discussions about ending Grove College's century-old tradition of all-female education by admitting male students into our programs. At a recent faculty meeting, a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. However, Grove students, both past and present, are against the idea of coeducation. Eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female, and over half of the alumnae who answered a separate survey also opposed coeducation. Therefore, we recommend maintaining Grove College's tradition of all-female education. We predict that keeping the college all-female will improve morale among students and convince alumnae to keep supporting the college financially."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
Whether Grove college should maintain all-female education tradition has been complicated in its implication and debated significantly. The college's governing committee recommend doing so, since they predict that keeping the college all-female will improve morale among students and convince alumnae to keep supporting the college financially. To buttress their argument, the committee members cite the evidences of ideas of coeducation from both past and present students. Although the recommendation has its own merit, it does not necessarily have the predicted results due to uncertainty among survey and ambiguous causes of the results.
To begin with, in order to fully evaluate the argument, the question that requires answers from the author is whether survey from students can substantiate the recommendation. The author supposed that eighty percent of students wanted the school to remain all female, but what is the total number of this sample size? What are the class standings of those participants? How was the survey conducted, by face-to-face interviewing or anonymous online vote? Without detailed information about the survey, we cannot gain reliable conclusion. For example, suppose incoming students tend to be content with or are even attracted by the all-female policy while graduating seniors prefer co-educational policy. If a disproportionate number of survey’s respondents are incoming students, then the result would distort the entire student body’s opinions as a group. Similarly, if most survey participates are not donors of college, then their views might not reflect views from donor, thereby giving little information about potential donation. Besides, the author fails to provide the sample size of these surveys. When only a few people took part in the survey, the results would not be a credible indication of prediction.
Moreover, another question needs to be answered is that whether there is positive relationship between college all-female policy and morale among students. The administration provides no reason why morale would improve, as opposed to remaining at its current level, if the status is simply maintained. Besides, we should also be informed about other conditions that might affect morale. For instance, if tuition increases dramatically while many reputed professors left the college, the morale of students would be impacted negatively in this case. Only if justifying all possible circumstances with regard to students’ morale can we fully evaluate the predicted expectations.
Last but not least, the author should provide more information about the fact that whether all-female education will convince alumnae to keep supporting the college financially. If alumnae are satisfied about the current all-female rule and think that it gave them adequate educational environment that prepared them to success in the future, then they would keep making donations. However, we have to acknowledge that financial supports are based on several other factors. It is plausible that alumnae devoting money or resources to college relies on their income, wealth and economics condition. If the nation is experiencing business recession, then alumnae might save more money for themselves and make less donations. Hence, the continuation of financial perhaps cannot be expected wholly by all-female policy. Without examining the reasons behind alumnae’s financial support, we are not able to foresee the trend owing to the change.
To sum up, as it stands, the aforementioned recommendation from college committee is not a simple issue that can be addressed readily. To strengthen the predicted result, the author ought to offer evidences as follows: first, whether the survey results from both current students and alumnae are convincing; second, whether all-female mode will improve morale among students instead of stabilizing or even decreasing; last, whether financial support from alumnae is correlated to tradition of all-female education.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
some issues with the last argument.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 28 15
No. of Words: 599 350
No. of Characters: 3325 1500
No. of Different Words: 305 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.947 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.551 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.87 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 282 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 217 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 145 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 99 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.393 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.595 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.679 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.269 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.448 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1227, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...be a credible indication of prediction. Moreover, another question needs to be a...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 708, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun donations is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...save more money for themselves and make less donations. Hence, the continuation of f...
^^^^
Line 7, column 946, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... foresee the trend owing to the change. To sum up, as it stands, the aforementio...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, first, hence, however, if, moreover, second, similarly, so, then, while, for example, for instance, to begin with, to sum up, with regard to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3430.0 2260.96107784 152% => OK
No of words: 599.0 441.139720559 136% => OK
Chars per words: 5.72621035058 5.12650576532 112% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.94716853372 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00402599413 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 312.0 204.123752495 153% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.520868113523 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 1072.8 705.55239521 152% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 11.0 2.70958083832 406% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.0506057846 57.8364921388 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.5 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.3928571429 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.71428571429 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0915881834104 0.218282227539 42% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0267596497032 0.0743258471296 36% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0365600712604 0.0701772020484 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0605043094671 0.128457276422 47% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.047863531369 0.0628817314937 76% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 33.24 48.3550499002 69% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.95 12.5979740519 127% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.34 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 177.0 98.500998004 180% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.5 12.3882235529 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.