According to a recent study on financial roles, one-third of high school seniors say that they have “significant financial responsibilities.” These responsibilities include, but are not limited to, contributing to food, shelter, or clothing for themselves or their families. At the same time, a second study demonstrates that a crisis in money management exists for high school students. According to this study, 80% of high school seniors have never taken a personal finance class even though the same percentage of seniors has opened bank accounts and one-third of these account holders has bounced a check.

Which of the following conclusions can be properly drawn from the statements above?
High schools would be wise to incorporate personal finance classes into their core curricula.
At least one-third of high school seniors work part-time jobs after school.
The number of high school seniors with significant financial responsibilities is greater than the number of seniors who have bounced a check.
Any high school seniors who contribute to food, shelter, or clothing for themselves or their families have significant financial responsibilities.
The majority of high school students have no financial responsibilities to their families.

(C) is the OA. My question is that how is it possible to conclude regarding the number of high school seniors when only the percentages are mentioned. The 2 study sizes are stated to be equal. Am I missing something?

The 2nd study says 1/3 of 80% of the high school seniors, so "C" can be derived from this information? All the others seem exaggerated or irrelevant.

TP is exactly right. This is basically a math question.

The number of high school seniors with significant financial responsibilities = 1/3 of total students = approx. 33%

The number of seniors who have bounced a check. = # with bank accounts * 1/3 who have bounced a check = (80% of total students) * (1/3) = approx. 27%

33% > 27%

Typically, the answer to a Draw a Conclusion question will be rather bland and factual. That is because it must be provable by the facts given, without stretching those facts or making any assumptions whatsoever.

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Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

I too struggled with this questoin, namely because there is no indication of how many students contributed to the surveys. If the statement specifically stated that the entire school participated in both surveys (implying the respondants were of equal number in both surveys) I would agree with the explanation. That said, I think it would be perfectly legitimate on the real test for the OA here to be incorrect, and for there to be a legitimate answer that does not necessitate information on the number of respondants.

I'm taking that to mean that you object to the "number of high school seniors" language in the correct choice (C).

It would be a problem if the choice had said something like "the number of seniors who have bounced a check is greater than 11,000." To prove that statement, we would have to know not only that 27% of seniors have done so, but also how many seniors were surveyed. Mathematically, this language says 0.27x > 11000, and would be provable only with knowledge of x, the total number of seniors.

But choice (C) compares the number of seniors who do one thing to the number of seniors who do another. Both types of seniors can be related to that unknown total number. Mathematically, choice (C) says 0.33x > 0.27x, which is always true no matter the value of x.

But maybe you object to taking both percentages out of the same total number? If so, you are interpreting choice (C) to say 0.33x > 0.27y. The truth of that statement would depend on the relative values of x and y. This is overthinking for a GMAT critical reasoning question! The choice and argument repeat the words "of seniors"--take that to mean "of THE SAME SET OF seniors." If they meant different groups, they would refer to them differently.

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Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

Hi Emily,

Can you please tell how can we rule out E....E is talking about "High school students".....but argument is talking about "High school seniors"....

How can they be same ? students in a school are in general > students categorised as seniors ?

Am I thinking correctly...or please tell if not what I am missing here?

Thanks
Mohit

when you do questions like this one - questions requiring you to draw a conclusion - you need to pick things that HAVE TO be true.

choice (c), the correct answer, can actually be PROVED mathematically (as shown in emily's nice analysis above).

this choice depends on an assumption that the three other classes of high school students will show patterns similar to the observed pattern for high school seniors.
there are no data available to support (or refute) this assumption, so you can't make any inferences based on it.

Hello,

I understand the math in the question, but is this an imperfect answer? The study notes that 1/3 of the high school seniors SAY that have significant financial responsibilities, but the answer choice makes the assumption that these students HAVE financial responsibilities.

Am i overanalyzing the difference between students saying they have financial responsibilities and actually having it?

I think the answer C is not correct, because it mentions 1/3 of 80% students who have never taken a fianancial course have bounced a cheque but it mentions nothing about the other 20%..may be they have also bounced the cheque.

"According to this study, 80% of high school seniors have never taken a personal finance class even though the same percentage of seniors has opened bank accounts and one-third of these account holders has bounced a check."

The argument states that 80% of senior have opened bank accounts. That means that 20% do not have bank accounts. I can't bounce a check if I don't have a bank account, so we don't have to worry about that 20%.

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Much appreciation for this post. Truly absorbing and excellently composed post. I will return in future.

[spam deleted]

Leaving the figures aside, I think personal finance must be taught to students from a young age. Managing money is all too important especially when you look at the recent economic challenges.

[spam deleted]

Yes indeed, teens are usually socially involve forget to manage their money and didn't think of recent economic challenges.

to the two spammers whose posts i had to delete inappropriate links from - keep your spam off our boards!

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Moderators-
Would like to once again re-iterate as to how Answer is (c).
Again the question does mention that 1/3rd of high school seniors SAY that they have significant financial responsibilities.

How can an individual treat this as they HAVE as provided by Answer choice (c). I eliminated this choice based on the same.

Per my understanding, there are no ASSUMPTIONS TO BE MADE IN MUST BE TRUE/INFERENCE questions or am I understanding this incorrectly?? Any better 'Mantra' in 2-3 lines when working with such questions?