Question

Smithtown University’s fund-raisers succeeded in getting donations from 80 percent of the potential donors they contacted. This success rate, exceptionally high for university fund-raisers, does not indicate that they were doing a good job. On the contrary, since the people most likely to donate are those who have donated in the past, good fund-raisers constantly try less-likely prospects in an effort to expand the donor base. The high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort.

Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E

(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)

Solution

Introduction: This is an amazing question with probably the lowest accuracy among all official CR questions. Only 25% of people who attempt this question on GMAT Club get it right, and given my experience discussing this question with my students, I believe that even among people who get this question right, most don’t get it right for the right reasons. Given this background, I’ll probably err on the side of explaining more rather than explaining less in the solution below.

The Story

Smithtown University’s fund-raisers succeeded in getting donations from 80 percent of the potential donors they contacted.

STU’s FRs got donations from 80% of the potential donors they contacted i.e. for every 100 people they contacted, they got donations from 80 people.

This success rate, exceptionally high for university fund-raisers, does not indicate that they were doing a good job.

The non-essential modifier “exceptionally high for university fund-raisers” says that the 80% success rate is very very high for university FRs (That means normally, FRs have a much lower success rate).

This high success rate doesn’t mean that FRs were doing a good job. (Interesting! How can such a high success rate not mean a good job?)

On the contrary, since the people most likely to donate are those who have donated in the past, good fund-raisers constantly try less-likely prospects in an effort to expand the donor base.

The people most likely to donate are the people who have donated in the past. (That looks reasonable. Once a person makes a donation to a university, he may be more willing to donate again since he sees value in donating money to the university)

Since old donors have a high propensity to donate again, good FRs constantly try less-likely prospects (i.e. new donors) to expand the donor base.

(This statement makes sense, but how is it connected with the previous statement? The previous statement said that a high success rate indicates STU’s FRs didn’t do a good job, and this statement says good FRs constantly try less probable prospects. Ohh! The author is assuming that a high success rate of STU’s FRs is due to the reason that they didn’t contact the less-likely prospects i.e. new donors. The author thinks that STU’s FRs got a high success rate because they kept on contacting the old donors, who were very likely to donate.)

(I observe that many people don’t pause to connect a statement back to the previous statement. They keep on reading, hoping things will automatically connect. This works most of the time since we can understand most of the things naturally. However, things that we can’t understand ‘naturally’ need to be understood deliberately. So, you need to pay attention to whether you understand the relationship between a statement and its previous one. If you don’t, take a pause and try to understand. There’s no point rushing to get a question wrong!)

The high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort.

This statement flows from the previous statement. In other words, this statement is supported by the previous statement. And this statement supports the second statement.

Why a high success rate doesn’t indicate that STU’s FRs were doing a good job? Because this high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort.

Gist: The high success rate doesn’t indicate that STU’s FRs were doing a good job. Why? Because the high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort. Why? Because good FRs constantly try less probable prospects.

The Gap

Since there are two levels of ‘whys’, there are two jumps/gaps in the argument:

  1. From “Good FRs constantly try less probable prospects” to “The high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort“

    This gap is so subtle that it doesn’t look like a gap. It seems that one can infer from a high success rate of an FR that he must have made insufficient canvassing effort. However, there are two levels of gaps here:(1) Are these STU FR’s average guys? What if these guys are overly adept at converting potential donors? In such a case, they might have a high success rate even though they may have contacted a lot of new donors. In such a case, their high success rate will not indicate that they did not contact new donors. Probably, they contacted a lot of new donors and were talented enough to convert a very high percentage of them.

    (2) Let’s accept that they didn’t contact a lot of new donors. Can we now say that their high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort? Not necessarily. What if these people deliberately contacted a smaller set of new donors but made a lot more effort per donor to convert the donor. That’s why they had a high success rate. In such a case, they contacted fewer donors but made more effort per donor. So, we won’t be able to say that their high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort.

     

  2. From “The high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort” to “The high success rate doesn’t indicate that STU’s FRs were doing a good job“

    Is there a jump here? Is it possible that even though the high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort, we still can’t say that the high success rate doesn’t indicate that STU’s FR’s were doing a good job?It is possible if the job of FRs includes more than just “canvassing”. Let’s say that the job of FRs also includes preparing canvassing material and shortlisting probable new donors. In such a case, FRs may not have made sufficient canvassing effort, but if they did a lot of good work in preparing canvassing material or shortlisting new donors, we can’t say that they did not do a good job! Right?

The Goal

We are looking for an option that most strengthens the argument. Any option that addresses the gaps identified above can be a valid strengthener.

Option Analysis

(A) Correct. The sentence compares the success rate of STU’s FRs and of FRs from other universities.* Success rate w.r.t. what? W.r.t. converting new donors. The sentence says that STU’s FRs had about the same success rate as FRs from other universities.

Oh! So, these STU guys are just like others; these people are not super-talented. Now, if we go back to the first gap identified above, we can see that this option eliminates a loophole in the argument. If STU FRs are just like others and thus are not overly talented, then their high (overall) success rate is likely due to the fact that they mainly contacted old donors and not the new donors and thus made insufficient canvassing effort.

*If you have trouble understanding this statement, I’ve shared a video at the end of this solution in which I share how I read options A, B, and C.

(B) Incorrect. This option compares the average size of the donations to STU from two kinds of donors:

  1. New donors whom STU’s FRs contacted
  2. Old donors

The option says that the average size of the donation from the first kind of donors was greater than the average size of the donations from the old donors.

Many people reject this option, saying that the argument doesn’t talk about the average size of donations and that thus this option is out of scope. The logic is completely wrong since a strengthener always provides new information. The reason why people don’t realize the incorrectness of this logic is that they apply this logic inconsistently. If they applied this logic consistently on every option, they’d realize that many correct options can also be rejected for this reason. Rather, even option A can be rejected on the grounds that the argument nowhere talks about fundraisers from other universities.

This option is a mild weakener since if the new donors donated a lot of money, then probably STU FRs did a good job. Probably, FRs spent more effort per donor to extract more money out of every donor. In such a case, they probably made sufficient canvassing effort – not in terms of contacting a lot of new donors but in terms of extracting more money from every new donor.

A bit bigger nuance now. The reason I say that this option is a ‘mild’ weakener is that the comparison presented in this option could be a constant factor. I mean to say that it is entirely possible that new donors always donate, on average, more than old donors. It is possible that every new donor donates a large amount for the first time and then donate a small amount every year. In such a case, the information presented in option B doesn’t tell us anything special about STU’s FRs.

(C) Incorrect. More than 60% of people mark this option on GMAT Club! This option says that most of the donations to STU from old donors came without FRs contacting those donors. So, these old donors donated on their own without any contact from FRs.

Many people think that this option means that most of the donations to STU came without any contact from FRs. That means that these FRs are useless. They are getting less than 50% of the donations; the majority of the donations are coming on their own. Well, these people miss the modifier ‘who had previously donated to it’. Thus, this option is not talking about most of the donations; it’s talking about most of the donations from old donors.

This option can also be a mild weakener since it can be taken to indicate that STU’s FRs did not contact many old donors. In such a case, they likely contacted more new donors. Thus, the argument gets weakened.

Again, I say that this is a ‘mild’ weakener since, like option B, this option can also be a constant factor. It is entirely possible that every year, the majority of donations from old donors come without any canvassing. In such a case, this option doesn’t tell us anything special about STU’s FRs.

(D) Incorrect.This option says that the majority of the donations to STU came from new donors. This option, thus, weakens the argument.

However, this option also suffers from the possibility that this could also be a constant factor. It is possible that every year, 60% of the donations come from new donors. So, getting a majority of the donations from new donors is nothing special. A good weakener would be an option that compares the performance of FRs this year with the general performance of FRs. For example:

A greater than usual proportion of the donations that fund-raisers succeeded in getting for Smithtown University this year were from donors who had never given to the university before.

(E) Incorrect. This option says that most of the money raised by STU’s FRs came from new donors. This option, thus, weakens the argument.

However, this option also suffers from the possibility that this could also be a constant factor. It is possible that every year, 60% of the raised money comes from new donors. So, getting most of the money from new donors is nothing special. A good weakener would be an option that compares the performance of FRs this year with the general performance of FRs. For example:

A greater than usual proportion of the money raised by Smithtown University’s fund-raisers came from donors who had never given to the university before.

If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask in the comments section.

This solution was created by Chiranjeev Singh and Anish Passi.