Logical reasoning PrepTest 144 · Section 2 · Question 20

Incorrect. First, the Professor notes that the number of students entering college as chem majors hasn't changed, so the students in this answer choice haven't had an effect of lowering that. Second, there's no indication that this is a change over the past decade, so it's not even clear that this answer highlights a shift.

Incorrect. This answer aligns with the paradox, but it doesn't explain it. Why is this number decreasing across the board?

Incorrect. Even if this were true, why is it causing a decline in chem degrees earned when the same number of students are starting as chem majors? This answer would presumably apply across the past decade, so why the decline over the past 10 years?

Incorrect. This answer is trying to get you to select it thinking that these students are majoring in other science degrees. However, there's no indication that these relative job prospects changed over the past 10 years, so there's no indication this explains that change in the number of students sticking with chemistry.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Paradox

Stimulus Summary:
Over the past decade, the same number of students are entering college as chem majors, and they have better job prospects than before, but fewer are graduating with chem degrees.

Answer Anticipation:
This argument has two features which are commonly relevant in finding a correct answer—a timeline, and a comparison. And, in fact, the comparison is along the timeline—something has declined over the past 10 years.

When a change is brought up in a Paradox question, in general, the correct answer has to highlight a change that would explain it. Here, despite job prospects and entering students being comparable/similar (or better), there has been a decline in the total number of students graduating with a chemistry degree. In order to explain that, something about a chemistry degree (outside of the number of starting students or job prospects) must also have changed. Let's find an answer with a relevant change to resolve this paradox.

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights something that has changed over time, so it's already better than almost all the other answer choices. And the change is relevant to the paradoxical change—if chemistry has become more boring over time, then that could explain why more students are dropping it despite better job prospects.

Key Takeaway:
When a Paradox question asks about something that has changed over time, the correct answer will almost always need to bring up another change that happened over the same time period. Here, most of the answers brought up a consideration without stating whether it was true a decade ago as well, and thus it made it impossible to see if they could explain the decline over that time period.