The following appeared in a memo written by a dean at Buckingham College. "To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a new dormitory. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, should double over the

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The following appeared in a memo written by a dean at Buckingham College.

"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a new dormitory. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, should double over the next fifty years, thus making existing dormitories inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has increased in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, an attractive new dormitory would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham." - GRE Argument 123

In this memo a dean at Buckingham College recommends that in order to meet expected enrollment increases the college should build an additional dormitory. To support this recommendation the dean points out that rental rates for off-campus apartments have been increasing, thus making it more difficult for students to afford this housing option. The dean also points out that a new dormitory would attract prospective students to the college. This argument is problematic in several respects.

A threshold problem with the argument involves the statistical reliability of the reports about off-...

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Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 425 350
No. of Characters: 2288 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.54 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.384 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.788 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.611 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.488 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.393 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.625 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5