"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The given argument demands that more new dormitories should be constructed to attract new students in more numbers to Bukingham College. Though a quick read makes us feel that the argument is strong, but a deeper thinking exposes some serious weaknesses.
Firstly, it is claimed that the enrollment of Buckingham College is growing and it is assumed that this trend will continue for next 50 years. But this assumption is baseless. Though it is true that enrollment of prospective students in a college somehow depends on housing availabilities, but to a greater extent, it depends on the current academic reputation and world ranking of that college. So if and only if Bukingham College can keep its reputation intact for the next 50 years, only then it’s demand will increase among students. More concrete evidence behind such forecasting of academic reputation is necessary since 50 years is indeed a long period and anything can happen within this time frame.
Secondly, even if we assume that Bukingham will continue to maintain its academic standard in coming years, it is very difficult to say that the rent of off-campus housing will continue to increase for the next 50 years in the town. There may be several reasons or natural calamities or whatsoever, that may reduce the demand of housing in the area resulting in the fall of rent price in future. Even if we consider that the rent of off-campus apartment will remain high in the town for years to come, we should keep in mind the tendency of students to share their apartments. So, whether the dormitory’s rent will remain less than the shared amount of rent per student in an off-campus apartment is definitely a big question and a matter of concern. Proper background evidence behind this has to be analyzed by the Bukingham administration.
Thirdly, Buckingham authorities should also closely consider the current demand of the on-campus old existing dormitories. It may be quite possible that, dormitories do not offer a sound and quiet academic environment for serious students and thereby students are not opting for dormitories and staying off-campus. If such is the ongoing trend, then it will definitely be highly imprudent to spend valuable funds in constructing new dormitories. It may be better then to utilize funds to improve the academic reputation and research environment of the college thereby more number of good students can be attracted.
So finally, we can assess that it may be a positive step to build more on-campus student housing, but more ground-level study in this regard is highly necessary before blindly approving this project.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 432 350
No. of Characters: 2156 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.559 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.991 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.757 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.548 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.824 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.561 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.114 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 386, Rule ID: IN_PAST[1]
Message: Did you mean: 'in the future'?
Suggestion: in the future
...rea resulting in the fall of rent price in future. Even if we consider that the rent of o...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 457, Rule ID: COMPARISONS_THEN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'better than'?
Suggestion: better than
...constructing new dormitories. It may be better then to utilize funds to improve the academi...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, as to, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2216.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 432.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12962962963 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55901411391 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87254621832 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.479166666667 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 680.4 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 1.0 8.76447105788 11% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.2288106312 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.352941176 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.4117647059 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.23529411765 5.70786347227 109% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.186552007675 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0659088700718 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0652204878522 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0995229078994 0.128457276422 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.056595680872 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.4 14.3799401198 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.77 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.53 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.