LSAT 142 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q25

LR Question 25 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: A recent poll revealed that most students at our…

QUESTION TYPE: Paradox

PARADOX: Students prefer that the new university president be experienced. Yet they have selected a candidate who is not experienced.

ANALYSIS: There are two major flaws here. First, the question didn’t tell us how strong the preference for experience is. When you’re considering a job, you might prefer it have the following qualities:

• High salary
• Low work hours
• Flexible schedule
• Free lunch

You might gladly take a job with no free lunch if it has a high salary and low, flexible hours! Similarly, this candidate for university president might be excellent in all other aspects, even if they lack experience.

Second, the stimulus hasn’t told us about the other leading candidates. Maybe they also lack experience! In that case, experience ceases to be a factor and it isn’t surprising that the preferred candidate has no experience – no candidate does.

___________

1. This adds confusion. This tells us that several other candidates had experience, yet students picked the candidate with no experience.
2. This adds confusion. To solve the paradox, we should show that other candidates lacked experience.
3. The stimulus only said the students were deciding between leading candidates. That implies the administration was considering other candidates, too. So this adds no new information.
4. CORRECT. This is a third explanation I didn’t discuss in the analysis section. If the students didn’t know who was experienced, then it makes sense they didn’t consider experience when they made their choice.
5. It doesn’t matter if experience actually isn’t that important. The question is about what students prefer and choose, not whether the new president will actually be good. Voters might have irrational or useless preferences!