How competitive is it to get into NYU-CAS?

NYU2013
Sun, 04 Sep 2011 11:57:30 +0000

I’m actually a phil major, so I know perfectly well how english works. Your example is actually wrong, at least as an except, because an inclusion of a sentence that has no direct relation to the previous sentence has violated a rule of english. If the except were drawn from a paragraph stating XYZ pertaining to Mike and stolen items together, then the except would be fine. However, as you’ve stated it you cannot infer that the cause of the fewer stolen efforts were because of him. Why? You’ve only stated that Mike was the RA and he held meetings in his room. Then you make a jump to stolen items and state that fewer items were stolen. Since you’ve provided no contextual evidence as to how Mike and the stolen items are related, no conclusions can be drawn. It would be okay to assume Mike was RA during those years because some relationship can be seen between Mike and the years, as the years are a supporting evidence. But, you would need more contextual evidence to support that the drop in crime rates were his cause.

(P1) Mike was RA
(P2) He held meetings in his room often
(P3) In 2003 to 2004 there were fewer stolen items
(C1) Mike is the cause of said drop in crime rate

Um… No. This argument is very clearly not valid. C1 does not follow from [P1, P2, P3]

However,

(P1) X was a dean
(P2) Applications to CAS tripled from 8,000 to 23,000
(P3) SAT scores rose from below 1200 to 1424
(P4) The acceptance rate dropped from 70% in 1991 to 24% this spring
(C1) The dean was the cause of said happenings namely, P1, P2 and P3

Argument is valid. C1 does follow from P1, P2, and P3. Sound though? Eh. Correlational evidence doesn’t provide causation. Point being that this except made sense, whereas yours did not and the inference you tried to make on your own excerpt isn’t valid.

Also… Examine the statement “the acceptance rate dropped from 70% in 1991 to 24% this spring” the first part of the statement says 70% in X year. Meaning that the acceptance rate being discussed is yearly acceptance rate. Why? Because 1991 is a year and without further supporting contrary evidence is has to be assumed that the acceptance rate in question was for the year. Since, it is required that you assume the conclusion with the evidence provided. “This spring” simply refers to this current year, 2011; as referring to yearly acceptance rate, as was done in the first part of sentence, is the only grammatically and syntactically correct deduction to make. Let me state it again, that the rules of english require that if a new reference is being made (time period, name, state of affairs, etc.) that has not been made previously, it must be introduced. E.g. I cannot say “Josh went to the store with Mike and she went with them.” I cannot use the pronoun “she” without first having introduced the person that “she” is referring to.