October 2008 LSAT Section 3 Question 21

Any student who is not required to hand in written homework based on the reading assignments in a course will not com...

shafieiava on January 17, 2020

Mapping this question

Can someone explain how they would map/diagram this question? I thought a sufficient assumption here would have to include highly motivated students because it appears as a new term in the conclusion.

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SamA on January 17, 2020

Hello @shafieiava,

The statement about highly motivated students is redundant. It seems that it was only written as a distraction. The first sentence is what is important.

"Any student who is not required to hand in written homework based on the reading assignments in a course will not complete all of the reading assignments."

no required writing - - - - - - - - - - -> not complete all assignments

The phrase "any student" already includes highly motivated students, which is why the next sentence is unnecessary.

The conclusion states that without requiring handwritten assignments, no student will get a high grade. We have no information about grading. How can we link the information that we do have high grades? This is where the sufficient assumption comes in.

We know it needs to look something like this:

no required writing - - - -> not complete all assignments - - -> no high grade

The link between completing all assignments and high grades is what we are looking for. This is why A is correct. If answer choice A is assumed, then our conclusion is guaranteed.