June 1992 LSAT Section 2 Question 6

Assume that John receives a lower grade in economics than in physics. He must have failed at least one course if whic...

Aley on August 19, 2020

Video Explanation

I have a question regarding your video explanation. You sort the grades in order [GP]>E>H. Then you put them in a table A_B_C_D_E_ where A(G)B(P)C(E)D(H)E(_) and then you eliminate each item one by one until you conclude that the answer is E. However, the answer choice E is only true is based on your original placement. There is nothing that guarantees E(economics) is consecutive to P or H, all we know is that it is higher than H and lower than B, so we can have a situation where it is GPE_H or GP_EH and in that case Russian cannot be lower than history and equal at best. If we put H as last, we can assume Italian and Russian can pretty much go anywhere on the table. Can you please explain where my gap in reasoning is? What assumption am I missing that requires you to put GPEH_ in as the first 4 grades.

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Victoria on September 3, 2020

Hi @Aley,

Happy to help!

The question is not asking us to identify the only possible scenario where John must have failed a class. It is entirely possible that John's grades could have been the following:

A: G
B: P
C: R
D: I E
E: H

However, we are limited to the answer choices that we are provided with. We are just asked to select the answer choice which ensures that John must have failed at least one course.

Answer choice (E) is true because it requires us to place one class in each grade. We already know from the stimulus that G > P > E > H.

Answer choice (E) tells us that John received a lower grade in R than in H. This means that John must have failed Russian because there are five grades and we have a sequence of five classes:
G > P > E > H >R

So, while the scenario outlined above is theoretically possible, it is not reflected in any of the answer choices. The additional condition imposed by answer choice (E) means that it must be true that John failed Russian which is why it is our correct answer.

Hope this helps clear things up a bit! Please let us know if you have any further questions.