Rather than bringing cash to school to pay for food expenses, Kindergrade School children will now use electronic cards that...

GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions

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Critical Reasoning

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Rather than bringing cash to school to pay for food expenses, Kindergrade School children will now use electronic cards that record students' purchases so that parents can later be billed. The objective of this new system is to provide children with cash alternatives that cannot profitably be stolen. To ensure that the cards are worthless to thieves, each card will bear its owner's picture, so staff at cafeteria checkouts can easily identify stolen cards.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously undermine the ability of the card system to achieve its goal?

As a result of the cards' introduction, the number of students who purchase food from school cafeterias is expected to increase.

The replacement of cash with the electronic cards will not allow any reductions in staffing for the checkouts at the schools' cafeterias.

Staff at the cafeteria checkouts know by name many of the students who regularly use the cafeteria, and the cards will bear the owner's name as well as his or her picture.

The cost to the school system of issuing the cards and installing the checkout machines to read them will be covered by the savings arising from no longer needing to handle cash.

The companies operating vending machines in the schools are adapting their machines so that the electronic cards can be used for purchases.

Solution

Passage Analysis:

Text from Passage	Analysis
Rather than bringing cash to school to pay for food expenses, Kindergrade School children will now use electronic cards that record students' purchases so that parents can later be billed.	What it says: School is switching from cash to electronic cards for food payments What it does: Introduces the new system being implemented What it is: Author's factual statement about policy change Visualization: Cash system → Electronic card system (parents get billed later)
The objective of this new system is to provide children with cash alternatives that cannot profitably be stolen.	What it says: The goal is to create payment method that's not worth stealing What it does: Explains the purpose behind the card system change What it is: Author's statement of the school's intention
To ensure that the cards are worthless to thieves, each card will bear its owner's picture, so staff at cafeteria checkouts can easily identify stolen cards.	What it says: Cards will have student photos so staff can spot if someone else is using them What it does: Explains how the school plans to make cards unstealable What it is: Author's explanation of the implementation method Visualization: Card with student photo → Staff checks photo matches user → Stolen cards get caught

Argument Flow:

The argument presents a simple plan: school switches to electronic cards to solve theft problems, and they'll put photos on cards so staff can catch thieves trying to use stolen cards.

Main Conclusion:

The electronic card system with photos will successfully prevent profitable theft of students' lunch money.

Logical Structure:

The school believes that adding photos to cards will make them worthless to steal because staff will easily identify when someone is using a card that doesn't belong to them, thus achieving the goal of preventing profitable theft.

Prethinking:

Question type:

Weaken - We need to find information that would reduce belief in the conclusion that the card system will achieve its goal of providing cash alternatives that cannot profitably be stolen

Precision of Claims

The key claim is about the system's ability to prevent profitable theft through photo identification. We need to focus on scenarios that would make the cards still worth stealing or make the photo verification ineffective

Strategy

To weaken this argument, we need to find scenarios that would make the electronic card system still vulnerable to profitable theft despite having student photos. We should look for ways that thieves could still benefit from stolen cards even with the photo verification system in place

Answer Choices Explained

As a result of the cards' introduction, the number of students who purchase food from school cafeterias is expected to increase.

This tells us more students will buy cafeteria food because of the cards. However, this doesn't weaken the system's ability to prevent theft - it's actually irrelevant to whether stolen cards can be profitably used. More students using the system doesn't make the photo verification any less effective.

The replacement of cash with the electronic cards will not allow any reductions in staffing for the checkouts at the schools' cafeterias.

This says staffing levels won't decrease at cafeteria checkouts. But the argument never claimed the system would reduce staffing - it just said staff would check photos to identify stolen cards. Whether staffing is reduced or not doesn't affect the system's ability to catch thieves.

Staff at the cafeteria checkouts know by name many of the students who regularly use the cafeteria, and the cards will bear the owner's name as well as his or her picture.

This actually strengthens the argument rather than weakening it. If staff already know many students by name AND the cards have both names and pictures, this gives staff even more ways to identify when someone is using a stolen card. This makes the theft prevention more effective, not less.

The cost to the school system of issuing the cards and installing the checkout machines to read them will be covered by the savings arising from no longer needing to handle cash.

This discusses cost-effectiveness and financial aspects of implementing the system. However, whether the system pays for itself financially has nothing to do with whether it can successfully prevent profitable theft. The cost structure doesn't affect the photo verification's effectiveness.

The companies operating vending machines in the schools are adapting their machines so that the electronic cards can be used for purchases.

This is the correct answer because it introduces a significant vulnerability. If vending machines throughout the school accept these same electronic cards, and vending machines don't have staff to check photos against users, then stolen cards would still have profitable value. Thieves could steal cards and use them at vending machines without any verification, completely undermining the goal of making cards worthless to steal.

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