Official Guide: Practice Test 1: Section 5: Quant: Q12

GRE Quant Problem Solving
1

Hello!

I can understand why the answer is 121, if we were to not consider the “In the graduating class…” portion of the problem, but when I read that part of the problem, I thought they meant all 236 graduating students took only algebra, only chemistry, or both. Is my logic wrong?

forum 1
forum 14032×3024 1.1 MB

forum 2
forum 24032×2536 1.01 MB

Thanks so much in advance :slight_smile:

2

See the question doesn’t mentioned the word only (Sadist ETS people :smiling_imp:) .
So what you’re looking at is : Group Chemistry + Group Algebra - Both + Neither = 236(Total)

Substituting values for Chemistry and Algebra :
142 + 121 - Both + Neither = 236
Both - Neither = 27.

Taking extreme cases :
Case 1 : minimum → We need to have a very slight overlap, thus make Neither = 0. So, Both equals 27.
Case 2 : maximum → Put all chemistry student under Algebra . So both turn out to be 121 → Ans

3

Haha “sadist ETS people” :rofl:

Thank you for the thorough explanation!