Logical Reasoning

PT104 · S4 · Q17 The Green Ensemble, a nonprofit

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

  • Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one

  • Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step

  • 81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Start practicing free

The Green Ensemble, a nonprofit theater group, has always been financially dependent on contributions from corporations and would have been forced to disband this year if any of its corporate sponsors had withdrawn their financial support.

Information

Conditional (if) Any corporate sponsor Ensemble would have withdrew support this yr → had to disband

Pivot (but) The Ensemble continued to operate all year and has announced next year's schedule (i.e. didn't disband)

Evaluate

On Must Be True, the first thing to read for is conditionals, and we get one here in the first sentence.

When we see conditionals, they want to test our ability to contrapose them, to chain them up with other rules, or to see when a fact triggers the rule (usually via contrapositive).

When a fact triggers the contrapositive, they usually introduce it with a Pivot, because the fact is clashing with the right side of the conditional.

The contrapositive of the rule was don't disband → no corp sponsor withdrew

The last sentence tells us the group didn't disband.

Goal

So we know that none of its corporate sponsors withdrew. Let's look for that idea in the answers.

17.

Which one of the following is a conclusion that can be properly drawn from the information above?

  1. Correct

    None of the Green Ensemble’s

    Why this is right

    Yay, that didn't take long. The rule says that if any sponsor had withdrawn, the Ensemble would have been forced to disband. The Ensemble did not disband; it operated all year and scheduled next year. By the contrapositive, no sponsor withdrew.

    Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    85% picked this

  2. Earlier this year the Green

    Too Speculative

    Nothing in the facts mentions other funding sources. The group may have survived simply because every corporate sponsor stayed. A new revenue stream is a possible storyline, but not one we can prove.

    4% picked this

  3. During this year corporate funding

    Unsupported

    We know that no sponsors withdrew, but we don't know that any of them are contributing more money than before. We have no idea whether the overall level funding has gone up or down or stayed the same.

    6% picked this

  4. This year corporate funding was

    Unsupported

    "Financially dependent" tells us the group needs corporate money to survive, not what fraction of its income that money represents. A group could be unable to survive without a source that supplies a third of its budget. The 50 percent figure comes from nowhere.

    1% picked this

  5. Corporate funding for nonprofit theater

    Out of Scope

    The passage concerns one theater group and its own sponsors. It says nothing about funding trends for nonprofit theater in general, so no inference about other groups is available. When it comes to Green Ensemble, we know that no sponsor withdrew, but have no grounds for thinking there's more funding than before.

    4% picked this

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill
LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free