GMAT Sample Essays 7 - Acid-Ease Pepticaid Essay Prompt
The following is taken from a sample essay prompt (Analytical Writing Assignment Section) of the GMAT:
The following appeared in an article in a consumer-products magazine:
"Two of today's best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease."
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
No copyright infringement is intended.
Planning before writing the essay:
P:(1) Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are two best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid.
(2) Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are available in milder non-precription forms.
(3) Doctor have written 76 million more pre-scriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Prepticaid.
C: People who need an effective but non-precription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease.
Sample Essay #1
The article announces that two nonprescription medications for excess stomach acid are now released, and then the author concludes that one of them, Acid-Ease, is superior to the other, Pepticaid, by citing a statistic data, how many doctors have written the prescription more than the other. This conclusion, however, has two serious flaws, so that it fails to convince the readers.
First, the most important, the author doesn't show the correlation between the prescription and nonprescription version. That is, without explanation of the difference or relationship, even though Acid-Ease has gained more doctor's supports for the prescription version, the readers can't judge whether Acid-Ease for the nonprescription version remain its strengths of the prescription version or not. For instance, if the ingredient of the nonprescription version is much different from one of the prescription version, it can be inferred that the strength of prescription version is not available in the nonprescription version. Therefore, to strength the argument, the author should have explained characteristics of nonprescription medication and made the readers to be able to understand the difference.
Second, although the author cites one statistical data, 76 million more prescriptions, which is a number that doctors have written for Acid-Ease compared to Pepticaid, this figure makes no sense without the following necessary information. First, the author should clearly articulate the timeframe of the survey, say, the figure is for one year, or for all time. Then, the author should show a percentage rather than a number so that the readers can judge how much Acid-Ease is supported by doctors. That is, if the market size of prescription for excess stomach acid is over 1 billion, the difference between Acid-Ease and Pepticaid can be considered quite small.
To sum up, although the author tries to convince the readers that Acid-Ease is a better choice even for nonprescription medication of excess stomach acid, since the argument has two serious flaws that I mentioned above, the author fails to make the conclusion reasonable.
“Two of today’s best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease.”
Main Points of the Argument
1, Firstly, the author overlooks the possibility that the same excess stomach acid may be attributed to different causes, and thus needs different medication. It is very likely that Acid-Ease is much more effective for one cause of excess stomach acid, but not for all.
2. Secondly, the author merely states that the doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid, but fails to tell us where he gets the figure.
Does the author get the figure from a specific city, or does he get it through random samples? Does the record correctly reveal the fact? …..Without answers to the questions above, we are not sure about the validity of the figure in this argument.
3, Last but not the least, even if it is true that the doctors have written more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full strength Pepticaid, we should not incautiously conclude that the milder nonprescription of Acid-Ease is better than that of Pepticaid. For one thing, we don’t know the patients’ response for the effectiveness of the full-strength medicine; for the other, we also have no idea whether the milder medication adopts a recipe different from that of the full-strength medication and whether the milder and full-strength medication act the same way.
Sample Essay #2
The article comes from consumer-products magazine describes, “Two best-selling brands of full-strengh prescription medications for the relief of excess stomach acid have mild non-prescription forms now. Because doctors have written much more prescriptions for Acid-Ease than for Pepticaid, people should buy Acid-Ease if they want milder non-prescription medicine. I don’t think this is a good argument because best-selling medicine doesn’t mean it is what people need; furthermore, even though the full-strength forms of the medicine are good for people, it doesn’t mean the mild non-prescription form are good for people.
The argument is weakened by using selling number to convince people, but it is ambiguous. There are many reasons could make the medicine selling well. Maybe its price is cheaper than another one, or it has a good advertisement team and make its selling well. People may want to buy it because it has good effect on relief of excess stomach acid or it has cheap price; however in this argument, it didn’t show up this information. In order to strength it, for example, we can add one premise, ”The reason doctor like to prescript it is it has good effect on relief of excess stomach acid.“
The relation between full-strength form and mild non-prescription form doesn’t be built up. The mild non-prescription form maybe has no effect on the symptom. It uses the myth of ”people always believes the effect of brand.“ and trying to give people the image that the effect of previous product will still keep its effect on next product. If some numbers about how the effect of new medicine can be provided, it will be more trustable.
Sample Essay #3
The argument assumes that people should choose Acid-Ease if they need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid only because doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. While the reason is relevant, and provides some grounds for preferring A than P, he lacks of comparison in three aspects lead the argument to a insufficient, unwarranted and unconvinced advertisement.
The first assumption is that doctors prefer Acid-Ease than Pepticaid on curing patients for they’ve written 76 million more prescriptions for full=strength A than for full-strength P. However, the author should not draw to the preference only because of the number of the prescriptions because there are reasons that lead to a different direction. For instance, the situation may due to the fact that the Acid-Ease is produced earlier than Pepticaid and doctors are more familiar with it
The second assumption is that the prescription may have been conducted in different time periods, and Acid-Ease may be produced long before the Pepiciad, For instance, the doctor may be much more familiar with Acid-Ease than with Pepciad. It is the very fact that lead both of doctors and patients use more A than P. Moreover, the author should not draw to the conclusion only depend on the unconvinced data and he should provide more analysis to describe it.
Finally, the third assumption is that the full-strength prescription could be used in the same way as the nonprescription medicine. To support his argument, the author provide a prescription that the A adn P are now available in medications and could be used in a milder nonprescription. However, the author does not provide any data or analysis to explain the medical effectiveness and whether they could be used as nonprescription . Moreover, the author assumes that people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease but he fails to make up any logical connection between them.
In conclusion, the argument is too weak to convince the patients and doctors. If the author wants to strengthen the argument, he should provide more data and analysis to explain the prescription time and the effectiveness of both of the medicine.
Sample Essay #4
Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are two of today’s best-selling, full-strength, prescribed medicines to offset excessive stomach acid. Out of these two, doctors prescribed 76 million more acid-ease than Pepticaid to patients. Now, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are both available as milder, non-prescribed over-the-counter medicines. The milder version of these medicines is effective for patients who don’t need full-strength medication or doctor’s prescription to purchase medicines.
However, just because doctors prescribed more Acid-Ease than Pepticaid in the past, doesn’t mean people should favor Acid-Ease over Pepticaid when it comes to purchasing a milder, non-prescribed medication to offset their excessive stomach acid.We need to understand why doctors prescribed more full-strength Acid-Ease versus Pepticaid in the past. Were doctors receiving royalty on Acid-Ease whenever they prescribed it? Or did Acid-Ease really outperformed Pepticaid as a better anti-acid medicine? What percentage of prescribed anti-acid medicine does 76 million fall under? These are all questions we must ask before concluding whether Acid-Ease indeed was a better prescribed medicine at full-strength.
After finding out whether 76 million more prescription of Acid-Ease was scientifically support based on above questions, we then must ask whether new milder, over-the-counter version of Acid-Ease still holds superiority over Pepticaid in performance. It could well be the case that Acid-Ease is a strong full-strength prescribed medicine, but an ineffective anti-acid medication when it comes to milder, over-the-counter drug.These two logics must be tested and be reviewed before we make our assumption.
If you want us to grade your essay, leave a comment below. If you would like an experienced tutor to give you detailed comments, you can check out this tutor.
Read more GMAT Sample Essays on our website.
The following appeared in an article in a consumer-products magazine:
"Two of today's best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease."
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
No copyright infringement is intended.
Planning before writing the essay:
P:(1) Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are two best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid.
(2) Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are available in milder non-precription forms.
(3) Doctor have written 76 million more pre-scriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Prepticaid.
C: People who need an effective but non-precription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease.
Sample Essay #1
The article announces that two nonprescription medications for excess stomach acid are now released, and then the author concludes that one of them, Acid-Ease, is superior to the other, Pepticaid, by citing a statistic data, how many doctors have written the prescription more than the other. This conclusion, however, has two serious flaws, so that it fails to convince the readers.
First, the most important, the author doesn't show the correlation between the prescription and nonprescription version. That is, without explanation of the difference or relationship, even though Acid-Ease has gained more doctor's supports for the prescription version, the readers can't judge whether Acid-Ease for the nonprescription version remain its strengths of the prescription version or not. For instance, if the ingredient of the nonprescription version is much different from one of the prescription version, it can be inferred that the strength of prescription version is not available in the nonprescription version. Therefore, to strength the argument, the author should have explained characteristics of nonprescription medication and made the readers to be able to understand the difference.
Second, although the author cites one statistical data, 76 million more prescriptions, which is a number that doctors have written for Acid-Ease compared to Pepticaid, this figure makes no sense without the following necessary information. First, the author should clearly articulate the timeframe of the survey, say, the figure is for one year, or for all time. Then, the author should show a percentage rather than a number so that the readers can judge how much Acid-Ease is supported by doctors. That is, if the market size of prescription for excess stomach acid is over 1 billion, the difference between Acid-Ease and Pepticaid can be considered quite small.
To sum up, although the author tries to convince the readers that Acid-Ease is a better choice even for nonprescription medication of excess stomach acid, since the argument has two serious flaws that I mentioned above, the author fails to make the conclusion reasonable.
“Two of today’s best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease.”
Main Points of the Argument
1, Firstly, the author overlooks the possibility that the same excess stomach acid may be attributed to different causes, and thus needs different medication. It is very likely that Acid-Ease is much more effective for one cause of excess stomach acid, but not for all.
2. Secondly, the author merely states that the doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid, but fails to tell us where he gets the figure.
Does the author get the figure from a specific city, or does he get it through random samples? Does the record correctly reveal the fact? …..Without answers to the questions above, we are not sure about the validity of the figure in this argument.
3, Last but not the least, even if it is true that the doctors have written more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full strength Pepticaid, we should not incautiously conclude that the milder nonprescription of Acid-Ease is better than that of Pepticaid. For one thing, we don’t know the patients’ response for the effectiveness of the full-strength medicine; for the other, we also have no idea whether the milder medication adopts a recipe different from that of the full-strength medication and whether the milder and full-strength medication act the same way.
Sample Essay #2
The article comes from consumer-products magazine describes, “Two best-selling brands of full-strengh prescription medications for the relief of excess stomach acid have mild non-prescription forms now. Because doctors have written much more prescriptions for Acid-Ease than for Pepticaid, people should buy Acid-Ease if they want milder non-prescription medicine. I don’t think this is a good argument because best-selling medicine doesn’t mean it is what people need; furthermore, even though the full-strength forms of the medicine are good for people, it doesn’t mean the mild non-prescription form are good for people.
The argument is weakened by using selling number to convince people, but it is ambiguous. There are many reasons could make the medicine selling well. Maybe its price is cheaper than another one, or it has a good advertisement team and make its selling well. People may want to buy it because it has good effect on relief of excess stomach acid or it has cheap price; however in this argument, it didn’t show up this information. In order to strength it, for example, we can add one premise, ”The reason doctor like to prescript it is it has good effect on relief of excess stomach acid.“
The relation between full-strength form and mild non-prescription form doesn’t be built up. The mild non-prescription form maybe has no effect on the symptom. It uses the myth of ”people always believes the effect of brand.“ and trying to give people the image that the effect of previous product will still keep its effect on next product. If some numbers about how the effect of new medicine can be provided, it will be more trustable.
Sample Essay #3
The argument assumes that people should choose Acid-Ease if they need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid only because doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. While the reason is relevant, and provides some grounds for preferring A than P, he lacks of comparison in three aspects lead the argument to a insufficient, unwarranted and unconvinced advertisement.
The first assumption is that doctors prefer Acid-Ease than Pepticaid on curing patients for they’ve written 76 million more prescriptions for full=strength A than for full-strength P. However, the author should not draw to the preference only because of the number of the prescriptions because there are reasons that lead to a different direction. For instance, the situation may due to the fact that the Acid-Ease is produced earlier than Pepticaid and doctors are more familiar with it
The second assumption is that the prescription may have been conducted in different time periods, and Acid-Ease may be produced long before the Pepiciad, For instance, the doctor may be much more familiar with Acid-Ease than with Pepciad. It is the very fact that lead both of doctors and patients use more A than P. Moreover, the author should not draw to the conclusion only depend on the unconvinced data and he should provide more analysis to describe it.
Finally, the third assumption is that the full-strength prescription could be used in the same way as the nonprescription medicine. To support his argument, the author provide a prescription that the A adn P are now available in medications and could be used in a milder nonprescription. However, the author does not provide any data or analysis to explain the medical effectiveness and whether they could be used as nonprescription . Moreover, the author assumes that people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease but he fails to make up any logical connection between them.
In conclusion, the argument is too weak to convince the patients and doctors. If the author wants to strengthen the argument, he should provide more data and analysis to explain the prescription time and the effectiveness of both of the medicine.
Sample Essay #4
Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are two of today’s best-selling, full-strength, prescribed medicines to offset excessive stomach acid. Out of these two, doctors prescribed 76 million more acid-ease than Pepticaid to patients. Now, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid are both available as milder, non-prescribed over-the-counter medicines. The milder version of these medicines is effective for patients who don’t need full-strength medication or doctor’s prescription to purchase medicines.
However, just because doctors prescribed more Acid-Ease than Pepticaid in the past, doesn’t mean people should favor Acid-Ease over Pepticaid when it comes to purchasing a milder, non-prescribed medication to offset their excessive stomach acid.We need to understand why doctors prescribed more full-strength Acid-Ease versus Pepticaid in the past. Were doctors receiving royalty on Acid-Ease whenever they prescribed it? Or did Acid-Ease really outperformed Pepticaid as a better anti-acid medicine? What percentage of prescribed anti-acid medicine does 76 million fall under? These are all questions we must ask before concluding whether Acid-Ease indeed was a better prescribed medicine at full-strength.
After finding out whether 76 million more prescription of Acid-Ease was scientifically support based on above questions, we then must ask whether new milder, over-the-counter version of Acid-Ease still holds superiority over Pepticaid in performance. It could well be the case that Acid-Ease is a strong full-strength prescribed medicine, but an ineffective anti-acid medication when it comes to milder, over-the-counter drug.These two logics must be tested and be reviewed before we make our assumption.
If you want us to grade your essay, leave a comment below. If you would like an experienced tutor to give you detailed comments, you can check out this tutor.
Read more GMAT Sample Essays on our website.
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