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I followed gregmat's structure for both the argument and the issue essay. I feel confident about the argument essay, as greg himself mentions, it is easily do able based on the structure and I'm pretty much convinced with the way I wrote it too, but the Issue essay seems to be a little tougher and ambiguous. Would be great if any one of you could review and suggest any tips/improvements! TIA. Issue essay question: The best way for a society to prepare its young people for leadership in government, industry, or other fields is by instilling in them a sense of cooperation, not competition. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position. Essay (written during a timed mock): A perfect leader is someone who not only has in depth knowledge about his team/organization/industry but also has the ability to get things done diligently. A leader is the one who is considered to be the best in the lot and hence the position, and to justify that, he has to possess a strong sense of cooperation, without giving up on the competition, in the right spirit. In my opinion, I think the statement's support towards cooperation is very much valid with respect to the scenario considered -- preparing young people for leadership. I'd like to support the same by calling forth two topics along with examples and hypothetical instances. The history has seen numerous leaders who have rose up to supreme authority by virtue of their competitive spirit, likewise, history has also witnessed these leaders falling apart in short time. What could possibly be the reason? Lack of cooperation? Yes -- if not the only reason, a major reason. Once someone rises to the top, the most important aspect would be to stay there and to be able to do that, that person has to be able to work 'with' his/her team and this directly translates to being cooperative at all times. I'd like to state an example to support the same. The Indian cricket team's best player of all times is Sachin Tendulkar, undoubtedly. And when he went up the ladder breaking through all the competition as the best cricket player of his time, people cheered his talent and competitive spirit. Soon, he was offered the captaincy of the Indian cricket team by the selectors and the coach without any second thoughts. But he failed miserably, as a player and as a leader. Why was that so? Many claim that he wasn't capable of working 'with' his teammates and always focused on being the best in the lot. He was a start individually, but lacked cooperation with his teammates. This example asserts that cooperation plays a formidable role in determining a leader's potential and success in any domain. Secondly, is competition bad for a young leader? Of course, young people need to have the competitive spirit in order to progress and accomplish their goals. But for people who aspire to be leaders, competition could be a bane. For instance, let's assume that a Manager has a fantastic team and always gets the work done on time. But slowly, the management comes to the realization that there is a start performer in his team who is getting most of the work done. In this case, if the manager holds a competitive spirit in the wrong sense, he might not like his teammate burgeoning. This leads to a lot of mix ups. Instead, if he is a person who has faith in cooperation, he would rather prefer walking up to his amazing teammate and have an open conversation about his success and learn and work together, and ultimately increasing his abilities and the team's standards. The statement strongly supports cooperation over competition, which might not hold water in all cases, but very well does in this case, where the focus is on the society trying to prepare its young people for leadership in various fields. In conclusion, I strongly support the claim that the statement makes and the above analysis provides the basis to my support.

Statistics gathered over the past three decades show that the death rate is higher among those who do not have jobs than among those with regular employment. Unemployment, just like heart disease and cancer, is a significant health issue. While many health care advocates promote increased government funding for medical research and public health care, it would be folly to increase government spending if doing so were to affect the nation's economy adversely and ultimately cause a rise in unemployment. A healthy economy means healthy citizens. The argument suggests that the government should not increase government spending as it might affect the nation’s economy, causing a rise in unemployment to the detriment of people’s health. There are many flaws in the argument: some of them being analogous, statistical and causal. This essay will examine the assumptions on which the argument is built, prove that these are wrong and thereby illustrate that the argument’s implications are misleading. The text mentions that the statistics have been gathered over the past three decades and show that death rate is higher among the unemployed than those with regular employment without giving details of the data sample. It fails to mention the age range of the survey participants, their background, whether it is rural or urban, and most importantly their number. It may be possible that the sample range is small, rendering the study unfeasible; or that most participants are too old; or that a majority of the participants are from villages, where it is possible that they don’t have access to good healthcare. Without these details, we cannot come to any conclusion, leave alone one that is so strong and bleak. Moreover, the argument says that because death rate is higher among the unemployed than those with regular employment, those who will become unemployed as a result of the nation’s economy deteriorating will die soon. This seems like a causal flaw. Just because death rate among the unemployed is higher doesn’t mean that those who become unemployed will die. With this assumption proving to be wrong, the argument falls apart. The argument also says that unemployment is a significant health issue, just like cancer and heart disease, without saying anything to justify this claim. This is an analogous flaw. The argument doesn’t give any data to reach such a strong conclusion. Without knowing the comparable statistics, how are we to be sure that unemployment is as serious a disease as heart ailment and cancer. With the several flaws in the argument being pointed out, it is clear that the government doesn’t need to cut back on spending in the fear that it will affect the nation’s economy and eventually harm its citizens due to increase in unemployment. Without accurate statistics and enough information that justifies the argument’s conclusions, we can dismiss the argument as flawed.

Dear Friends and GRE Experts, I am preparing for GRE and this is my 5th attempt to write a GRE essay (different topics each time). This is an argument topic given on official GRE website. I would request you to have a look on the essay and grade it upon convenience and availability of time. Thank You. Sincerely, NickyGRE. Actual GRE Argument Prompt: The following appeared on the Mozart School of Music Web site. "The Mozart School of Music should be the first choice for parents considering enrolling their child in music lessons. First of all, the Mozart School welcomes youngsters at all ability and age levels; there is no audition to attend the school. Second, the school offers instruction in nearly all musical instruments as well a wide range of styles and genres from classical to rock. Third, the faculty includes some of the most distinguished musicians in the area. Finally, many Mozart graduates have gone on to become well-known and highly paid professional musicians." Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The argument presented is a form of advertise on the website of Mozart School of Music, which promotes its readers to consider itself as the first choice while thinking of learning music or musical instruments. The first assumption that this kind of arguments suppose is that people would visit the web-site on which the advertisement has been published. It may be a case that the other schools of music publish their advertisement in news paper, other forms of print media or in radio or television broadcast, while the Mozart School of Music may be alone in publishing the advertisement through its web-site and there may be very few people, actually interested in learning music or musical instruments who might visit the web-site and the advertisement displayed in it. Though in the second statement, the argument states that it welcomes people of all age-groups and all ability levels,in the first statement it reveals its unstated assumption that its chief cluster of clients is children by stating 'the first choice for parents'. This suggests that the majority of new customers or new students that this school gets comes from children or youngsters of lower age. This also suggests the scientific assumption that at lower ages, the interests are easier to be cultivated, nurtured and developed than at higher or older ages. The fourth statement argues that the school possesses some of the most distinguished musicians as its faculty members. It is a vague and unclear statement since it doesn't state what are the criteria on which it establishes the 'most distinguished' status of its faculty members, for example, popularity of their musical albums, variations and skilles incorporated in their musical scores, intuitions presented in their compositions - these all factors can make them distinguished and well-reputed. Also, what it assumes as 'the area' is again a debatable topic, as music is a very wide region having majestic scope and its classification can vary individually. One possible classification can qualitatively confine music into different areas like vocal music, instrumental music etc. In the final statement, the argument assumes that the Mozart graduates, who have gathered reputation and fame after getting educated from the school, are well-known to the readers of this advertisement since there are no details given about the individuals who succeeded on the base of education gathered from the Mozart School. Then, again, the argument assumes that the relative term 'highly paid' communicates unanimous and unambiguous meaning to all different classes of its readers- poors and rich people alike. In conclusion, the argument poses some seriously flawed assumptions which can be corrected. Above is response typed in actual test conditions: 431 words