The article "How Not To Blow It With Financial Aid", written by Rachael Lousie Ensign is a perfect article to analyze because it seems to be full with logical fallacies. It starts with the sentence, "what do last year's bonus, your kids straight As... Have in common? They all hurt your chances of landing financial aid [for college]" firstly, the author is generalizing too much about the topic. One college may have a tight lock on their financial aid, but not all colleges do. For instance, University of Colorado in Boulder, or CU gives out scholarships for many things including straight As, or good grades relative to one's school. Ensign is commiting a logical fallacy. She is making hasty generalizations about all colleges when some colleges may not apply. This will cause her audience, people who want to know how to get as much financial aid as possible for themselves or their children for college, to immediately no longer accept her crediblity as an economic author. Another fallacy she commits is the worst case scenario fallacy. Everytime she mentions something a family can do wrong with financial aid she immediately only offers the worst possible outcomes. There is no middle ground for her explanations which would make the audience think the article is too radical. Her logical fallacies take a huge toll on her credibility, ethos is no longer a good quality of article. This is however a good article and very informative, it just includes some fallacies that hurt her argument rather than improve it.
-written on an iPhone
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