GMAT OFFICIAL GUIDE PS

Solution:

To solve this problem we first need to determine the number of women. We know that there are 500 people and 15% of them are women. Thus we know:

500 x 0.15 = 75 women

We are asked, if 50 additional workers are to be hired and all of the present workers remain, how many of the additional workers must be women in order to raise the percent of women employees to 20 percent? To translate this idea to a mathematical statement we have:

(Number of woman after hire)/(total workers after hire) = 20%

To solve this statement, we can set up the actual equation with the numbers given in the question stem, and we let w be the number of additional women hired:

(75 +w)/(500 + 50) = 20%

(75 +w)/550 = 0.2

75 + w = 550 x 0.2

75 + w = 110

w = 35

Answer: E

About The Author

Jeffrey Miller is the head GMAT instructor for Target Test Prep. Jeff has more than fourteen years of experience in the business of helping students with low GMAT scores hurdle the seemingly impossible and achieve the scores they need to get into the top 20 business school programs in the world, including HBS, Stanford, Wharton, and Columbia. Jeff has cultivated many successful business school graduates through his GMAT instruction, and will be a pivotal resource for many more to follow.