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A common mistake for beginning group theory students is the belief that a quotient of a group $G$ is necessarily isomorphic to a subgroup of $G$. Is there a characterization for groups for which this property fails?

If this question is too broad, I might ask if such a characterization exists for $p$-groups.


As @Ralph points out, we could restate this property as "groups in which at least one subgroup is not an endomorphism kernel." Evidently there is a bit of literature on groups for which the only endomorphism kernels are trivial or the whole group, but (outside of simple groups) this is a substantially stronger condition.

Update: I crossposted to MO and received an answer to the (now omitted) peripheral question about probability. The characterization is still unanswered.

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how do you define the probability space? – K.Ghosh Dec 30 '12 at 9:20
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Note that all quasisimple groups have the property. – Geoff Robinson Dec 30 '12 at 9:58
All finite abelian groups don't have the property, and non-abelian groups of order $\,p^3\,\,,\,\,p$ a prime have it. – DonAntonio Jan 15 at 23:31
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There is a discussion of this here: groupprops.subwiki.org/wiki/… – Douglas B. Staple Mar 11 at 18:02
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If $G$ is a free group of rank $\ge 2$ then $G'$ has the required property. – Boris Novikov yesterday
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