Because of the flood of immigrants between 1905 and 1910, so overcrowded were the school buildings on the lower East Side beyond their capacity that the city converted a hospital ship into a school where ten thousand children received instruction.

(A) so overcrowded were the school buildings on the lower East Side beyond their capacity
(B) so overcrowded beyond their capacity were the school buildings on the lower East Side
(C) school buildings on the lower East Side were overcrowded so far beyond their capacity
(D) school buildings on the lower East Side were so overcrowded
(E) lower East Side school buildings were so overcrowded

please explain your reasoning for accepting or rejecting any choice
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Thanks
Sarnia

Should be D.

D is the most concise and follows the idiom ...so X that Y

"far beyond their capacity" is redundant as "overcrowded" already conveys that meaning.

Any surprises in store ?

D is the right answer.
This is a question on Misplaced Modifiers and School buildings needs to be immediately after the comma.

I pick D because it's more clear to me. Although, E displays correct usage of the subject after the comma...

But the question is... are schools located "on" the lower east side or "in" the lower east side. Or does it matter?

Well, I got the question from another forum for which there wasn't an official answer. I like Stoolfi's explanation though.
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Thanks
Sarnia

Follow this link folks

http://www.sentencecorrection.com/forum ... owtopic=67

Hey All,

I got asked by PM to take this one on, so here I am!

Because of the flood of immigrants between 1905 and 1910, so overcrowded were the school buildings on the lower East Side beyond their capacity that the city converted a hospital ship into a school where ten thousand children received instruction.

(A) so overcrowded were the school buildings on the lower East Side beyond their capacity
PROBLEM: First, there's no reason to say "overcrowded...beyond their capacity". It's redundant in terms of meaning, because overcrowding is already beyond capacity. Also, this backwards construction is confusing here. We'd be better off saying "the school buildings were so overcrowded". Also "beyond their capacity" is oddly placed.

(B) so overcrowded beyond their capacity were the school buildings on the lower East Side
PROBLEM: The same two issues mentioned above (minus the third).

(C) school buildings on the lower East Side were overcrowded so far beyond their capacity
PROBLEM: The overcrowded/beyond their capacity redundancy issue.

(D) school buildings on the lower East Side were so overcrowded
ANSWER: Lovely.

(E) lower East Side school buildings were so overcrowded
PROBLEM: This makes me doubt this as an official question, because E is wrong here, even though it is more compact and there's no direct grammatical reason to cross it off. People are saying that "school buildings" needs to come after the comma, but that's not true. "lower East Side" is simply a bunch of adjectives. That's like saying that "buildings" needs to come after the comma, so we can't have "school" before it, which is not true. I'd say this is wrong because the meaning is slightly wrong here. There aren't really such things as "lower East Side school buildings". That makes it sound like there's some special kind of building constructed only in this area. In reality, they are just "school buildings ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE".

Hope that helps!

-t
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Tommy Wallach | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | San Francisco

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I would mark D... thou E came in as a pretty close choice
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Hey All,

A better explanation for E:

Consider these two sentences:

Businessmen in Spain are very interesting.

Spanish businessmen are very interesting.

See how the first one is discussing ANY businessmen IN Spain, whereas the second one is describing any businessmen that are SPANISH? That's the difference here between D and E. "Lower East Side School Buildings" sounds like a type of school building (not the actual location).

Make more sense?

-tommy
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Tommy Wallach | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | San Francisco

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