nikki6218 wrote:
Source-800score
Because the student did not review the study material from cover to cover the night before, he seemed unprepared during the class.
A) did not review the study material from cover to cover the night before, he seemed
B) had not reviewed the study material from cover to cover the night before, he seemed
C) had not reviewed the study material completely the night before, he seemed
D) had not reviewed the study material completely the night before, he seems
E) did not review the study material completely the night before, he seemed
Dear
nikki6218,
I'm happy to help.
Some GMAT SC practice questions are very high quality, and others are not. This one is abysmal. If I were going to assign a grade for the question quality, I would assign an
F for this question. It has several problems.
First of all, the split of "
from cover to cover" vs. "
completely" is not a GMAT-like split at all. The latter is more concise, but the former is more emphatic, and depending on the rhetorical concerns, either could be preferable. It's not a case in which one is clearly right and the other is clearly wrong, so it is not at all an appropriate split.
The question author obviously wants us to conclude that because "
the night before" is earlier in time, we need the past perfect tense:
had not reviewed. For more on the perfect tenses, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-verb- ... ct-tenses/The problem is: often the GMAT prefers only one indicator of time sequence, and sometimes considers a double indication redundant. The phrase "
the night before" already clearly indicates time sequence, so it is unclear whether the GMAT would clearly prefer the past perfect to the simple past. On correct GMAT problems in official material, I have see the simple past as the OA in questions such as this --- questions in which the time sequence was clearly indicated by some other words.
Basically, it seems that the author of this particular question was entirely unacquainted with the standards of the GMAT SC. My friend, just because some company out there calls something a GMAT SC practice question, and just because it has the basic underlined format, don't automatically assume that it adheres to the high lofty standards of the GMAT itself. It is very very hard to write practice questions that are as rigorous as those found in official material. Many sources out there offer "SC practice questions" that fall woefully short of the ideals, as this one does.
Here, for free, is a high quality GMAT SC practice question:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3225Does all this make sense?
Mike