24. A recent study has found that within the past few years, many doctors had elected early retirement rather than face the threats of lawsuits and the rising costs of malpractice insurance.
(A) had elected early retirement rather than face
(B) had elected early retirement instead of facing
(C) have elected retiring early instead of facing
(D) have elected to retire early rather than facing
(E) have elected to retire early rather than face

E would be the right answer because of correct use of verb tense.
Sentences which describe an event that has happened in near past will almost invariably tend to use present perfect. ( recently in this case)
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Hi,

I am confused between (D) & (E), could anyone please explain?

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Hi there,

This is the sentence with choice D:

A recent study has found that within the past few years, many doctors have elected to retire early rather than facing the threats of lawsuits and the rising costs of malpractice insurance.

The original sentence means that according to a recent study, in the last few years many doctors have chosen to do X rather than Y. Here, X and Y should be parallel. Per this choice (D),
X = to retire early
Y = facing the threats of…
These two entities are not parallel because X is “to verb” while Y is written in verb-ing form. Hence, we have parallelism error in this sentence.

Choice E corrects this error. This is the sentence with choice E:

A recent study has found that within the past few years, many doctors have elected to retire early rather than face the threats of lawsuits and the rising costs of malpractice insurance.

X = to retire early
Y = (to) face the threats of…
The two entities are parallel here, and hence choice E is the correct answer.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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Hi Sachin,

Whenever we have a list, the common items in the first entity of the list may not be repeated before all the entities in the list. OG questions are inundated with such parallel construction. For example the first question of OGV2:

Like ants, termites have an elaborate social structure in which a few individuals reproduce and the rest serve the colony by tending juveniles, gathering food, building the nest, or battling intruders.

This is the sentence with correct answer choice E. Notice the entities in the sub-list. Termites serve the colony by:
a. tending juveniles,
b. gathering food,
c. building the nest, or
d. battling intruders.

In the sentence, only the first entity is preceded by “by”. It is understood before other entities. This is a very common structure. Here comes the need to identify the correct entities that are intended to make the correct intended parallel list. Try out this official question:

The computer software being designed for a project studying Native American access to higher education will not only meet the needs of that study, but also has the versatility and power of facilitating similar research endeavors.

(A) but also has the versatility and power of facilitating
(B) but also have the versatility and power to facilitate
C) but it also has the versatility and power to facilitate
(D) and also have the versatility and power of facilitating
(E) and it also has such versatility and power that it can facilitate

Now let’s analyze, why choice C is incorrect.

C) have elected retiring early instead of facing: Notice the use of “elected” here. The way it has been used in this choice and the original sentence as well, it seems to suggest that the doctors have cast their votes for an entity named “retiring” instead of another entity “facing”. This is the incorrect use of the word. The intended meaning is that they have elected to – chose to – do one thing rather than the other. This incorrect use of “elected” makes this choice incorrect.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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I find it difficult sometimes to understand the intended meaning.. This is one area I guess that can't be learnt by any grammatical rules.
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