goodyear2013 wrote:
The rising of costs of data processing operations at many financial institutions has created a growing opportunity for independent companies to provide these services more efficiently and at lower cost.
A) The rising of costs
B) Rising costs
C) The rising cost
D) Because the rising cost
E) Because of rising costs
Dear
goodyear2013,
I'm happy to help.
First, let's get the lay of the land with this sentence:
______________________
of data processing operations at many financial institutions has created a growing opportunity for independent companies to provide these services more efficiently and at lower cost. First of all, we have a long infinitive phrase at the end. For more on infinitive phrases, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/infinitive ... -the-gmat/I'll mark this in a separate color:
______________________
of data processing operations at many financial institutions has created a growing opportunity for independent companies to provide these services more efficiently and at lower cost.
(The "for" preposition is contains the subject of the infinitive phrase.)
Now, also set the prepositional phrase off in parentheses and mark them in color:
______________________
(of data processing operations) (at many financial institutions) has created a growing opportunity for independent companies to provide these services more efficiently and at lower cost.
We see we have only one main verb, and this main verb needs a subject. The blank at the beginning must be a noun or something that can play the role of a noun. Both
(D) &
(E) are out.
Choice
(A) is super-awkward, so that is out. I'm quite intrigued that official material would leave us with a split that depends only on the presence or absence of the definite article. That's what we have in the split between
(B) &
(C).
With the definite article, choice
(B), "
rising costs", would be appropriate if we were speaking in general, if for any reason, we weren't interested in specifying anything about the nature of these "rising costs." For example, "rising costs are a problem for doctors in private practice." This is not an appropriate choice in this sentence.
Here, we know in tremendous detail the nature of the costs. From the sentence, we can answer with tremendous precision the question, "the cost of what?" This means that we need the definite article. That's why
(C) is the best answer.
Does all this make sense?
Mike