Law firms and other professional services groups, academic institution

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

This question uses the incorrect pronoun "where" to refer to "informal talent marketplaces." "Where" is used to refer to physical locations, but the "talent marketplaces" are a metaphorical construct, not an actual geographical location. In this case, "in which" is the appropriate construction. The original answer choice also utilizes unnecessary turns of phrase in its use of “best employees junior to them,” as well as “assignments that they find most attractive,” both of which use excessive language and could be expressed more succinctly.

(A) This choice is incorrect as it repeats the original sentence.

(B) This choice correctly changes "where" to "in which" but incorrectly uses the conjunction “and” between the terms “strive” and “identify,” suggesting that the two terms denote two distinct activities, as opposed to the intended single activity of identifying the best junior employees. Also, “assignments that they find most attractive” are unnecessarily wordy.

(C) This answer repeats the original pronoun error ("where").

(D) This choice incorrectly uses the conjunction “and” between the terms “strive” and “identify,” suggesting that the two terms denote two distinct activities, as opposed to the intended single activity of identifying the best junior employees.

(E) CORRECT This choice correctly changes "where" to "in which" and also rephrases the sentence more concisely ("best junior employees"; "most attractive assignments")
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Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended core meaning of this sentence is that in the informal talent marketplaces, senior employees strive to identify the best junior employees and the best junior employees compete for the most attractive assignments.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Pronouns + Verb Forms + Awkwardness/Redundancy

• "where" is only used to refer to a physical location.
• The infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + identify" in this sentence) is the preferred construction for referring to the purpose or intent of an action.

A: This answer choice incorrectly refers to "talent marketplaces" with "where"; please remember, "where" is only used to refer to a physical location. Further, Option A uses the needlessly wordy phrases "employees junior to them" and "that they find most attractive", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

B: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "strive and identify"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that in the informal talent marketplaces senior employees strive and as a separate action identify the best junior employees; the intended meaning is that in the informal talent marketplaces senior employees strive for the purpose of identifying the best junior employees. Further, Option B uses the needlessly wordy phrase "that they find most attractive", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

C: This answer choice incorrectly refers to "talent marketplaces" with "where"; please remember, "where" is only used to refer to a physical location.

D: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrases "that enable" and "strive and identify; the construction of these phrases incorrectly implies that the informal talent marketplaces make it possible for senior employees to strive and as a separate action identify the best junior employees; the intended meaning is that in the informal talent marketplaces senior employees practically strive for the purpose of identifying the best junior employees.

E: Correct. This answer choice correctly refers to "informal talent marketplaces" with "in which" and uses the phrase "strive to identify", conveying the intended meaning - that in the informal talent marketplaces senior employees practically strive for the purpose of identifying the best junior employees; please remember, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + identify" in this sentence) is the preferred construction for referring to the purpose or intent of an action. Further, Option E is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.

Hence, E is the best answer choice.

Additional Note: Please understand that in this context, "marketplaces" refers to a metaphorical concept rather than to literal, physical marketplaces, so "where" cannot be used to refer to it.

To understand the concept of "Where" versus "When" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the concept of "Infinitive" vs "Present Participle" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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hi all,
this Q tests on following issues..
1) where vs in which.. here in which is better than where...
eg it will be better when we say " it was delhi where i met him " rather than " it was delhi in which i met him "..
however " delhi has a market where you get everything " would not be better than " delhi has a market in which you get everything "..
2) strive to identify vs strive and identify... 'strive and identify' makes the two parts independent so strive to identify is better..

only E is left..
however E changes the meaning by writng "the best junior employees " instead of " the junior employees"..
it could be a typing error but otherwise it changes the scope of junior employees..
ans E
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E and C are the same except : 'in which' vs 'where'. Chose 'in which', because thought this marketplace is not a physical location.

Option is E.
Coming to the meaning of the question first ---Law firms and other professional services groups, academic institutions, and research divisions have some talent marketplaces , in that senior managers do something and juniors do something.
The question has a few errors. Usage of where is incorrect because where refers to a place or location in physical and marketplaces is no place/location. second error is the ambiguity with the pronoun 'they' it can either refers to junior employees or senior employees.
Please note parallelism is well followed over here.

Now scan the options .
Choice A and B are INcorrect due to where usage.
Choice D changes the meaning by introducing 'that'
Choice B disturbs the parallel structure by introducing and between strive and identify instead of using an infinitive form.
Choice E is free from all errors and is concise wrt pronoun usage.



Please Give me + 1 kudos if my post is valuable to you

Law firms and other professional services groups, academic institutions, and research divisions often have informal talent marketplaces where senior employees strive to identify the best employees junior to them and the junior employees compete for the assignments that they find most attractive.

• where senior employees strive to identify the best employees junior to them and the junior employees compete for the assignments that they find most attractive- usage of where to refer to marketplaces is incorrect , the best employees junior to them phrase is wordy

• in which senior employees strive and identify the best junior employees and the junior employees compete for the assignments that they find most attractive - strive and identify changes the meaning

• where senior employees strive to identify the best junior employees and the best junior employees compete for the most attractive assignments - usage of where to refer to marketplaces is incorrect

• that enable senior employees to strive and identify the best junior employees and the best junior employees compete for the most attractive assignments - to strive and identify changes the meaning - the activities are not independent of each other

• in which senior employees strive to identify the best junior employees and the best junior employees compete for the most attractive assignments - Correct

Answer E
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Hi, experts,daagh VeritasKarishma egmat I rejected all answer choices except A and B because the rest use the additional term "best junior employees compete"

The OG sentence doesn't mention that ONLY the best junior employees compete; how can we then assume this? Also, isn't it nonsensical to assume that only the best junior employees would compete in the marketplace? All employees get an equal opportunity to compete but yes the senior employees can def strive to employ the best junior employees. I tried to go for a meaning-based approach. Could someone please shed some light on why my analysis is incorrect?

I don't think that this question can stand logic. The project leaders select their team members, who are notably good but to call all of them the best is incongruous. Even technically there can be only one who can be called 'the best'. Whoever are selected then compete among themselves for the best employee award.

As such E doesn't appeal to reason.
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Kritisood It's important to keep in mind that there is nothing special about answer choice A. If E had been missing this word and A had included it, we could just as well ask why it appeared in A. What it comes down, though, is that we're just finding the one answer that works. This isn't about making assumptions; it's just about avoiding error and conveying a clear meaning.
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daagh It's actually quite common to use the word "best" to refer to an entire group or category of people. For instance, we might say that the Olympics is a gathering of the best amateur athletes from around the world. Perhaps only one of them is the best athlete of all, or the best athlete in any given category, but that's a different usage.
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DmitryFarber thanks for your reply. I actually chose B even though "strive and identify" may be incorrect, I inferred it to be clearer in meaning than E with the additional "best" in junior employees. (which was the only reason why I didn't choose E)

Would you say then that the additional "best" is not an error? and how then should we go about more questions like these? It is said that the original sentence conveys the intended meaning most of the time.

The simple solution is just to erase any notion of "original." We infer the intended meaning from looking at all 5 choices and seeing what makes sense. As for the extra "best" in E, it makes very little change in the meaning. I don't see the value of adding it, but it doesn't create a problematic meaning, so there's no reason to strike it.
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I agree with you here, Kriti. When I read the sentence, I said to myself,

This is what is happening -

- the senior employees are trying to identify the best junior employees ( notice the use of "strive to identify" - "best" is a subjective trait so might be different for different senior employees)
- the junior employees are competing for the projects they find attractive (again, "attractive" is a subjective trait so might be different for different employees)

So "best" junior employees are competing did not make sense to me. If the sentence were structured differently, say
...where senior employees identify the best junior employees and then the best junior employees compete ...
it would have been fine.

Also, "where" vs "in which", I would prefer "in which" since the marketplace isn't an actual physical location but we do have some leeway here. Where cannot refer to time but here it refers to marketplace so I can live with it.

All in all, given these options, I would have been torn between options (A) and (E). Even though (A) uses a few extra words, those words do clarify the meaning.

Also, "strive and identify" is an absolute no no. They are not doing two things - striving and identifying. There is only one action - striving to identify.
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Hi DmitryFarber,
Can you please solve the following doubts I have?
what I understand from the original question stem is that there is a pool of junior employees from which the senior employees choose the best ones and the junior employees compete among themselves to get the assignment that they find the most attractive.
Option E Changes two things here from the original question: Firstly, it changes that not junior employees but the best of junior employees are competing among themselves and secondly it removes the part 'they find attractive' and changes it to attractive assignments.
Don't these changes lead to a meaning change?

Regards,
PSP

I agree with Karishma (as usual!). I disagree with almost every word of the "official explanation" here.

For one thing, there's nothing in the sentence that tells us whether this "informal marketplace" is a physical location or not, so I don't accept the justification provided for rejecting "where". But you can also use "where" more flexibly than the explanation suggests; we use "where" correctly all the time to refer to metaphorical locations or situations. The sentence "Where would I be without your help?" does not normally mean "What city would I be in if you hadn't helped me?", for example.

The "official explanation" also says The original answer choice also utilizes unnecessary turns of phrase in its use of “best employees junior to them,” as well as “assignments that they find most attractive,” both of which use excessive language and could be expressed more succinctly (a sentence that itself could be expressed more succinctly) but that is clearly not true. If we replace “assignments that they find most attractive" with "the most attractive assignments", that changes the meaning. If we say "the most attractive assignments", we're saying some assignments are objectively more attractive than others. If we say “assignments that they find most attractive", we're saying that different employees will be attracted by different assignments. We're then saying that "attractiveness" is a subjective judgment, which makes more sense to me. I also don't think "employees junior to them" means the same thing as "junior employees" (the latter suggests the company employs a binary categorization of employees that the former doesn't suggest) though that distinction is more subtle, and there is a clear difference in meaning when answer E discusses only the "best" junior employees, and answer A discusses junior employees in general. Again, I'd think it's all employees who are competing, not just the best ones, so again A seems to convey the more natural meaning.

So I prefer A here on meaning grounds. The only reason I have to rule it out is the extraneous "the" before "junior employees", but that's a tenuous justification. I think you could justify any of the answers A, C or E, and I can't imagine any real GMAT question would hinge solely on the distinction between "in which" and "where" that this question hinges on, unless the situation were one where one of those two choices was clearly unacceptable.
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Hi IanStewart,
Thank you for providing your insights. Option A was my choice as well. Anyway, I have better clarity now. I really do appreciate your very prompt replies.
Regards,
PSP

Why is E correct, E changes the meaning ... A says all employees compete for assignments but E says only best do so??

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