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gaurav2m
if we correct the ||ism in this sentence then why the Option E is wrong
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Hi Gaurav, if we change charging to charge in option E, it would not be wrong.

But given option D and changed option E (both of which would be correct), we would just go with the more concise option: Option D.
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I wonder if the there was another option, lest's say f.
option f- as

more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as over $16,000.

It would still be OK, will it not?
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I wonder if the there was another option, lest's say f.
option f- as

more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as over $16,000.

It would still be OK, will it not?
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This question is hard enough! Why make it harder by trying to invent your own answer choice? :)

As explained in this post, choice (D) essentially gives us "three times as many institutions do X as do Y." If we drop the second "do" (in other words, if we drop the second "charge", as you suggested), the comparison and the parallelism are no longer clear.

(D) would still be the best choice, and that's all you need to worry about!
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The answer is definitely (D) here.

The biggest issue in this question is the (very cleverly disguised) idiom "as many... as". We use the phrase "as many... as" pretty frequently in normal language:

  • Chuck eats three times as many burritos as Mike. --> no problem, right?
  • Chuck eats more than three times as many burritos as Mike. --> still no problem, right?

Both of these are acceptable, it's just that they're saying slightly different things. But you wouldn't say either of these:

  • Chuck eats three times as many burritos than Mike.
  • Chuck eats more than three times as many burritos than Mike.

You could say "as many... as" or "more than" -- but "as many... than" is simply wrong. The error in (A), (B), and (C) is exactly the same as in these last two examples. It's just that the construction is more complicated, so it's harder to spot the error. For example, here's answer choice (C):

Quote:
more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year than charge over $16,000

There are a ton of words separating "as many" from "than" -- and that makes it really, really hard to see the mistake. And yes, this is a nasty little trick that you're likely to see in other GMAT SC questions.

Anyway, that leaves us with (D) and (E). As several people have mentioned, there's a parallelism issue in (E), but to be fair, it's really subtle. Here are (D) and (E) again, with a few words stripped out to make it easier to see what's happening:

    (D) "... three times as many institutions charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as charge over $16,000."
    (E) "... three times as many institutions charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as those charging over $16,000."

The parallelism is much, much clearer in (D): "three times as many institutions do X as do Y." In (E), we're basically saying "three times as many institutions do X as institutions doing Y."

But to be fair: man, this question is tough, and I can introduce you to a whole bunch of people who missed this on their practice tests... and still scored in the mid-700s on the real thing just a few weeks later. :)
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Hey Ninja,

I understand the parallelism argument for choosing D, however, isn't it correct to use those since you are referring to a different group of colleges? In other words, it is a new copy of the same object (in this case group), since the same college can't be charging different tuition. I would appreciate the clarification.

Thanks!
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Quote:
Hey Ninja,

I understand the parallelism argument for choosing D, however, isn't it correct to use those since you are referring to a different group of colleges? In other words, it is a new copy of the same object (in this case group), since the same college can't be charging different tuition. I would appreciate the clarification.

Thanks!
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You might be thinking of the situation when you have a choice between an answer choice that uses "those" and one that uses "they." In that scenario, sure, if you're referring to a different group, you'd want "those", since "they" would seem to refer to the original noun.

But that's not our choice here. To see how this construction is different, consider a simple example:

    As many of Tim's neighbors love him as want to see him committed to an institution for the criminally insane.

Here, we're using actions to differentiate between two groups: 1) the neighbors who love Tim and 2) the neighbors who want him committed. That's fine. Because the verbs make it clear that we're talking about two separate groups, there's no need for "those."

Same deal in (D). Take another look:

Quote:
According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as charge over $16,000.
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Again, we're using actions to differentiate between two separate groups. One group charges under $8000. The other charges over $16,000. That's perfectly fine. You noted that it wouldn't make any sense for the same college to be charging different tuitions, so there's no cause for confusion, and no need for "those."

I hope that helps!
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I am so Glad I got this one right. Thanks to you GMATNinja. Your style of thinking really helped me a lot.

Anyone who is facing difficulty understanding Comparisons, please watch this video series by Charles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0XwvN ... Ud&index=4
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sudeshpatodiya
I am so Glad I got this one right. Thanks to you GMATNinja. Your style of thinking really helped me a lot.

Anyone who is facing difficulty understanding Comparisons, please watch this video series by Charles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0XwvN ... Ud&index=4
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Thank you so much for the kind words, sudeshpatodiya! I'm glad to hear that you found the videos helpful. Have fun studying!
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A. 'As many .. than' - incorrect idiom
B. Same as A
C. Same as A
D. Correct
E. There is nothing parallel to 'those charging'.
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According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and Updated on: 06 Jul 2021, 18:46
Originally posted by jabhatta2 on 06 Jul 2021, 17:53.
Last edited by jabhatta2 on 06 Jul 2021, 18:46, edited 4 times in total.
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Hi -- the take-away I got from this problem is, the idiom usage is

More ...THAN == correct idiom
More restaurants charge 10 $ THAN charge 5 $

With Much and Many, use as instead.
as much .... as == Correct
as many .... as == Correct

as many ....than = Incorrect
as many ....than = Incorrect

Twice as many restaurants charge 10 $ as charge 5 $ = Correct
Twice as many students eat pizza as burgers = Correct
Students are buying twice as many pizzas as salads = Correct

Have you just memorized that "THAN" cannot be coupled with as many or as much or does it make logical sense to you ?

In the below sentences for examples, i am surprised the 2nd example is wrong based on idioms.
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There are twice as many students buying pizzas as buying salads

There are twice as many students buying pizzas THAN buying salads

Is the 2nd sentence, really wrong on the GMAT ? If so, do you have a logical understanding of why "THAN" does not couple with As Much
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OA is E....it uses idiom as X as Y

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

Yes, I got the idiomatic bit of it. However, what about charge || charging? I think option e is breaking parallelism

It is acceptable to omit repeated parts of the second element of two elements in parallel. Before the omission the sentence (simplified for easy understanding) is as follows:

More than three times as many institutions charge low fees as institutions charge high fees.

The blue font and green font portions are parallel elements.


It is allowed to omit the repeated part (institutions) from the second element ( green font). After omission the sentence becomes:
More than three times as many institutions charge low fees as instituionscharge high fees.
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HI, If we remove the verb "charge" also, will the sentence still valid:
More than three times as many institutions charge low fees as high fees.[/quote]
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jabhatta2
Hi -- the take-away I got from this problem is, the idiom usage is

More ...THAN == correct idiom
More restaurants charge 10 $ THAN charge 5 $

With Much and Many, use as instead.
as much .... as == Correct
as many .... as == Correct

as many ....than = Incorrect
as many ....than = Incorrect

Twice as many restaurants charge 10 $ as charge 5 $ = Correct
Twice as many students eat pizza as burgers = Correct
Students are buying twice as many pizzas as salads = Correct

Have you just memorized that "THAN" cannot be coupled with as many or as much or does it make logical sense to you ?

In the below sentences for examples, i am surprised the 2nd example is wrong based on idioms.
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Yup, this one pretty much comes down to the idiom, as we discussed in this post.

As we also mentioned in that post, this is a tough question! If you come across a question like this -- one that hinges on an idiom that you're unsure of -- it might be best to guess quickly and move onto the next question. After all, there are over 25,000 idioms in English, so it is probably not the best use of your time to try to memorize them all.

Luckily, most SC questions can be solved using a combination of (learnable!) grammar rules and differences in meaning. It's better to spend the majority of your 65-minute verbal section working through those issues, instead of wasting too much time on an uncertain idiom. More on that general approach can be found in this article or this video.

I hope that helps a bit!
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According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year than those that charge over $16,000.

(A) than those that charge
(B) than are charging
(C) than to charge
(D) as charge
(E) as those charging

comparison needs parallelism to be logical


some points in the second part of comparison. the second part has following features
-point 1, must contain the different phrase from the first phrase.

- point 2, normally dose not contain the phrase similar to the phrase in the first part of comparison but it can do so because parallelism is still good when it repeat the similar words , the word "charge" in our sentence is an example.

rule is simple. both repeated words and different words in the second part must be in the same grammatical roles as those in first part.

more simple, check whether every word in the second part is in the same grammatical role as that in the first part.
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Apart from parallelism issuse in Option E, can I also say that the usage of pronoun ''those'' in Option E is wrong. Because it is referring to the same institutions which charge under $8000 a year. The logically, the institutions which charge over $16000 a year are different institutions than the ones mentioned earlier. Thus, usage of the pronoun to refer to the same earlier institutions is logically wrong.

Is above understanding, correct?

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VIGHNESHKAMATH
Apart from parallelism issuse in Option E, can I also say that the usage of pronoun ''those'' in Option E is wrong. Because it is referring to the same institutions which charge under $8000 a year. The logically, the institutions which charge over $16000 a year are different institutions than the ones mentioned earlier. Thus, usage of the pronoun to refer to the same earlier institutions is logically wrong.

Is above understanding, correct?

Regards
Vighnesh
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Hello VIGHNESHKAMATH,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, this understanding is not correct.

The pronouns "that" and "those" can be used to refer to the main noun of a noun phrase, without any of its modifiers; thus, in Option E, "those" refers to just "institutions"; in other words "those" refers to a different type of "institutions".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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VIGHNESHKAMATH
Apart from parallelism issuse in Option E, can I also say that the usage of pronoun ''those'' in Option E is wrong. Because it is referring to the same institutions which charge under $8000 a year.
Is above understanding, correct?
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Hi Vighnesh, your understanding would hold true, if the pronoun used was they (instead of those).
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Would the following construction be correct ?

According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education as those charging fees over $16,000 charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year.
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Hey Taulark1

Happy to help.


That's a negative! Let's understand why by first looking at the correct version of the sentence:

According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as charge over $16,000.

What we have above is a case of Ellipsis. The repetitive words have been omitted. If we re-insert those words, we get:

According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as (independent institutions of higher education) charge over $16,000.

So, the idea follows the pattern:

As many Xs do P as (Xs) do Q.


Salient Observations:
a. The verbs in both clauses must be in the simple present: "charge". If we change "charge" to "charging", we ruin the parallelism and distort the meaning.
b. The aspect of comparison is "how much institutions charge".


Now, coming to your version of the sentence:
According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education as those charging fees over $16,000 charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year.

a. The first blatant error is the use of 'charging' instead of 'charge'.
b. The second gross error is the awkward construction. The second 'as' has been inserted before the verb 'charge' of the first clause. This not only makes the sentence confusing, it also places the verbs (charge) of both clauses one after another, causing even more confusion. This construction is not rhetorical.


For these reasons, this version will not work.

I hope this helps improve your understanding.


Happy Learning!

Abhishek
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GMATNinja
The answer is definitely (D) here.

The biggest issue in this question is the (very cleverly disguised) idiom "as many... as". We use the phrase "as many... as" pretty frequently in normal language:

  • Chuck eats three times as many burritos as Mike. --> no problem, right?
  • Chuck eats more than three times as many burritos as Mike. --> still no problem, right?

Both of these are acceptable, it's just that they're saying slightly different things. But you wouldn't say either of these:

  • Chuck eats three times as many burritos than Mike.
  • Chuck eats more than three times as many burritos than Mike.

You could say "as many... as" or "more than" -- but "as many... than" is simply wrong. The error in (A), (B), and (C) is exactly the same as in these last two examples. It's just that the construction is more complicated, so it's harder to spot the error. For example, here's answer choice (C):

Quote:
more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year than charge over $16,000

There are a ton of words separating "as many" from "than" -- and that makes it really, really hard to see the mistake. And yes, this is a nasty little trick that you're likely to see in other GMAT SC questions.

Anyway, that leaves us with (D) and (E). As several people have mentioned, there's a parallelism issue in (E), but to be fair, it's really subtle. Here are (D) and (E) again, with a few words stripped out to make it easier to see what's happening:

    (D) "... three times as many institutions charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as charge over $16,000."
    (E) "... three times as many institutions charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as those charging over $16,000."

The parallelism is much, much clearer in (D): "three times as many institutions do X as do Y." In (E), we're basically saying "three times as many institutions do X as institutions doing Y."

But to be fair: man, this question is tough, and I can introduce you to a whole bunch of people who missed this on their practice tests... and still scored in the mid-700s on the real thing just a few weeks later. :)
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GMATNinja
Shouldn't option E answers the question "Who was/were charging the tuition and fees?". Whereas in D as many as X charge Y ... as charge Z, it doesn't tell us about the institution(s) that/those charge fees? Although option E lacks parallelism, but should we prefer parallelism over the intended meaning? Please explain.
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Shouldn't option E answers the question "Who was/were charging the tuition and fees?". Whereas in D as many as X charge Y ... as charge Z, it doesn't tell us about the institution(s) that/those charge fees? Although option E lacks parallelism, but should we prefer parallelism over the intended meaning? Please explain.
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Consider this phrase:

    "Three times as many people drink beer as people drinking wine."

The parallelism issue is a problem precisely because it creates a meaning issue. What's being compared here? How much people DRINK beer to PEOPLE drinking wine? Are we comparing the action of one group to the people of another group?

Also, at first glance, "as people drinking wine" seems like a modifier for "drink." (How do the people drink beer? AS people drinking wine.). Obviously that doesn't make any sense, but the faulty parallelism makes it harder to interpret the meaning.

But try this one:

    "Three times as many people drink beer as drink wine."

Here, we're clearly comparing the number of people who drink beer to the number of people who drink wine -- we're comparing the actions of those people (drinking wine vs drinking beer), and that's a perfectly logical comparison. This structure is exactly what we have in (D), and the comparison is clear and logical.

Again, this is an awfully tricky question, so it's probably not worth killing too many brain cells on this one. ;)
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