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According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and

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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   15 Jan 2018, 19:00
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giuliab3 wrote:
In my exam simulation I chose answer A, why is A wrong?
thank you

The key to this question is the comparison idiom: "three times as many independent institutions [do a bunch of stuff] _______________ other institutions."

Obviously, I've stripped a lot of distracting crap out of the sentence, but what would you prefer to have in the blank: "as" or "than"?

See if that helps! And if you need more on comparisons, check out part I and part II of our YouTube series on the topic.
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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   14 Jul 2018, 06:29
GMATNinja wrote:
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. :)



There is a reason I am not convinced with OA D and this explanation. You say that:
more three times as many institution do X as do Y.

This would mean that:
"more than three times as many institutions do X as institutions do Y". this is not the correct meaning. Instead we should have something like:
"more than three times as many institutions do X as institutions that do Y". Now this is parallel. No matter how much you say that E is not parallel, it has "that" after institutions in a sense
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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   18 Apr 2019, 00:46
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gaurav2m wrote:
What if we make "charging" to "charge" in option E then which would be the best answer. 'D' or 'E'

Hi Gaurav, it would still be D for concision.
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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   18 Apr 2019, 01:16
EducationAisle wrote:
gaurav2m wrote:
What if we make "charging" to "charge" in option E then which would be the best answer. 'D' or 'E'

Hi Gaurav, it would still be D for concision.



Could you please elaborate more, as i can see the experts were saying that there is only ||ism error in this sentence but if we correct the ||ism in this sentence then why the Option E is wrong
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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   18 Apr 2019, 05:01
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gaurav2m wrote:
if we correct the ||ism in this sentence then why the Option E is wrong

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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   02 May 2019, 02:33
GMATNinja
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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   08 Aug 2020, 11:31
GMATNinja wrote:
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. :)




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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   07 Sep 2020, 09:18
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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!

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.

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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   14 Nov 2020, 08:53
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sudeshpatodiya wrote:
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

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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   29 Jun 2021, 03:09
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 [#permalink] New post   Updated on: 06 Jul 2021, 18:46
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.

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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   06 Jul 2021, 17:54
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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   09 Jul 2021, 11:19
sayantanc2k wrote:
Tobybun wrote:
mayankbhatnagar wrote:
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.


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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   10 Aug 2021, 09:59
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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   13 Mar 2022, 04:39
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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   13 Mar 2022, 05:02
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VIGHNESHKAMATH wrote:
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


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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   13 Mar 2022, 05:11
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VIGHNESHKAMATH wrote:
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?

Hi Vighnesh, your understanding would hold true, if the pronoun used was they (instead of those).
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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   01 Nov 2022, 20:13
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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According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   14 Nov 2022, 05:13
GMATNinja wrote:
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. :)


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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink] New post   19 Nov 2022, 16:46
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Sahil2208 wrote:
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.

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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Re: According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and [#permalink]
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