... (S) owning and living ... (V) is ... (Mod) a goal ... of young adults, like that of earlier generations.


(A) like that of earlier generations
(B) as that for earlier generations
"that" is used to compare two different things, we need to use "it" to compare the antecedent "owning and living" to itself.

(C) just as earlier generations did
Not parallel to first clause, makes no sense... what did earlier generations do?

(D) as have earlier generations
Not parallel to first clause

(E) as it was of earlier generations
Parallel to first clause,
"owning and living" = it
"is" = was
"a goal" = (omitted)
"of young adults" = of earlier generations

What you are saying is clearly logical and correct. When a subject consists of a list constructed via the use of "and," such as "the wolf and the bear," that subject should be paired with a plural verb.

So, what's going on in the sentence in this question?

What's going on is that the writer has taken some poetic license and is considering "owning and living in a freestanding house on its own land " a single thing, a single goal,as in, "What is your goal?" "My goal is to own and live in a freestanding house on its own land."

You can see that this stance makes some sense, as it doesn't really make sense to say that this person has two separate goals, owning a house and living in it.

So, whether the use of a singular verb or the use of a plural verb makes more sense is not clearly defined, and the writer has made the call that using a singular verb in this particular case makes more sense.

Now, you can use this example to enhance your SC performance, because, while in this case, the debatable choice of verb appears in the non-underlined portion of the sentence, in other questions, such questionable use of language can appear in OAs. So, by seeing that a somewhat nonstandard use of language might be considered acceptable, you may keep yourself from eliminating choices that SC question writers feel are, while sketchy or debatably wrong, the best.
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Dear AtlanticGMAT,

Why can't it be the case that we were omitting the verb from the second half?
Another SC sentence also omits something:

Traffic safety officials predict that drivers will be as likely to exceed the proposed speed limit as they are the current one.

Dear Andrew AtlanticGMAT,

Thanks for your response. The missing verb here is "was". Is "was" unacceptable since it's in a different tense from "is"?

Owning and living in a freestanding house is still a goal of of a majority of young adults like owning and living in a freestanding house WAS a goal of earlier generations.

Hi Andrew AtlanticGMAT,

I actually just found an OG question that used a verb with not in the exact form with the already present one:

Of all the wild animals in their area, none was more useful to the Delaware tribes than the Virginia white- tailed deer: it was a source of meat, and its hide was used for clothing, its antlers and bones were used for tools, and its sinews and gut were used for bindings and glue

So it looks like it only boils down to tense? Thanks!

After like there must be a noun/pronoun/noun phrase.

Can be solved in 30-45 seconds with decent boiling of the answer choices:

First element I was able to check was the long clause in between, which must be linked with another dependant clause, which means that we must use one of the FANBOYS, which is displayed with "as", so answer choices A and C are eliminated!


Second element, meaning can bring us to E very easily: it is to me the only construction which purely respects the structure of the sentance and conveys the full meaning!

Here it is!