According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of

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 companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, which is about the same number of people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Awkwardness/Redundancy

• "equal" and "equivalent" are used to compare the "quality" or "function" of the things being compared; to use these terms to compare the number of the things, the sentence must explicitly mention that "number" is the quality being compared.

A: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "equivalent to the enrollment of"; the use of "equivalent" incorrectly implies that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in quality to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities; the intended meaning is that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in number to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities; remember, "equal" and "equivalent" are used to compare the "quality" or "function" of the things being compared; to use these terms to compare the number of the things, the sentence must explicitly mention that "number" is the quality being compared.

B: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "equivalent of those"; the use of "equivalent" incorrectly implies that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in quality to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities; the intended meaning is that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in number to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities; remember, "equal" and "equivalent" are used to compare the "quality" or "function" of the things being compared; to use these terms to compare the number of the things, the sentence must explicitly mention that "number" is the quality being compared. Further, Option B uses the needlessly wordy phrase "the equivalent of those", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

C: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "equal to those"; the use of "equal" incorrectly implies that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in quality to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities; the intended meaning is that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in number to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities; remember, "equal" and "equivalent" are used to compare the "quality" or "function" of the things being compared; to use these terms to compare the number of the things, the sentence must explicitly mention that "number" is the quality being compared. Further, Option C uses the needlessly wordy phrase "equal to those who are", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

D: This answer choice uses the needlessly indirect phrase "the enrollment of", leading to awkwardness.

E: Correct. This answer choice uses the phrase "as many as"; the use of the phrase "as many as" correctly conveys the intended meaning - that companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, and these people are equal in number to the people enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities. Further, Option E is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.

Hence, E is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

So "E" for me.
Kindly correct my concepts if I am wrong here!!

According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about equivalent to the enrollment of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities.
(A) equivalent to the enrollment of compares quantity with process of enrolling
(B) the equivalent of those enrolled in compares quantity with people
(C) equal to those who are enrolled in compares quantity with people
(D) as many as the enrollment of better, although still compares uncomparable things (quantity with process)
(E) as many as are enrolled in Right one!

What is OA?

P.S. Please underline the part of the sentence which is under question.

First some tips -

1. Whenever there is a multiplication kind of comparison, such as I am 2 times as old as my sister, use- as comparison verb as. And not as two times greater than or so.

2. Whenever there is addition or subtraction kind of comparison,such as I am 2 years older than my sister, use - Verb + er, than and not 'as comparison verb as'.

I believe if you follow this structure of multiplication and addition/subtraction you will sail through this easily.
More on this is available in Manhattan Sentence Correction the latest version.

Coming to the question.
By POE - C and E prevail.

C : eight million people, a number has been compared with 'those' which refers to people and not a number. Hence eliminated.

E: as many as clearly shows the same number of people are present in the 4 year colleges and the universities.

Hence IMO : E.

The problem with the word equal or equivalent is in its meaning. Equal is a term the denotes all round similarity both in quantity and quality. It is used for an amalgam of several features and not just when one or two attributes are compared between two things.

If we say that Roosevelt was equal to Lincoln, we mean to say that Lincoln and Roosevelt were equally similar in many characters such as dynamism, respect to humanity, reverence to democracy, statesmanship and so on. The word equal can rarely denote material equality alone. That is why the terms, equal or equivalent is slightly out of place in this context, where we just comparing the number of enrollments by two bodies. A, B and C, therefore, fall back due to improper diction.

Between D and E, In D, 'as many as' and' the enrolment of' do not gel; so E.

"equivalent to the enrollment" messes up the comparison. You want to compare people to people. A is gone.

"the equivalent of those enrolled", you're equating people to "those enrolled", which doesn't make sense. B is gone.

"equal to those who are enrolled", in what way are they "equal"? Equal implies that the traits of X and Y are equal, or that the beliefs of X and Y are equal. But you don't want to compare traits/beliefs of X and Y, you want to compare X to Y. So, C is gone

"as many as the enrollment" compares the people to the enrollment. Doesn't make sense, so D is gone.

E "as many as are enrolled in" is a perfect segway into the non-underlined part to the right, this portion connects the traits of the 8 million people to the enrolled people in american colleges. That's the intended comparison.

I go with E.

In this question, we compare "nearly eight million people" with the number of people enrolling the nations four-year colleges. So:
A. Compare "people" with "the enrollment" -> wrong
B. Wrong word for comparison: the equivalent of
C. Wrong comparison: "equal" is used for uncountable nouns.
D. Compare "people" with "the enrollment" -> wrong

Sentence Correction is largely a test of logic. A basic characteristic of logic is that one can only have an apples to apples comparison.

With B, the sentence would be:

According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about the equivalent of those enrolled in the nations four-year colleges and universities.

Focusing on the underlined portion and slightly expanding it, the sentence becomes:

Eight million people are equivalent of those (people) enrolled in the nations four-year colleges and universities.

But this is an illogical comparison, Eight million people (a number) cannot be equivalent of people (enrolled in the nations four-year colleges and universities).

At the very least, the sentence should have been (not that this is perfect):

..eight million people, about equivalent to the number of people enrolled in the nations four-year colleges and universities.

According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about equivalent to the enrollment of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities.
(A) equivalent to the enrollment of "Equivalent" is an adjective, modifying the amount (which is another red flag). The "number" must not be omitted. None of them follow so it's grammatically incorrect.
(B) the equivalent of those enrolled in "equivalent of" is wrong because the idiomatic phrase is "equivalent to".
(C) equal to those who are enrolled in "Equal" is also a modifier, so it must have amount/value/size. Without it, the phrase is not grammatical.
(D) as many as the enrollment of This violates the rules of comparison construction, where enrollment, being a process, cannot be compared to number of people.
(E) as many as are enrolled in Best choice. "As many as" is typically preferred for comparisons of equivalence. We know this because most of us write with "as many as". None of us use with "equivalent" or "equal" left alone. I suppose knowing which are countable and uncountable modifiers would help in how to eliminate the answer choices and what "equal" and "equivalent" generally refer to. We say "equal" and "equivalent" in English because what we are comparing in generally unquantifiable.

The 2015 Official GMAT Guide for Verbal Review claims that the word equal is usually used to describe uncountable values (Sentence Correction Q. #85).

According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about equivalent to the enrollment of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities.
(A) equivalent to the enrollment of
(B) the equivalent of those enrolled in
(C) equal to those who are enrolled in
(D) as many as the enrollment of
(E) as many as are enrolled in


Their explanation to the incorrect answer (C) reads, "Equal is generally used for uncountable quantities, such as equal justice, not countable quantities, such as people."

But, isn't "equal" used all the time for discrete values, for example, math and the other GMAT section known as Quantitative? Sure, it's represented with two different formats, spelled out in grammar vs. mathematical notation in symbol form, but the function is the same, no?

Can you not say, "The number of oranges and the number of apples are equal in quantity." Or even with continuous values like, "The water level is equal in all tanks." Granted, the GMAT explanation states that it's usually for uncountable quantities. I just think that it's a bad answer choice to have if that's the reason behind (C) being incorrect.

Is it grammatically incorrect to state, "Five million people in country A is equal to the population who are in country B"? In that case, one would be making equal "Five million people" to "population". So, the people themselves aren't equal to the population, it's the number of people that's equal to the population which needs to be clearly distinguished (?). Is that the reason?

I think that OG explanation is misleading, so I wouldn't focus on it too much. The word 'equal' is used in different ways, and I think they're thinking only about one of the definitions.

We often use 'equal' in what you might call its 'mathematical meaning' when comparing two numbers, or two amounts, so we say "the number of people in the auditorium is equal to the number in the foyer", or "the amount of milk in the pitcher is equal to the amount on the floor". When using 'equal' in that way, you need to be sure you're comparing like with like - an amount with an amount, or a number with a number. That usage is the one the OG explanation seems to be ignoring.

But 'equal' is often used in a more metaphorical sense to mean something like 'roughly the same', even in cases where we aren't discussing things that can be measured numerically. So we say "the two tasks are of equal difficulty", or "the employees received equal treatment", or "all things being equal". I have to guess that's the usage the person writing the OG solution had in mind.

It is not the usage of 'equal' in C that makes C incorrect. It's that the sentence doesn't draw a proper comparison. When it uses 'those', it is referring to the people enrolled in four-year colleges. So answer C is saying the people receiving training are equal to the people in college. That's not what the question means to say - the sentence isn't saying the people in both groups are roughly the same. it means to say that the number of people in college is equal to the number in training. It would be possible to use the word 'equal' in a correct answer here, but it would need to be clear that one number was being compared with another.

And as for your three example sentences:

"The number of oranges and the number of apples are equal in quantity." --> this is fine except that the 'in quantity' at the end is redundant (the rest of the sentence makes clear you're comparing quantities), so would best be cut

"The water level is equal in all tanks." --> that seems good to me

"Five million people in country A is equal to the population who are in country B"? --> this is not drawing a correct comparison. You could say the population of one country was equal to the population of the other, or something like "There are 5m people in country A, and an equal number in country B".

Hello experts

What is the subject for 'are' in this sentence?

Thanks

Consider the following structure:

I own as many shirts as you own.
I own as many shirts as are owned by you.
I own 4 shirts, as many as are owned by you.

The latter clause in the second and the third sentences are written in passive (the object of the first clause is the subject of the second clause) - the subject (shirts) is omitted from the second clause in the third sentence.

Similarly, in option E the subject "people" has been omitted. The following sentences are written in an analogous way:

Companies are providing training to as many people as colleges enroll.
Companies are providing training to as many people as are enrolled in colleges.
Companies are providing training to 8 million people, as many as are enrolled in colleges.

According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about equivalent to the enrollment of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities.

(A) equivalent to the enrollment of
(B) the equivalent of those enrolled in
(C) equal to those who are enrolled in
(D) as many as the enrollment of
(E) as many as are enrolled in

There is a special significance to the term 'equal' or 'equivalent' in English. We cannot call something as equal or equivalent to some other thing just basing on one parameter such as the number of people enrolled. 'Equal' denotes a stature based on qualitatively comparable metrics such as charisma, charm, caliber, and class. We cannot call anyone equal to Mahatma or Lincoln or Mandela because they were beyond comparison. That is the reason A, B, & C lose steam. In D, the comparison is between 8M people with enrollment. E is the best.

According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about equivalent to the enrollment of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities.

(A) equivalent to the enrollment of
(B) the equivalent of those enrolled in
(C) equal to those who are enrolled in
(D) as many as the enrollment of
(E) as many as are enrolled in

GMATNinjaTwo Where is the subject in answer (E)? Does "as many as people who are enrolled in" sound correct?

Here is the sentence using choice (E):

"...companies in the United States are providing job training and general education for nearly eight million people, about as many as are enrolled in the nation’s four-year colleges and universities."

In that sentence, people is the implied subject of "are enrolled". How many people are provided with job training and general education? Nearly eight million (say, for example, 7.9 million). How many people are enrolled in the nation's four-year colleges and universities? Approximately the same number of people (not necessarily less than 8 million but close to 7.9 million). The "as many as" construction correctly compares these two countable quantities (people provided with job training and general education and people enrolled in four-year colleges and universities).

enrolment
ɪnˈrəʊlm(ə)nt/Submit
noun
noun: enrollment
the action of enrolling or being enrolled.
"the amount due must be paid on enrolment in October"
NORTH AMERICAN
the number of people enrolled at a school or college.

This above part is google's definition.

So, enrollment can refer to the number of people enrolled - So why A is wrong. Though I agree E is right. I thought even A is a good contender.
daagh, GMATNinja please help me out.