After completing their bachelor’s and gaining a couple of year’s valu

First, why option A is right:

Let us look at the structure of the sentence. The sentence consists of the following parts:

1. The main clause:
MBA aspirants start preparing

2. Four parallel present participle modifiers (denoting how the MBA aspirants start preparing):
2.1 taking the GMAT
2.2 gathering references
2.3 writing statements
2.4 mobilising financial documents

Option A clearly conveys the intended meaning.

Next, why option B is wrong:

Again let us look at the structure of the sentence. The sentence consists of the following parts:
1. The main clause:
1A.
MBA aspirants start preparing, and take the GMAT, gather reference and mobilise financial document
MBA aspirants does the following four things:
1A.1 start preparing
1A.2 take the GMAT
1A.3 gather reference
1A.4 mobilise financial document

The 4 verbs start, take, gather and mobilise are the main verbs of the sentence.
You would notice that the first and the second verbare separated by and. Such usage is wrong.

1B
However alternatively you could consider that the MBA aspirants do 3 things:
1B.1 start and take
1B.2 gather
1B.3 mobilise

This structure would be technically alright. However even in this case the intended meaning is distorted.

2. A participle modifier (denoting how the aspirants gather reference);
writing personal statement.

Both the main clause and the participle modifier convey the wrong meaning in this case.

next, why option C is wrong:

I would suggest that you do the structure analysis yourself in the manner I described above. You would most probably understand yourself why option C also conveys the wrong meaning. If you are not clear, please feel free to write back.

Option A: As per MGMAT book (Chapter-4,Pg-57) we can have 3 or 4 items in a list. However, GMAT always inserts a comma before the "and" in a list of 3 or 4 items.
So option A without the last comma may not be grammatically correct. May be experts can advice.

The latest writing guidelines recommend the comma, but otherwise the comma is optional.

Daagh,

Request you to kindly explain why 'A' is the right answer.

Here is my approach.

'MBA aspirants' needs a verb.......So D, E out

Out of A, B, C....Couldn't eliminate any one based on parallelism...

Thanks,
A

responding to a PM.

this is not a good question for practice, as the punctuation is clearly not respected. On the other hand though, GMAT never tests punctuation...

the intended meaning is:
MBA aspirants start preparing for their university admission:
how:
1. take the gmat
2. gather references and recommendation letters
3. write personal statement
4. mobilize financial dox for the Visa application.

as we can see, these 4 parts should be parallel and should be presented in such a form so that to modify the preceded clause. This can be done by using ing modifiers.
A - looks good, but we do NEED a comma before mobilising. per @e-gmat, the list should be properly connected (we need comma + and before the last entity of the list). So A is not the correct answer.
B - and take - now this implies that aspirants do 2 things: start preparing and take the gmat. what comes next is even more confusing, since gather is written as a verb..even if the original meaning implied 3 action verbs to be present, these 3 are not properly connected. so B is not correct.
C - this one slightly changes the meaning. Per the intended meaning, aspirants do 4 actions in their preparation: take/gather/write/and mobilize. Per this choice: 1. take the gmat and gather ref/rec letters, and 2. writing & mobilizing. so out.
D - this one does not have an active verb. Furthermore, the verb "and gather" does not have another verb to be parallel to. SO this one clearly is wrong.
E - this one does not have a verb.

so as you can see - neither of the options is correct.

Inserting comma before and is optional. Not inserting a comma does not make the sentence ungrammatical.

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