Bunuel wrote:
Although many of the elderly residents in the nursing home are quite wealthy, they do not seem to
make much use of it, with some of them rarely spending any money beyond their monthly fees at the facility.
A. make much use of it, with some of them
B. make much use of it, as some of them
C. be making much use of it, with some
D. make much use of their wealth, with some of them
E. be making much use of their wealth, as some
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
As soon as you see pronouns in the underlined or non-underlined portion, you should focus on those as a primary decision point. In this example, three of the answer choices contain pronouns (“it” in (A), (B), and (C)) and the others do not have that pronoun. The pronouns “their” and “them” also show up in the answer choices and “they” is present in the non-underlined portion. There is no issue with “they,” their,” or “them” as they all properly refer back to “the elderly residents.” However the “it” in (A), (B) and (C) is problematic. Whenever you are given this omission of pronouns in certain answer choices, you should consider the possibility of a reference error, as the pronoun might be problematic. In (A), (B), and (C) there is nothing in the sentence for the pronoun “it” to refer to. By changing “it” to “their wealth,” the testmakers are giving you a major hint that this is the problem – make sure you properly leverage that hint! In (E), the “as some” after the comma does not link properly with the rest of the sentence. You cannot say “as some rarely spending….” Correct answer is (D) which eliminates the pronoun error and uses a logical structure to complete the rest of the sentence.