As business grows more complex, students majoring in specialized areas

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Concepts tested here: Verb Forms + Idioms + Awkwardness/Redundancy

• The simple present continuous tense is used to refer to actions that are currently ongoing and continuous in nature.
• The present perfect continuous tense (marked by "has/have been") is the correct tense to refer to actions that started in past and continue into the present.
• Habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense.
• The simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past.
• “being” is only to be used when it is part of a noun phrase or represents the passive continuous verb tense; the use of passive continuous must be justified in the context.
• “like” is used for comparing nouns, “as” is used for comparing actions/clauses, and “such as” is used for giving examples.

A: This answer choice incorrectly uses the present perfect continuous tense verb "have been becoming" to refer to an action that is currently ongoing and continuous in nature; please remember, the simple present continuous tense is used to refer to actions that are currently ongoing and continuous in nature, and the present perfect continuous tense (marked by "has/have been") is the correct tense to refer to actions that started in past and continue into the present. Further, Option A incorrectly uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "majoring" in this sentence) to refer to a habitual action; please remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense. Additionally, Option A incorrectly uses "like" to present examples - "finance" and "marketing"; please remember, “like” is used for comparing nouns, “as” is used for comparing actions/clauses, and “such as” is used for giving examples. Besides, Option A uses the needlessly wordy phrase "those of finance and marketing", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

B: Correct. This answer choice correctly uses the simple present tense verb "major" to refer to habitual action. Further, Option B correctly uses the simple present continuous tense verb "are becoming" to refer to an action that is currently ongoing and continuous in nature. Additionally, Option B correctly uses "such as" to present examples - "finance" and "marketing". Besides, Option B is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.

C: This answer choice incorrectly uses the simple past tense verb "majored" to refer to a habitual action; please remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense, and the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past. Further, Option C uses the needlessly wordy phrase "those of finance and marketing", leading to awkwardness and redundancy. Moreover, Option C incorrectly uses the word "being", leading to further awkwardness and redundancy; remember, “being” is only to be used when it is part of a noun phrase or represents the passive continuous verb tense; the use of passive continuous must be justified in the context.

D: This answer choice incorrectly uses the present perfect continuous tense verb "have been becoming" to refer to an action that is currently ongoing and continuous in nature; please remember, the simple present continuous tense is used to refer to actions that are currently ongoing and continuous in nature, and the present perfect continuous tense (marked by "has/have been") is the correct tense to refer to actions that started in past and continue into the present. Further, Option D incorrectly uses "like" to present examples - "finance" and "marketing"; please remember, “like” is used for comparing nouns, “as” is used for comparing actions/clauses, and “such as” is used for giving examples. Additionally, Option D uses the needlessly wordy phrase "those of finance and marketing", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

E: This answer choice incorrectly uses the past participle phrase "having majored" to refer to a habitual action; please remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the word "being", leading to awkwardness and redundancy; remember, “being” is only to be used when it is part of a noun phrase or represents the passive continuous verb tense; the use of passive continuous must be justified in the context.

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the concept of "Simple Continuous Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the concept of "Present Perfect Continuous Tense" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

lets consider this:
students have been becoming increasingly successful in job market.
success can increase but when we are going to say successful we will say more and more successful.

So we end up with B and D.
B wrongly uses such specialized areas as .....

So its clearly D

The sentence starts with....

As business grows more complex, students.......

A) Wrong we should prefer the one starting with who as we want to talk about students, also improper use of like.
majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming increasingly

B) Sounds good and also conveys the idea that popularity of those students is increasing day by day, so keep it on hold.

C) Sentence makes immediate shift from present to past and also weird at end.
who majored in specialized areas such as those of finance and marketing are being increasingly

D)Wrong..improper use of like. For giving example such as should be used.
who major in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming more and more

E) Awkward.
having majored in such specialized areas as finance and marketing are being increasingly


So B should be the answer

Hi Ashish,
Thank you for posting your query here.

Before I respond to you doubt I must say you have done a great job analyzing this sentence. However, I will like to add one point:

As you already mentioned "are becoming is better compared to are being", it is correct that "are becoming" is preferable over "are being", but "are being" is certainly not incorrect.

In choice C if we say "students who majored", then we don't include the current students in "the students". Now, we are talking only about the students who majored in the past whereas per the original sentence, it's stated as a fact true in the present context. So, it's applicable for both type of students.



Hope this helps!
Regards,
Deepak Bhaskar

As business grows more complex, students majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming increasingly successful in the job market.

• As business grows is written in simple present tense in the form of General fact.
• Verb-ing form majoring is incorrect here as it flaws rule of parallelism.
• usage of like instead of such as
• usage of present perfect tense (have been becoming) is incorrect as the other portion of non-underlined sentence is in simple
• present tense.

A. majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming increasingly
Incorrect for above reasons.

B. who major in such specialized areas as finance and marketing are becoming more and more
Correct choice as this option resolves all the errors mentioned
As X happens, Y happens
As business grows, students are becoming successful.
verbs grows and are becoming are parallel in construction.

C. who majored in specialized areas such as those of finance and marketing are being increasingly
past tense verb majored is not parallel with verb grows as in A.
finance and marketing are the areas in which students major.
usage of those of distorts the meaning here.
usage of being is incorrect here.

D. who major in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming more and more
like to show examples plays the spoilsport here.
Also have been and those of errors from A & C repeat.

E. having majored in such specialized areas as finance and marketing are being increasingly
having majored distorts the meaning totally.
being error also repeats.

We rejected A not because of this distinction but because of the one highlighted below:

(A) majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming increasingly

Finance and marketing are areas. So, "those" is redundant.

With "those" in the sentence, we have the following:

majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming increasingly

The structure of the above is similar to the following:

majoring in specialized areas like the areas of this area and this other area have been becoming increasingly

GMAT SC is all about priorities, and "wordiness" should be a very low priority as you eliminate answer choices. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) Wordiness is a bit subjective, and you risk eliminating a correct answer that YOU think is wordy, but the GMAT thinks is fine.
2) If you focus on something squishy like wordiness, you might miss out on much more glaring issues with the grammar or meaning of the sentence.

Overall, it's best to narrow your focus to definite errors and meaning issues first, and then ONLY if all else fails do you have to consider wordiness as a reason to eliminate an answer choice. For this question, there are high-priority grammar errors in (A), (C), and (D) ("like" is incorrect in (A) and (D), "those of" is incorrect in (C)). (E) distorts the meaning of the sentence as described in this post.

So, while "more and more" might not be a phrase that you or I would choose to put in this sentence, (B) is the only option left. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether "more and more" would generally be considered wordy -- it is a low-priority reason to eliminate an answer choice, and here it doesn't come into play at all.

For more on this overall approach to SC, check out this article.

I hope that helps!

Correct answer B.

Reasons for not choosing A

1)To introduce example use "such as" instead of "like". "areas like those of
finance and marketing" Totally wrong use of like here.

2)"Those of finance".What does those represent for?

3)Finally the tense which "are becoming" is far more appropriate than "have been becoming".Its less wordy and succinct in meaning and tense continuity.

As noted by abhimahna, a "such as" construction should be used to introduce examples, not "like". Also, the use of the present perfect progressive (have been becoming) is unnecessary because we are not emphasizing the duration of that action. For example, it would make more sense to say, "Students have been becoming increasingly successful in the job market since 1990," where the tense emphasizes the duration. As in choice (B), the present progressive is sufficient to convey the meaning and less wordy.

The sentence conveys an ongoing process of cause and effect.
As business grows more complex, students who major in finance are becoming more and more successful.

We do not use present perfect because the success is not limited to students who majored in the past up till now. It is an ongoing process so those who major in the future too will benefit. Hence we say "students who major in ..."
This is the same reason we don't use present perfect continuous 'have been becoming...' It doesn't give the sense of a process which will continue in the future too.

the distinction between whether finance and marketing are areas themselves and whether "those" should be inserted is not the only issue here.
On the GMAT, the preposition like is used for comparison, not to cite examples.
If you want to enumerate examples use "such as". The answer choice B perfectly utilizes stylistic usage of "such as":
specializes areas such as A & B = such specialized areas as A & B mean the exactly the same thing.

Your question is too generic, but I would try to explain at least one important correct use of "having": the perfect participle (in many of the cases "having" is considered wrong by a number of candidates without much analysis, but this could be used as a trap by the question writers):

The structure present participle "having" + past participle any verb is used to depict a task / action that has already been completed by someone before some other task / action is taken up.

Having completed my homework, I went out to play.... correct.

The perfect participle modifier (e.g., having completed my homework) is just a type of present participle modifier (used to depict a completed task) and hence follows the standard rules of present participle modifier.

Hello MaximD,

I would be glad to help you out with this one.

The sentence intends to say that certain kind of students are becoming successful in the job market? What kind of students are they?

They are the students who major in finance and marketing. So this part of the sentence presents general information about the students. General information are stated in simple tense verbs.

The structure who major... does not imply that they are still studying. The expression implies that these students choose finance or marketing as their major subject.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Here's (E) in full:

"Having majored" indicates that only students who majored in finance/marketing/etc in the past will be successful in the job market. That doesn't quite fit with the beginning of the sentence: "As business grows more complex...". Instead, it makes more sense to say that students who major in these areas now and in the future are becoming more successful as business grows more complex.

There's really not a major issue with the word "increasingly" in this sentence -- not every split makes a certain answer choice right and another one wrong! The answer choices that include "increasingly" can be eliminated for other reasons, so there's no need to worry about that specific split.

I hope that helps!

As business grows more complex,
students
majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing
have been becoming increasingly successful in the job market.

(A) majoring in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming increasingly
>> examples are shown via such as & those of is wordy and unnecessary points to areas.
(B) who major in such specialized areas as finance and marketing are becoming more and more
(C) who majored in specialized areas such as those of finance and marketing are being increasingly
>> are becoming is better compared to are being.
(D) who major in specialized areas like those of finance and marketing have been becoming more and more
(E) having majored in such specialized areas as finance and marketing are being increasingly.

Is , C "who majored" incorrect because if they have already majored then they r no more student?
Experts please correct.I dont see any grammatical issue here.

Why we replaced 'majoring' with 'who major' ?
The modifier 'majoring' was correctly modifying noun 'studnets'.