At Shiprock, New Mexico, a perennially powerful girls’ high school bas

Hello PriyamRathor,

We hope this finds you well.

The answer to your query involves a very fine bit of nuance.

Here, since the "community" in question is associated with a physical location that is mentioned in the sentence, the use of "where" is acceptable.

By contrast, in the linked question, the "clans" are not associated with a place, so "where" is incorrect.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hey PriyamRathor

Happy to help you with this query.



Although you’re right that ‘community’ refers to a ‘group of people’ in its most commonly used sense, the word ‘community’ can also refer to a physical locality or territory or state. In this respect, ‘community’ is similar to the word ‘society’, which also has both connotations.

Here’re references for both:

1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community

2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society

‘Clans’, on the other hand, has no such connotation and is used strictly just for groups of people.



That said, we now only need to look for clues that help us identify which sense the word ‘community’ has been used in. As GMATNinja has rightly pointed out, the phrase ‘household incomes’ presupposes the existence of ‘households’ within that community. And the word ‘household’ also has a physical connotation to it.

3. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/household?q=household+

Moreover, a girls’ basketball team can be a source of pride for a locality as well.



Finally, another important thing to notice in the “Shiprock” question is that we merely have to choose between ‘which’ and ‘where’, and the two choices with ‘which’ in them (D and E) have worse errors.



So, add it all up, and choice C becomes the best contender.



I hope this helps improve your understanding.



Happy Learning!



Abhishek
SME & Product Creator
e-GMAT

I understand there is error of use of "them". However, isn???t option B, C and D wrongly implying that 49% of (household) income are below poverty level i.e. 49% of income (household being adjective) are below poverty level?

I feel your pain here. The difference is that a community is an abstraction that can encompass many elements: a group of people, a culture, and a physical location. A clan, on other hand, is pretty concrete. It's a group of people.

The McGregors, for instance, might be considered a clan -- they're people. And they might live in a lovely community, or place.

That's awfully subtle, and it's certainly not worth memorizing the difference in meaning between "community" and "clan". Instead, I'd look at it this way: if "where" is referring to any word that's abstract enough to create a debate in your mind about whether that word suggests a location, don't treat it as an error. But if "where" is referring to a concrete entity that definitely isn't a place, then it's fine to treat it as an error.

The big takeaway: it's okay to be unsure! But if you are, move on to other decision points you feel more confident about.

I hope that helps a bit!

Hey Rickooreo

Very sorry for the delayed response. Happy to discuss this with you.

I'm not sure you framed your question very well. But, if you're referring to a meaning difference between choices B, C, and D, then you're absolutely correct. There is a major meaning shift. Allow me to explain.

Choices B and D somewhat mean the same, while choice C means something totally different. Let's look at each of these one by one.

C: where 49 percent of the household incomes are below the poverty level
B: where they have 49 percent of the household incomes below the poverty level
D: which has 49 percent of the household incomes below the poverty level

Let's visualize the meaning of each of these phrase, starting with C.

Choice C:

o Say there are 1000 households in Shiprock.
o The incomes of 49% of these 1000 households are below the poverty level.
o In other words, 490 out of 1000 households in Shiprock are below the poverty level.

Choice B and D:

o According to B and D, 49% of the total households below the poverty level (somewhere) are in Shiprock.
o Say "somewhere" = New Mexico
o Then let's say the State of New Mexico has 1 million households.
o Of these, let's say 10% (or 100,000) are below the poverty level.
o In other words, 49% of 100,000, i.e. 49,000 households below the poverty level are in Shiprock.
(Now, please note, I've only assumed the base to be New Mexico. We could even take it to be the United States, but that would be even more unlikely logically because you wouldn't expect 49% of USA's BPL households to be in a tiny area called Shiprock.)

So, as you can see, there is certainly a meaning shift. Now, let's look at choice A to identify the intended meaning:

Choice A: where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are below the poverty level

o Notice that choice A intends to say what choice C manages to say successfully.
o The household incomes of 49% of the households in Shiprock (of them) are below the poverty level.
o In other words, say there are 1000 households in Shiprock.
o The incomes of 49% of these 1000 households are below the poverty level.
o In other words, 490 out of 1000 households in Shiprock are below the poverty level.

I hope this helps you understand the meaning shift between choices B, C, and D. Choices B and D distort the intended meaning, while choice C conveys it successfully. Please revert for further clarification, if required.

Happy Learning!

Abhishek

Hello experts, even though I am clear with provided explanations, I wanted to have my concern clarified regarding the usage of "where". I do remember in of the given explanations, an expert mentioned that on the Gmat, "where" only refers to a place, hence, can't be used with words such as society, community etc. While I understand that "in which " stands better with society, is it always correct to use "where" to refer to the community? I would appreciate your reply. Thank you.

Not always! Check out this post for more: https://gmatclub.com/forum/at-shiprock- ... l#p2472001.

Can someone please explain how can 'where' refer to community. As far as I know 'where can refer only to places. If it is referring to Shiprock then how can it jump over all verbs etc., to refer to such far away noun? Isn't where ambiguous here?