Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing, so stalking them over

Question

Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing, so stalking them over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it with nothing but a handheld lance, as Dorset people did, required exceptional hunting skill.

(A) so stalking them over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it

(B) so to stalk them over the treeless landscape and get close enough to kill one

(C) so in order to stalk them over the treeless landscape and get close enough to kill one

(D) and so in order to stalk it over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it

(E) and so stalking them over the treeless landscape and getting close enough in order to kill it

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Official Answer

B

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GMATNinja · Accepted Answer

I agree with you on the first part,  rekhabishop : I'm not sure that there's a clear reason why "to stalk" is fundamentally better than "stalking." In general, I'd be fine with either one of those, and the difference between "to stalk" and "stalking" really isn't the deciding factor, anyway (unless we're worried about the parallelism -- more on that in a moment). The bigger issue is that the pronouns are wrong in A, D, and E, so we're left with two options that feature "to stalk."

But the parallelism is completely fine in B and C: "get" is parallel with "stalk", and there's no reason to repeat the word "to." It might not be  wrong , exactly, if we repeated "to", but it certainly isn't necessary.

And even if you want the sentence to say "to get", that's not an option, so it isn't something you should worry about. What's the only difference between B and C? Just a couple of extra, unnecessary words ("in order") in C. So B must be the correct answer.

I hope this helps!

stallone · Answer

B is correct :

A is wrong as it messes between "Them" and 'it".

C here "in order to" indicates a actions for which we might need the person who is performing that action just after the commaa (as Dorset people did,).
 but we have required instead.

D and E both are wrong in using "it" (singular) whereas "animals" is not singular.

rigger · Answer

A) wrong. run-on sentence with "... stalking... getting..."
B) correct. "to stalk.... required"
C) wrong. "in order" is unneccesary
D) "and so" makes sentence awkward
E) "and so" makes sentence awkward

x2suresh · Answer

"it" is not appropriate
between B and C

B looks concise..

razkhan · Answer

Take the sentence like this.

To X and to Y

You have to maintain the consistency.

as for choice A, it does not keep up the parallel construction, 
stalking, getting , kill <<---

Makes B a better choice

GMATPill · Answer

OK, so the sentence is in the form of:  
"Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing, so   required exceptional hunting skill."

but they just made it more complicated by adding a lot of "fluff":

"Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing,  so stalking them over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it  with nothing but a handheld lance, as Dorset people did, required exceptional hunting skill."

Well, there's some discrepancy here:
"stalking THEM"
"getting close enough to kill IT"
 THEM is not consistent with IT. Something sounds weird.

You seem to have gotten this far as you chose answer (C), which correctly replaces IT with ONE.

However, the problem with (C), is that it leaves something hanging. 
 Answer (C) does not make sense: 
 "so in order to stalk them...blah blah blah...required exceptional hunting skill."

Answer (C)  would  make sense if it were more like this: 
 "so in order to stalk them....blah blah blah...the hunter had to have exceptional hunting skill."

But since the latter part of the sentence ("required exceptional hunting skill") is  NOT underlined , then we must keep it as is and look for another answer choice.

Now with answer choice (B), we fix the original issue of replacing IT with ONE.
 But it also makes sense... 
"to stalk them...blah blah blah...required exceptional hunting skill."

This makes sense! It's in the form of "To Do   required  " --Answer (B)  --notice you don't need to mention the subject in this case.

Notice how answer (C) would have had to look in order to be correct (must include the subject "hunter"): "In order to Do  , a hunter required  --- but since this is not what (C) is you have to go with answer (B)

Hope that helps

shashanknitp · Answer

A, d, e, are all wrong at first sight coz -

In the non-underlined portion the sentence is "Caribou are...." which means the noun Caribou is plural . So, A, d, e are out in first go.
Between B and C I chose B for two reasons - 
1. It is concise
2. C lacks the subject in the second clause which makes the second clause a fragment (In order to...can not act as subject)

dqtuan9627 · Answer

In B i think the parallelism is wrong because "to stalk....and kill". Can anysome show me where I am wrong? Thanks a lot

prasi55 · Answer

Dear dqtuan9627,

The parallelism is between "stalk" and "get".

How can you know this? Look for markers that indicate the parallelism: for lists with more than two items, look for the commas; for lists with two items, look for the conjunctions.

--Prasad

AdmitJA · Answer

There is a list of things in this sentence --> stalk and kill

So there must be 
a) an and between the items in the list
b) the items in the list must be parallel and
c) the pronoun reference must be correct!

Non underlined portion says that the C  ARE  wary animal s . So we need them and not it.

B is the best

HKD1710 · Answer

Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing, so stalking them over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it with nothing but a handheld lance, as Dorset people did, required exceptional hunting skill.

(A) so stalking them over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it
Stalking, getting – AND is required.

(B) so to stalk them over the treeless landscape and get close enough to kill one

(C) so in order to stalk them over the treeless landscape and get close enough to kill one
So & in order are redundant

(D) and so in order to stalk it over the treeless landscape, getting close enough to kill it
And is used here, then where is the subject for second clause??
Stalk and getting

(E) and so stalking them over the treeless landscape and getting close enough in order to kill it
And is used here, then where is the subject for second clause??
Stalking them and getting to kill it

rekhabishop · Answer

I feel that the answer is C. I'm not sure why 'to stalk' is more appropriate than stalking.
Plus in B, I feel that 'to stalk....and get' breaks the parellelism law. It should be 'to stalk.....to get'

rekhabishop · Answer

Thank You! Makes more sense, now. However, just out of curiosity, is it a legit question? I mean, per GMAT standard, are the options really that close?

GMATNinja · Answer

Glad that the response was helpful! Sadly... yeah, it's a legit question. Actually a retired official exam question. Most of the time, the difference between right and wrong answers is more substantial than just a couple of extra words, but questions like these are definitely fair game.

TaN1213 · Answer

I am not sure if anyone noticed, but don't we need a ";" after the independent clause - "Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing," ? 
Is comma sufficient to join two independent clauses?

GMATNinja · Answer

If you stick a conjunction ("and", "so", "although", etc.) in front of an independent clause, the clause then becomes dependent. So there's no problem here at all: "caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing" is the independent clause, and the following clause -- beginning with "and" or "so" -- is dependent. A comma is no problem in this situation, and a semicolon would be incorrect.

I hope this helps!

RashedVai · Answer

what is the difference between "to" and "in order to"? How the meaning changes in option (C)?  generis   EducationAisle

Posted from my mobile device

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

There are multiple possible uses of the word "to." One is equivalent to "in order to." If I say "I went to school to learn," it means "I went to school in order to learn." Translation: Learning was my purpose when I enrolled.

However, "to" also forms part of an infinitive verb. In some other languages (e.g. Spanish, French), the infinitive is all one word and doesn't need a separate word like "to." If we read the sentence carefully, we can see that it's this usage that we need in C. We can't say "IN ORDER TO STALK . . . required exceptional skill." "To stalk" (an infinitive) is actually the subject of the sentence, not the purpose of some other action. We could use "in order to" if the sentence said something like this: "so in order to stalk them, one must be almost completely silent." In that case, "in order to" would modify the main action: "One must be silent." Why must one be silent? To stalk caribou.

allahisgreat · Answer

e-gmat, if inorder to cannot act as a subject how can to?

Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing, so stalking them over

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Caribou are wary animals with excellent hearing, so stalking them over

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