Bunuel wrote:
Genes not inherited from your parents, long thought to be irrelevant to genetics research, are apparently important in determining your lot in life; for example, where parents, who have certain gene variants, their children are more likely to go to college, regardless of whether their children have those same variants.
A. where parents, who have certain gene variants, their children are more likely to go to college,
B. if parents have certain gene variants, their children are more likely to go to college,
C. if parents, having certain gene variants, have children more likely to go to college,
D. where parents, who have certain gene variants, have children more likely to go to college,
E. if parents have certain gene variants, their children, more likely to go to college,
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:
To succeed on this problem, it is important to look for logical meaning. In this case, think about the cause and effect within this sentence. If parents have a certain gene, then their children will be more likely to go to college. The correct answer will follow this logic.
Answer choice (A) is an illogical construction. If you remove the appositive “who have certain gene variants,” you are left with “where parents their children…”, which is clearly illogical. Eliminate (A).
Choice (B) contains a logical construction - if parents have this, then children are that - and is therefore the answer. It has the correct “if/then” construction, leaving a complete sentence.
Choice (C), similar to (A), leaves the sentence with an illogical construction if you cut out the appositives. If parents have certain gene variants…, (then) regardless of whether their children have those same variants… what? You need a consequence in order for the if/then statement to work. You can therefore eliminate choice (C).
You can then apply the same logic to (D). Since you don’t have a consequence for the implied if/then construction, the choice creates an illogical construction.
Choice (E) creates not only an illogical construction but also an incomplete sentence. Because you must have a complete sentence on either side of a semicolon, it can also be eliminated.
The correct answer is (B).