In California today, Hispanics under the age of eighteen account for m

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-
Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning of this sentence is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of this sentence is that today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, and by comparison, about 35 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen were Hispanic a decade ago.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Pronouns + Comparisons

• A comparison must always be made between similar elements.
• "compared/comparison with" is used for comparing similar things, and "compared/comparison to" is used for comparing different things.

A: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "account for more than 43 percent,"; the construction of this phrase produces an incoherent meaning, as it fails to convey what "43 percent" refers to; the intended meaning is that today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, and by comparison, about 35 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen were Hispanic a decade ago. Further, Option A incorrectly compares "43 percent" to "a decade ago"; remember, a comparison must always be made between similar elements.

B: This answer choice suffers from a pronoun error, as the pronoun "it" lacks a clear and logical referent. Further, Option B incorrectly compares "Hispanic" to "a decade ago"; remember, a comparison must always be made between similar elements.

C: Correct. This answer choice avoids the pronoun error seen in Options A, B, D, and E, as it uses no pronouns. Further, Option C uses the phrase "43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen", conveying the intended meaning - that today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, and by comparison, about 35 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen were Hispanic a decade ago. Additionally, Option C correctly compares "43 percent" with "35 percent". Besides, Option C correctly uses "compared with" to compare two similar things - "43 percent" and "35 percent".

D: This answer choice suffers from a pronoun error, as the pronoun "it" lacks a clear and logical referent. Further, Option D alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "account for more than 43 percent,"; the construction of this phrase produces an incoherent meaning, as it fails to convey what "43 percent" refers to; the intended meaning is that today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, and by comparison, about 35 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen were Hispanic a decade ago. Additionally, Option D incorrectly uses "compared to" to compare two similar things - "Today" and "a decade ago"; remember, "compared/comparison with" is used for comparing similar things, and "compared/comparison to" is used for comparing different things.

E: This answer choice suffers from a pronoun error, as the pronoun "it" lacks a clear and logical referent. Further, Option E alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "account for more than 43 percent,"; the construction of this phrase produces an incoherent meaning, as it fails to convey what "43 percent" refers to; the intended meaning is that today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, and by comparison, about 35 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen were Hispanic a decade ago.

Hence, C is the best answer choice.

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



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

ugimba,

"compared to" is used to show similarities....in this case the percent rates are different...therefore "compared with" should be used.

My choice is C.

Use of "compared to" and "compared with"

"compared to" is used to make comparison of dissimilar things such as apple and orange.
"compared with" is used to make comparison of similar things such as apple and apple.

a) Compares 43% with a decade - wrong.
b) Wrong comparison. Also the sentence is not concise - "of Californians".
c) Correct comparison between 43% today and 35% a decade ago.
d) "Californians" is not better than what is in C. The sentence is not concise
e) The sentence is not concise and is in passive.

Therefore it is C.

Nice one @daagh.

One question though: In E, aren't we comparing today with a decade ago. It seems to be parallel. i do concede on the "it" part though. I got confused with the following wrong structure:

Today, H-->43%, unlike decade ago, when it(H)-->37%.

Seemed legit at the time. But, I did not see the term "was". So, it had to be compared to %age.

Hope I'm making some sense.

Although the great comments above exist, I'd like to give it a try since this problem seems to confuse me a bit.

In California today, Hispanics under the age of eighteen account for more than 43 percent, compared with a decade ago, when it was about 35 percent.


(A) In California today, Hispanics under the age of eighteen account for more than 43 percent, compared with a decade ago, when it was about 35 percent.

appears to compare "Hispanics" with "35 percent"
"it" can only refer to the noun.

for example,

a half of the population is indeed necessary, so it was more than that of USA. (it only refers to 'population', so it's wrong)

(B) Of the Californians under the age of eighteen, today more than 43 percent of them are Hispanic, compared with a decade ago, when it was about 35 percent.

wrong comparison.

Hispanic vs 35 percent
should've been,
Hispanic of the Californians under the age of eighteen vs (Hispanic of the Californians under the age of eighteen a decade ago) 35 percent

(C) Today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, compared with about 35 percent a decade ago.

ellipsis is here.

43 percent of Californians ~ vs 35 percent (of Californians ~ )
Correct

(D) Today, compared to a decade ago, Californians who are Hispanics under the age of eighteen account for more than 43 percent, whereas it was about 35 percent.

Californians vs 35 percent

(E) Today, Hispanics under the age of eighteen in California account for more than 43 percent, unlike a decade ago, when it was about 35 percent.

Same problem as above

Hi, GMATNinja

Could you please explain what is compared in (A)?

of course, in logical meaning 43 percent should be compared with 35 percent.

But, for me, in A it seems as if today is correctly compared with a decade ago.
can we compare time adverbs?
for example, today teenagers account for 60 % of World population, compared with a decade ago, when they accounted for 30 %

Thank you very much beforehand!

I think your question highlights the issue with (A)! We logically want to compare 43% to 35%, but instead the sentence seems to compare 43% to "a decade ago... when it (??) was about 35%."

On the other hand, choice (C) clearly compares the percentage today (43%) to the percentage a decade ago (35%). That makes (C) a much better choice.

In California today, Hispanics under the age of eighteen account for more than 43 percent, compared with a decade ago, when it was about 35 percent.
In this sentence, if i had to compare the timelines (Today, a decade ago) would this construction be right? For comparisons to hold, are the nouns supposed to be placed next to eachother?

Can someone please help?

Hello Blair15,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, no; this construction is not correct, as it compares "43 percent" with "a decade ago"; the nouns being compared do not need to be next to each other, but the sentence must be constructed in such a way that the parallelism marker - here, the past participle "compared" - connects the nouns being compared.

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

Be careful about making rules, particularly when it comes to comparisons. If we have a noun modifier, such as "like" or "compared with," it's true that typically the nouns are reasonably close, but there's certainly no rule that they have to touch.

Is the comparison in your example inherently wrong? I don't think so, as you could argue that we're comparing "today" to a decade ago." But I'd wonder about comparing "California today" to just "a decade ago," as opposed to "California a decade ago."

I'd also worry that it might look like we're comparing "43 percent" to "a decade ago." So I'd file this comparison under "not ideal, but not a concrete error either."

Then there's issue of the "it." What's "it" referring to? I can't find any noun that might work here. It's one thing to have a confusing pronoun. It's quite another to have one that can't logically refer to anything.

Now we've got a less-than-ideal comparison and a concrete pronoun error -- and that's more than enough to eliminate an answer choice.

Contrast that with (C), which gets rid of the pronoun altogether, and clearly compares two figures: 43 percent in one period to 35 percent in another. Much better.

The takeaway: there's an awful lot in SC that can't be boiled down to rules. If you're unsure about one issue, such as a comparison, look for another. If you can't find another, evaluate the option in relation to the alternatives. If a construction isn't technically wrong, but it's less clear than another option, it's perfectly reasonable to use it as a decision point.

I hope that helps!

Thank you so much , this was very insightful!

I often get confused with usage of compared with. When I read the options, I feel compared with is not correctly used in any of the options , as it is very far from the entities being compared. So how should I tackle such SC questions in which "compared with" is used

I feel your pain here. It would be nice if there was an official benchmark to judge whether a modifier is correct. ("All modifiers must be within five words of the thing they describe!") But there isn't.

So the litmus test is really just, "Is the modifier logical?" and "Is the modifier reasonably close to what it's describing?" Subjective? Sure. So if you're uncertain about the answer to those questions, don't treat it as a concrete error.

Take another look at the correct answer, (C):

The portion in blue is giving additional info about the portion in red. Logical? Sure! We're comparing one figure to another. Reasonably close? Yup. It would be tough to get those two phrases much closer than they are. So, while there's no rule to help us here, a couple of simple questions can lead us to the conclusion that this construction is perfectly fine. And then you can move on to other issues.

I hope that clears things up!

Hi Experts

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In option C , It doesn't seems like Hispanics are compared with a percent?

Hispanic, compared with about 35 percent a decade ago.

Yes, exactly, answer C is not making that comparison. It's comparing two percentages at different times: "more than 43 percent" and "about 35 percent".

Vatsal7794

Notice that in the context of C, "Hispanic" is an adjective, not a noun, so there's no way to apply a noun modifier to it. In any case, when we're making a comparison of this type, we don't automatically assume that the comparison applies to the preceding word, noun or not. We need to use the overall structure and meaning to apply the comparison correctly.

It's the opposite. Compared to is for dissimilar things, and "with" is for similar things.