Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate

This question is based on Comparison and Structure.

The point of comparison in this sentence is that patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are the patterns of stress that boys experience. The comparison is complete and accurate in Option A because the pronoun ‘those’ refers to “patterns of stress”. So, A is the best of all the options.

The relative pronoun ‘what’ is used to begin a noun clause, so we could say that the clause beginning with ‘what’ acts as the antecedent or the subject itself. When an antecedent is already mentioned in the sentence (in this case, “patterns of stress”), we do not use the relative pronoun ‘what’ to refer to it. We use a demonstrative pronoun such as those, this etc. Since this option contains the relative pronoun ‘what’, Option B can be eliminated.

Option C compares patterns of stress with boys’ experience. Since the comparison is illogical, Option C can be eliminated.

The comparison implied by Option D is - the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than boys’ stress patterns do.
To make the comparison parallel, “patterns of stress that girls experience” should be compared with “patterns of stress that boys experience”, not “boys’ stress patterns”.
Furthermore, the verb ‘are’ cannot be compared with the verb ‘do’. The former implies a state of being and the latter an action. The phrase ‘do more likely’ makes no sense at all. So, Option D can be eliminated.

The definite article is missing in this option, so that affects parallelism. The lack of a verb also prevents the comparison from being complete. So, Option E can be eliminated.

Therefore, A is the most appropriate option.

Jayanthi Kumar.

Hello Sir,
How would the same sentence be written in case I were to omit the verb 'are' and use only "than those of". What are the structural changes I have to make?

Hi Vishal, if you have to omit the verb, then following is one way to articulate the sentence:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely than those that boys experience, to result in depression.

Hello,

So, if choice D were: "boys’ stress patterns are"., would it be correct ?

For me, it should be correct.

Thanks

This would take care of the verb issue, but this modified version of D would still loose out to A on parallelism front:

Notice the perfect parallelism in A:

...patterns of stress that girls experience

is being compared with:

...those (patterns of stress) that boys experience

thanks for writing about it! unfortunately, every second teenager is really stressed and this leads to terrible consequences (for example, my daughter had insomnia and we managed it only thanks to a psychotherapist. I recommend that you read about the signs of stress here. this will help you take your condition more seriously

I eliminated A because I tought that it refers back to girls, since girls is closest plural noun to those. What am I missing?

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Having multiple options for a pronoun isn't necessarily a dealbreaker. The GMAT is fairly lenient when it comes to that sort of thing, and there's certainly no rule that says that a pronoun MUST refer to the closest noun.

In this case, replacing "those" with "girls" makes absolutely no sense, so it's fairly obvious that "those" must refer to "patterns of stress" instead.

For more on pronoun ambiguity, check out this creaky old video or this newer, shorter one.

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are those that boys experience.

Option Elimination - First, let's come out of the native vs non-native speaker split. If you are native, wonderful. But if you are not, don't consider that as a blocker. Try to understand the issue and logically address it. You must have mastered your native language wonderfully, so have the same approach and mindset here. Give it some practice and time, and see the results. Back to our question now.

(A) are those that boys experience - let's expand it. Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than those (the patterns of stress) that boys experience are (likely to result in depression). We are comprising here the stress patterns of boys and girls and the relative likelihood of those patterns into depression (mind you, we are not comparing the likelihood of depression for one and some other likelihood for another - keep this in mind. It'll help to eliminate other options.)

(B) what boys experience - To understand the issue here, let's first understand the correct sentence.
The structure of the correct sentence is
"The patterns of stress that girls experience," so logically for comparison, what will you expect? "the patterns of stress that boys experience"? Right? Yes. The structure is you have a noun phrase, and then you have a relative clause introduced by "that" to elaborate on the stress or modify the noun "stress." But instead of having the same structure, we have "what boys experience," which is modifying what? Ideally, it would be "the patterns of stress," but the author beautifully removed that and left the noun clause introduced by "what." So, to consolidate our learnings

"The patterns of stress that girls experience" vs. "what boys experience" or let's see the structure.

"Noun phrase + relative clause to modify the noun" vs. " noun clause" modifying nothing. Which is fundamentally wrong.

In maths lingo, we are comparing 1=2. Is it correct? No. So how can this parallelism error be correct in a language, which, in this case, is English? Does that make sense?

(C) boys’ experience would - This shatters the parallelism, but on top, it also adds the hypothetical by "would," which ensures that this option becomes atrociously wrong.

(D) boys’ stress patterns do - "do" action verb doesn't replace the "are" helping verb or the verb of being.

(E) stress patterns of boys - I'm afraid that's wrong for two reasons.

1. Structure - let's look at the structure of the correct option to understand the drastic different pattern this option has.

On the left, we have "The patterns of stress that girls experience" - We have "the" definite article + noun (patterns) + preposition (of) + noun (stress) + relative clause to modify the noun "stress."

On the right side, we have "stress patterns of boys." We have the adjective "stress" - mind you, it's not a noun anymore that we modified with the relative clause in the earlier part - then we have the noun "patterns" + preposition (of) + noun (boys). So, to consolidate, we have

"The patterns of stress that girls experience" vs."stress patterns of boys." So, on one side, we have apples; on the other, we have oranges. Can they be parallel? No.

2. On the left side, the effect of stress patterns that girls experience results in "depression." The intended meaning is that the stress patterns that boys experience are less likely to result in the same outcome, which is "depression." Ok, so the outcome of the left side is more depression. On the right side, what is the outcome? Depression? No. Not mentioned here. It can be "they fell sick," "they watched a movie," or " they had a couple of drinks." You see, this is not just wrong but a big blunder. Options C and E are the worst of all. In option C, at least the issue is visible, but in option E, it's entangled, so unless we unpeel it on the surface, it looks okay; it's a classic deception.