Most interns who work for pay hold positions that require

Hi, can some expert kindly explain why E is a better option over D?
There is no concrete explanation for why answer choice D is incorrect?

Hi,

I always prefer to look at such parallelism questions as a mathematical expression using parentheses.

If we apply this concept to (D), we get:

Most interns who work for pay hold positions that require few skills, carry (little experience, and little hope for permanent placement).

Expanding this, we get: Most interns who work for pay hold positions that require few skills, carry little experience, and carry little hope for permanent placement.

While this can be considered, you would agree that "offer little hope" is a better expression for conveying the intended meaning than "carry little hope". Hence, given the better option available in (E), we must reject option (D).

Hope this helps.

....positions that require...., carry......, and offer...

Notice the parallelism between the three verbs in bold. That parallelism is missing in D.

Hi EducationAisle svasan05 thanks a lot for the prompt reply. Though I understand that we must pick up learnings from a particular Q and move ahead. However, I am just trying to get my logic correct so please bear with me.

IMO if there was no who in the sentence, plugging in choice E would result in following:

Most interns work for pay hold positions that require few skills, carry little experience, and offer little hope for permanent placement. All verb forms parallel & sentence means that it is the positions that do the three things mentioned in the sentence. However doesn't use of who change meaning of the sentence? i.e. Interns who work in positions that require few skills, carry little experience & little hope for placement. If the meaning of the sentence is latter, I assume the parallelism is correct if we plug in D. Carry X & Y.

Would appreciate if you can point out if I have misunderstood the meaning of the sentence by missing something.

who is modifying interns, that is modifying positions, and hold is the main verb.

Why E over D.
also i was stuck with option C

Experts please analyze C,D, and E.

Thanks in advance.

Hello JITESHSINGH,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option D is incorrect, as it does not maintain parallelism among "require few skills", "carry little experience", and "little hope for permanent placement", as the former two are verb phrases, and the latter is a noun phrase.

Similarly, Option C fails to maintain parallelism among "require few skills", "little experience", and "offer little hope for permanent placement".

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

Hello, everyone. I am generally not a fan of questions by third parties, but I think the only somewhat strange element of this question is the use of the verb carry: most interns carry little experience is not common usage, even if the sentence is passable. (I imagine just about any native speaker would say have.) That said, the goal here is just to create a list with three parallel elements:

• skills
• experience
• hope

The introduction of other words, such as adjectives or verbs, around these key nouns seems to be causing a few people grief. Consider a list with the modifiers (adjectives) added in:

1) few skills
2) little experience √
3) little hope √

No problem. But look at what happens when we add in the verb require:

1) require few skills
2) [require] little experience √
3) [require] little hope X

It does not make sense to say that positions require little hope for permanent placement. Also, you cannot allow the second element to "piggyback" off the first verb without also applying that verb to the third element. Rather, there should be a clean break:

require | few skills and little experience | and | offer little hope...

Note that the list has ditched the commas and has opted to group the first two nouns under, say, element A while denoting a clear break with a second and and a different verb to create element B. (It is fine for an element in a list to branch.)

Since we do not see any answer choice that resembles the above, we have to consider parallel verbs:

1) require few skills
2) carry little experience √
3) offer little hope √

We can see how the final list presents perfectly parallel elements, A, B, and C. Now, we can assess the answer choices and expose faulty parallelism or implied meaning:


Answer choices (A) and (B) suffer from the same issue, as explained earlier. I would also argue that and also is redundant in (A). Answer choice (C) groups the first two key nouns under the same verb but then conjures up a different verb for the third:

positions that require few skills, [require] little experience, and offer...

You should appreciate by now that we cannot create such a list. The second comma allows us to anticipate that a third requirement will follow, and hitting another action in offer is jarring.

Finally, answer choice (D) adds a second verb ahead of the second element, but then omits such a verb ahead of the third:

positions that require few skills, carry little experience, and little hope...

Where is the verb in front of hope? Even if you want to make a case for carry, you would need to punctuate differently, similar to what we saw above, only with the second verb acting as the glue to hold the latter two key nouns together. I will not write the sentence with carry in it as that verb, since it would not make sense to say positions that carry little hope for permanent placement, but just so you can appreciate the point: require A and [different verb] B and C. Now, the second element would branch under the second verb, and the punctuation would not get in the way.

Perhaps it makes more sense now why (E) is the only justifiable answer. I had fun with this question, even if I always advise centering preparation on official Verbal questions.

- Andrew

Non-official one-note questions like this one are useful as learning tools - to learn/teach and reinforce certain points.
They may not be realistic as GMAT questions that could appear in the exam.

Posted from my mobile device

Defending a Princeton Review question, eh, vv65? All joking aside, I was complimenting the question-writer in my earlier post. (In fact, I am reminded of a somewhat similar official question). The parallelism is hidden just well enough, forcing readers to keep track of a verb-adjective-noun list all at once, and alterations such as and also and and with are just convincing enough to snare a few people, the same sorts of issues we might see in an official question. I would not label this particular question "one-note," even if parallelism is the central concern. My gripe is with questions that are way too simplistic or unnecessarily difficult to help students prepare for the challenges that lie ahead. Such questions belong in grammar primers, in my view, without masquerading as GMAT™ SC questions. (You may have seen my harsh critique of a question that started with a split between The frog is and The frog are, and at some point required the reader to judge whether the frog in question did or did not necessarily possess a tail.) Of course, I do not have the final say in what content people choose to create or post, and I enjoy many questions, but with several hundred official questions floating around that range from covering basic concepts to arcane ones, I see no compelling reason to study something else to prepare for the exam.

- Andrew

Agree! Unrealistic questions should not masquerade as SC questions and should definitely not figure in practice tests.

Non-native speakers sometimes need to do grammar or language drills as part of GMAT preparation.

Posted from my mobile device

This isn't the best problem--since when does a job carry experience?--but the official answer of E is the only possible choice. We need our three terms to be parallel, and the first part says "require few skills." So we can parallel the verb ("require") with two other verbs, or we can parallel the noun (either "few skills" or just "skills," as appropriate). However, if we parallel the nouns, we'd need the initial verb to apply to all three terms. Since the jobs don't "require little hope," we now have no choice but to put a verb in each term. E is the only choice that does that!

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