It may someday be feasible to try to retrieve organisms from tiny unde

Abhishek,
In GMAT, it doesn't help to worry about non-underlined parts. We should consider them only to solve the underlined part. We might lose precious minutes on these inconsequentials.
But, for your query's sake, when there is no sensible antecedent for a pronoun, the pronoun may mostly be a dummy. Don't we say, it is impossible to decide which is better between the devil and the deep sea. What does the 'it' refer to?

Hi Experts,

In the second part, there is an it and it can't refer back to an action. Doesn't that make all the choices incorrect? Or have I got it wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated.

I thought of the same thing and chose option E. IMO "it" is an indicator here and is not pointing to any noun. Please help.

arya251294

The great daagh has addressed the "it" issue above. The sentence is using a "placeholder it," as in "It is very difficult to get into Stanford." This is just a form we use to say, in this case, "I am going to mention something that is difficult to do." If we try to find an antecedent for "it," we get sucked into a black hole: surely "it" must refer to getting into Stanford, but then is the sentence saying "To get into Stanford is very difficult to get into Stanford"??? No. The "it" is just holding a place until we can explain what we want to say. This might seem a bit odd, but it is an extremely common, everyday usage in English. In fact, as I was writing this, I almost wrote "It might seem strange to use "it" here," and of course that "it" at the front of the sentence is itself a placeholder. A few other examples:

It isn't important what you wear.
It's a long way to the top of the mountain.
It has long been considered likely that life exists on other planets.

Thanks a ton for your reply.
Actually I was under the impression (read somewhere on internet) that - "it" & "that" are not preferred as indicators on GMAT.
Is there any rule like that?

arya251294
"It" and "that" are extreme common and important words throughout SC, and they have a number of different valid uses that can go astray. I'd have to see the specific usage your source was addressing to evaluate that particular claim.

sure thing.
will find out & tag

Thanks again.

The OA definitely seems the most idiomatic. However, is there a meaning error there? Won’t it always be feasible to try something? When I was reviewing this, I looked for some sort of hint that it would someday be feasible to successfully retrieve, and while B does not fit idiomatically it seems to be the only option that hints of something that will be feasible in the future but isn’t today.

I have to imagine, given the overwhelming number of idioms in the English language and high proportion of non-native speakers sitting for the exam, GMAT prefers meaning to idiom.

Anyone have thoughts? Welcome feedback to help me see where my reasoning is incorrect.

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