Fifty-two percent of United States high school graduates go on to coll

Hello, Shameek. It has been a while since we last crossed paths (under my old name, "which I will not utter here"). In an effort to assist you and the larger community, I will offer my thoughts on the answer choices. Since the whole sentence is underlined, we can jump right into the answer choices.


I like the direct language of the beginning of the sentence. It is easy to follow, and it sets up an expectation for the comparison, namely an order of number + of + country + predicate. But then we jump across the comma, and the order is skewed. We get a possessive Canada's, and the number follows. It is a bit jarring to encounter such a reversal, and the information is less easy to follow. You brought up the question of the -ed modifier. You have to be careful when applying your understanding of grammatical rules too strictly. Here, compared can, in fact, reach across the prepositional phrase and predicate of the main clause, if for no other reason than that dropping in the comparison directly would delay the expression of vital meaning and thus make the sentence even harder to follow. (Left-branching sentences, those that delay the main clause, are not preferred on the GMAT™.) Try it for yourself, using this version of the sentence:

Fifty-two percent of United States high school graduates, compared with Canada's thirty-five percent and Great Britain, Japan, and West Germany's fifteen percent, go on to college.

By delaying what is actually being compared, students from one country who go on to college with students from other countries who do the same, we have an entirely meaningless comparison until the end of the sentence, by which time we may have forgotten all those numbers. Consider this, too: how many countries could we add and still draw a meaningful comparison with a left-branching sentence? The clear expression of vital meaning is the foremost concern on SC questions, and this one, any way we spin it, fails to meet that standard. Rather than stand behind an absolute grammatical rule, you might consider rule #1 for SC questions.


Once again, the order of the comparison is off. In the opening clause, we have the same order as before: number + of + country + predicate. Jump across the semicolon, and we get preposition + country + it. What? The it should give anyone pause. This is just as sloppy as the previous answer, if not worse.


It is true that the prepositional phrase to introduce the sentence precedes the number—in + country + number + predicate—and that the comparison presents a slightly different order—number + in + country. However, the pieces are no longer mismatched. We have already touched on the -ed modifier and why it should not be placed after graduates. That might work in a shorter comparison, but we have too much to keep track of in this one for the sentence to operate effectively. So far, so good on this one.


Yes, this sounds awful, but one aspect of it that I do like is that it clarifies whether each of the countries in the comparison sees fifteen percent of its graduates go on to college or whether all three countries combined do so. The possessive form of the country names should be swapped out for number + in + country, but that is not exactly derailing the sentence. The part I cannot get over is the broken up the percentage... is fifty-two. What does that achieve in the way of clarity that the more streamlined fifty-two percent does not? Between this option or (C), I would go for (C) every time.


I will give this one the benefit of the doubt and assume that a semicolon has been left out after fifty-two. Not only does the split percentage issue rear its ugly head once more, but we also have a problematic comparison in that. This is why order matters. If we replace that with what is logically being compared, we get,

The percentage of United States high school graduates going on to college is fifty-two; [the percentage of United States high school graduates going on to college] in Canada is thirty-five...

The meaning is completely different from what had been established in earlier versions of the sentence. This is probably the easiest elimination.

You might wonder why I chose to highlight the different talking points in the sentences above, rather than mark them in red, as I typically do, to point out incorrect elements. The reason is that I simply wanted to draw attention to talking points, not declare what was absolutely right or wrong... the type of thinking that can lead to making erroneous conclusions.

Good luck with your studies. Thank you for indirectly bringing this one to my attention.

- Andrew