In addition to having more protein than wheat does, the protein in ric

OFFICIAL GMAT EXPLANATION

In this sentence, the initial clause modifies the nearest noun, indentifying it as the thing being compared to wheat. By making protein the noun modified, choices A, C, and D illogically compare wheat with protein and claim that the protein in rice has more protein than wheat does. In C and D, the comparative structure higher in quality than it is in wheat absurdly suggests that rice protein contains wheat. B, the best choice, logically compares wheat to rice by placing the noun rice immediately after the initial clause. B also uses that to refer to protein in making the comparison between the proteins of rice and wheat. Choice E needs either that in or does after wheat to make a complete and logical comparison.

DmitryFarber mgmat
Hi,
i was seen Thursday's with Ron's videos , in that he says "that" is used to take a particular thing from the comparision element and "it" is used to take the whole thing .
Here in the option A, the protein of Rice is higher than that of wheat.
So here that of refers to Protein of, and i marked the right answer as A.
while n option B, i felt "that" can refer to protein or rice
Not sure where i am going wrong or if i didn't understand what Ron was trying to say.
Can you please help me with this.

The comparison between "the protein in rice" and "that in wheat" is fine. But you've missed the introductory modifier "having more protein than wheat does." This modifier must describe rice, not "the protein in rice"; A says that "the protein in rice" has more protein than wheat does, and that's insane.

In B, the "that" must refer to "protein" since there's a verb ("has") after "rice" and no verb present in the phrase "that in wheat." Parallelism controls here. There's no ambiguity.

I hope this helps!

Hi AndrewN IanStewart How to decide between B and E? Is it the use of "a" which makes it sound as though E has many proteins? Or is comparison skewed in E? Though I couldn't find comparison wrong.

Hello, pk6969. Remember, your goal in SC is not to chase what could work as a sentence, but to select the option that is least debatable. I have taken the liberty of paring down the answer choices above to the two in question. To be clear, I cannot find a reason to doubt anything in (B). First, notice that protein refers to the same general protein of the non-underlined portion, and the restrictive article the makes sense: more protein... the protein. Then, notice that the comparison is clear: rice has protein of a higher quality than [the protein] in wheat. No problem.

Now, consider the same two benchmarks in (E). First, we have more protein... a protein. An article might not seem to make much of a difference, but the sentence now seems to be discussing a particular protein found in rice, and that does not pair well with the first usage of the word protein. Then, the comparison hinges upon ellipsis, forcing the reader to do more work to disqualify the nonsensical reading that rice has a protein higher in quality than in rice. We can determine that the comparison should instead be interpreted, rice has a protein higher in quality than wheat [does]; however, we have to do more work to get there.

If one sentence has zero doubts while another iteration of the same sentence has two, we should pick the safer bet. The sooner you become cognizant of opting for safer answers over others that may, in part, be alluring but that also lead to doubts, the better you will get at SC.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about the question.

- Andrew

I think it's a close call here, because we sometimes omit words in a comparison when meaning is clear without them. The difficulty in E is that we can read the comparison in two ways. It can be saying, paraphrasing, "protein in rice is of higher quality than (the quality of) wheat", or we can read it as "protein in rice is of higher quality than wheat (protein is)". We don't want to compare rice protein and wheat itself; we want to compare rice protein and wheat protein. It's not clear though whether E is making that comparison. So it's possible to misinterpret the comparison in E, and if another answer is unambiguous, we should prefer that answer in GMAT SC. I don't think the article "a" is a decisive error here, though I can understand the argument that it matters. I think it's a hard question because E, on first read, doesn't look problematic, and it takes some work to decode the comparison, and to ask whether more than one interpretation is possible.

My take on the question:

A: In addition to HAVING more protein than wheat does, the protein...? The subject of having becomes protein which doesnt make sense. Hence A is incorrect.

C: .....more than it is...., implies the same protein is there in wheat and rice. Doesn't make sense : Incorrect

D: Incorrect for the same reason as C

E: ...a protein... ? like just one? : Incorrect

B: has no such issues: rice has protein of higher quality than that(protein) in wheat : Sounds good, Correct!

GMATNinja, can you please help with the explanation for B here. shouldn't it be than that of rather than that in?

Well, we’re talking about an idiom here, and generally, we don't want you to worry about those. But which of the following constructions seems right to you?

1) There are 10 grams of protein in wheat.

2) There are 10 grams of protein of wheat.

You can probably tell that #1 is better, right? What would protein of wheat even mean? Protein made of wheat?

In other words: "in" is fine. And we don’t have the option of “that of” anyway.

The real takeaway: if there's ever an idiom you're unsure about, don't use it as a decision point -- there will almost always be more concrete issues to focus on.

I hope that helps!