Rejecting the apprenticeship model of training social workers in phila

Question

Rejecting the apprenticeship model of training social workers in philanthropic agencies, twentieth-century reformer Edith Abbott was convinced  of social work education belonging in the university so that  students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social issues.

A. of social work education belonging in the university so that

B. that social work education should be in the university, and that

C. about the importance of social work education belonging in the university while

D. that social work education belonged in the university, where

E. of the necessity of social work education being in the university and

My take:
convinced that, so A, C and E out.
Between B and D.
students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social
issues--> has to be subordinated to the main clause so B out.
The idiom is belong to, so D out.

One more time, Im with F.

egmat · Accepted Answer

Hi Shipra, Thanks for posting your question here. :-)

Let's talk about the intended meaning of the sentence first. The sentence says that Abbot rejected the apprenticeship model of training social workers in philanthropic agencies because he was sure that the social work education must be imparted at the university level. Why did he think so? He thought so because he felt that students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social issues. So per the original sentence he was only convinced of a single point. The part starting with "so that" presents the reasoning for his conviction. Now Choice B is grammatically as well as logically incorrect. 1. It is logically incorrect because the forced parallelism in the sentence now conveys that Abbot was convinced of two things. The second entity in the list is no more the reasoning for his convictions. 2. The grammatical flaw in the sentence is usage of "should be". The usage of this verb now suggests that inclusion of the social work education in university is his command or demand that must be met. The inclusion appears to be his diktat rather than his belief. Choice D indeed is the correct answer as it clearly conveys the intended meaning. The phrase "belonging in" is absolutely correct. It is the university that the said education belong. Commonly, we use the phrase "belong to" which means someone owns something. Here we cannot use "belong to" because the university does not own the social work education. It "belongs in" the university as in its right place is in the university. Hope this helps.

Thanks. Shraddha

nusmavrik · Answer

B is a gmat trap (fake that parallelism) I will point that in a bit. Convinced is "persuasive" form of belief. It means very sure. Remember the subjunctive? Does it use should / would?? "that parallelism" works like this : that............and that........... E.g convinced that .............. and that....... However look at the meaning. The use of "and" disintegrates the old sentence where you were talking about "social work". suddenly started talking about "student". Edith Abbott will be very unhappy :-D

What are you convinced about if I disintegrate the sentence into two parts -

social work education should be in the university - still not convinced, I need more explanation !
where students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social issues. ---> that is the evidence I need for being convinced.

RGM · Answer

I'm with F - LOL! My take is D. We need "that" to connect the phrase - leaving us with B and D. The 'students offered" phrase is logically connected to the conviction as previously stated and D connects these ideas perfectly.

noboru · Answer

But in D belonged in is not the idiom...
Please clarify.

RGM · Answer

Belong in is a correct idiom when trying to express something being in it's right place.

nusmavrik · Answer

"convinced that." should is prohibited So B is OUT.

D it is.

pdarun · Answer

Nusmavrik: D also uses "convinced that". So why then is B out but not D? I selected B, because of "belonged in" >> Thought was that the wrong idiom usage in D weighs over the wrond conjuntion "and" used to connect the sub-ordinate clauses

.

sarah1234 · Answer

Hi,
I ruled out A, C,E. Between B and D,B shows parallelism and D says BELONGED IN..which does not look ok.Please advice why D is correct.

Shipra

teaserbae · Answer

broall   hazelnut   daagh 
Why A is wrong?

daagh · Answer

A is wrong mainly because of the idiom 'convinced of.' When we report an author's thinking, it customary to report his philosophy in a relative clause starting with 'that.'

FANewJersey · Answer

Hi egmat Shraddha, You wrote following in your argument: "..... So per the original sentence he was only convinced of a single point. The part starting with "so that" presents the reasoning for his conviction....." But then I see people discussing this question here and also discussing at ManhattanPrep official blog are saying that "convinced of" is idiomatically wrong. https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... t6968.html So I am really confused here. Can you please help. If "convinced of" is wrong then how come you didn't point it out. Better yet - why did you use it in your description if everyone is saying that it is idiomatically incorrect? I will appreciate your help.

woohoo921 · Answer

egmat This is very helpful. Can you please clarify on why the comma is needed before the where? Would it be incorrect to get rid of the comma before the where? Thank you in advance

ramlala · Answer

woohoo921

Hi,
Here comma is used to seperate nonessential relative clause. 
Here author conveys that 'students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social issues' is nonessential cluase.

Hope this may help you.

systemsav · Answer

This is either a very good question or a very weird one. My 2 cents on this:

- 'was convinced that' is correct idiomatic form. 'was convinced of' could also be alright (I didn't know). So the options remaining were  A, B, D

- Between  B  and  D : There are 2 facts presented in the sentence - 
 1. 'social work education belongs in the university'
 2. 'students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social issues'
Please note that these 2 facts seem to be linked. The 'and that' condition at the end of option B makes it sound like fact no. 2 is extra information presented separately. So B is out.

- Between  D  and  A : 'was convinced of x belonging' was not preferable. Moreover, there is a meaning issue. If ABC is convinced of x belonging in the university, it should be followed by reason (because, due to) and not consequence (so that)

Option  D . Only concern is 'where' directed to university. Since a university is also a place, but here the author means all universities in general- it caused confusion. But  D  still appears to be the best option.

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Rejecting the apprenticeship model of training social workers in philanthropic agencies, twentieth-century reformer Edith Abbott was convinced of social work education belonging in the university so that students could be offered a broad range of courses dealing with social issues.

A. of social work education belonging in the university so that --- of social education (Edith was convinced of NOUN? BELONGING modifies EDUCATION awkwardly. SO THAT is not bad but not great.

B. that social work education should be in the university, and that (the usage of SHOULD on the GMAT is a little obscure. , AND THAT ---> there can be a time when this structure might work but the sentence is not long or complex enough to support it."

C. about the importance of social work education belonging in the university while ---- "ABOUT usage is not the best. BELONGING modifies EDUCATION awkwardly. WHILE (concurrently) brings some ambiguity into the sentence.

D. that social work education belonged in the university, where (Yep.. the WHERE modifies university)

E. of the necessity of social work education being in the university and (OF the NOUN? Issue with BEING. Parallelism problems with the usage of the final AND.

(D)

aarkay87 · Answer

GMATNinja

Could you please share another approach/split that is not based on idiom and that can eliminate options-A, C & E?

On further exploring, I came across one alternate approach by Ron Purewal that structure - [ Preposition] + [Noun] + [Participle] - is wrong unless the preposition refers directly to the NOUN.

Link: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 910#p26678

Could you please confirm and elaborate on this rule further?

Regards
Rohit

GMATNinja · Answer

Here's (A) again, but placed into a bigger chunk of the sentence:

This has a subtle meaning issue:

so that   generally introduces some sort of reason. For example: "Tim worked hard so that he could afford a vacation." Why did Tim work hard? So that he could afford a vacation -- in other words, his ability to afford a vacation was a  result  of his hard work. 
 In (A), it sounds like the "so that" part is answering the question, "WHY was Edith Abbott convinced of social work education belonging in the university?" Was Edith Abbott  convinced  so that students could be offered a broad range of course? Was the ability to offer a broad range of courses a  result   of Abbott's being convinced*  of something? 
 Nope. That doesn't make any sense because there is no causal relationship here.

(C) has a meaning issue as well:

Was Abbott ONLY convinced about the importance {...} WHILE (at the time when) students could be offered a broad range of courses?? 
 Or, going with an alternative interpretation, was Abbott convinced about the importance of social work education belonging in the university ONLY while (at the time when) students could be offered a broad range of courses?? 
 Nope. The "students could be offered a broad range of courses..." part is not meant to tell us WHEN Abbott was convinced of something. 
 The fact that we can interpret this sentence in multiple ways is a red flag. And since neither interpretation makes much sense, we can get rid of (C).

Looking at (E), we either have a parallelism issue or a run-on sentence:
 
  If the "and" is a parallelism trigger, then the clause right after it ("students could be offered a broad range of courses") isn't parallel to anything. 
 And if the "and" is meant to simply join two independent clauses, then we are missing a comma (and thus have a run-on sentence).

Either way, (E) doesn't work.

And, of course, we have the idiomatic issues that give us even more reason to (A), (C), and (E): "convinced that..." is better than "convinced of..." or "convinced about..." in this context. But again,  you don't want to lose too much sleep over idioms.

The whole preposition/noun/participle thing definitely gives us another vote against these three options. However, I certainly would not recommend trying to refine this rule so that you can blindly apply it to future problems. SC is about meaning and clarity, and memorizing a list of increasingly complex rules won't do all that much for you. Also, notice that the linked post admits that this "rule" is only USUALLY the case -- in other words, like most "rules" on the GMAT, it can be broken.

I hope that helps!

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Rejecting the apprenticeship model of training social workers in phila

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