Students with marginal grades might wonder if colleges, eager for new

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

(The use of “if” and “whether”) Whenever you find the word “if” in the underlined portion of a sentence, you should suspect that it has been erroneously used in placed of “whether.” The use of the word “whether” in two of the answer choices should confirm this suspicion. Remember that the word “if” must be used only as a future conditionality, and not when an option is indicated. The given sentence talks of a speculation, which implies that it may or may not be true. So, the proper word to use here is “whether” and not “if.”

(A), (B) and (C) can all be discarded for this reason alone.

The main difference between (D) and (E) is that the former uses the present tense (“were willing”) while the latter uses the future tense (“would overlook”). The student is wondering if, at some point in time in the future, a college would be willing to overlook his or her low grades. D implies a wondering if they are willing to do so now, E implies wondering if they will do so in the future. So, (E) is the most appropriate answer.

(E) is better than (D) in other respect also because the phrase “wonder whether” is neater than “wonder as to whether,” and the phrase “eager for profit” is neater than “in its eagerness of profit.”

(In this case also, you could have arrived at the correct answer between (D) and (E) by just choosing the shorter one.)