The Engineering Department, one of the newest departments in the

Nice practice question. The cue for the correct solution is the combo use of the singular possessive pronoun "its" to denote the department and the correct idiom 'demand in the industry' rather than 'demand for the industry'. B fits in blithely. The pronoun ' their' is no issue logically, as it refers to the plural graduates. One can't describe it as 'its demand " as a department can have no demand in the industry.
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Also we have because of vs due to split.

The Engineering Department has more extensive facilities because of... (due to modifies noun or noun phrase)

Daagh ,

I didn't understand in "their correspondingly higher" what "their" is referring to. What I figured out is graduates' demand is singular. Is my understanding correct ?

"Their" refers to ONLY graduates.

What is the difference between "Every other X" & " Every X" . Please explain with e.g.

thanks,
Sujeet

'more than every other' compares The Engineering Department with other deps of university; so using 'every', which combines all the deps of the university, can't be logical

Engineering department is singular, so "its" and not "their" . Eliminate A , D,E

We are comparing Engg dept with every other department and not every deptt. Hence, B is the answer !

[b]Please provide kudos if you like my post. Thank you[b]

This rule - use "other" to compare something with other member of the same group - is often tested in GMAT, but it's also often misunderstood.
+1 Kudos for you

Official Explanation

Split #1: "every" vs. "every other". The Engineering Department is a department, and it can't have more extensive facilities than itself! The appropriate comparison is between this department and "every other" department. Choices (A) & (C) make this mistake.

Split #2: the "due to" mistake. The word "due" is an adjective, a noun modifier, so it must modify the noun it touches. The noun "every other department" is not "due to" anyone's demand for anything. We are trying to modify the action of the previous clause, and a noun modifier cannot perform this task. We need the verb modifier "because of." Choices (A) & (D) make this mistake.

Split #3: idiom with "demand". The idiom "P's demand for Q" means that P is the actor doing the demanding and Q is the thing demanded. Thus, "its graduates' demand for industry" in (C) would mean that the graduates were demanding industry—that's so wrong that it's not even clear what it would mean. Choice (C) is wrong.

The reverse construction in (A) & (E), "industry's demand for their graduates," gets the logic correct: yes, industry has a demand—industry is demanding the graduates.

An alternate way to express this is to say "its graduates' demand in industry," the version in (B) & (D). The construction "demand in" is not really an idiom by itself. It's just that the graduates experience a demand, and this demand is taking place in industry. This is a perfectly fine way to express this. Only (C) makes the idiom mistake.

Split #4: pronoun agreement. The "Engineering Department" may have many members, both faculty and students, but it's a singular collective noun, and we need to refer to it by a singular pronoun: "it". Choices (D) & (E) use the incorrect plural pronoun. In fact, (E) makes that mistake, and then it makes the double-whammy mistake of using the same pronoun, "their," to refer to two different antecedents back-to-back, first the "Engineering Department," then the "graduates. This is a second pronoun mistake: choice (E) is a train wreck in terms of pronoun rules.

Split #5: the correspondence. What corresponds to what? the graduates have a higher demand in industry and this corresponds to the higher salaries they receive. Higher corresponds to higher, so we need to modify the adjective "higher"—we need the adverb to modify the adjective: "correspondingly higher." Only choices (A) & (B) have this correct.

The only possible answer is (B).

Isn't correspondingly act as a correct form of adverb, modifying adjective higher. Please correct me if I am wrong.

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