The Rock Mountain News reported that the foreclosure rate in 2007 was

Can someone please address why a is preferred over b.
a) The Rock Mountain News reported that the foreclosure rate in 2007 was 5.9%, 1.1 percent more than it was in 1988.

I think the it here is incorrect, as it here refers to the same foreclosure rate which varies every year. If we replace it with that, then I guess the comparison is correct. ( foreclosure rate in 2007 was 5.9%, 1.1 percent more than that was in 1988)
In option B- 1.1 percent more than (the foreclosure rate) in 1998. We can have the ellipsis and the meaning is concise.

Nothing wrong with the original sentence, X more than Y is correct idiomatically, hence answer must be (A)

You may want to fix the problem because I believe the "in" should be underlined.

I chose B and read it as, "The Rock Mountain News reported that the foreclosure rate in 2007 was 5.9%, 1.1 percent more than in 1988."

with the "in" appended to B, is it still incorrect?

The point is that we should not append 'in' to B; We should rather extend underlining to include "in" to the original. I have done it now. Therefore, B remains without 'in'.

@e-gmat,

why are options C and D incorrect?

Thanks!

E changes the meaning to be that 5.9% is 1.1 per cent the foreclosure rate that was observed in 1988. B incorrectly compares 5.9% to the year 1988. D and C are correct but they are wordier and more intricate than A.

This means that A is the correct answer.

In Option B, why ellipsis is not working?

The Rock Mountain News reported that the foreclosure rate in 2007 was 5.9%,
B) 1.1 percent more than...
...the foreclosure rate in 1998.

AndrewN - request your explanation please.

Hello, Pankaj0901. I will address your concern and touch on all the answer choices, since no OA or OE are available.


I see a lot of discussion on why the original sentence is correct. I have a doubt, though. When comparing one numerical value to another, we use greater than or less than, not more than. I have no problem with it standing in for the foreclosure rate, but I cannot shake this notion that the sentence would be improved if it used greater than.


Not only has the more than issue not been addressed, we also have to deal with a skewed comparison. When using comparatives, we want the two sides to be parallel. Here, we get decidedly non-parallel information:

[the foreclosure rate was] 1.1 percent more than 1988

As a general rule, you want ellipsis to work with as few words as possible. So, for example, a verb-to-verb comparison can be written, John has more money than Susie [does]. We understand, without the verb being added at the end, that John does not have more money than Susies, but that he has more money than Susie does. But in this sentence, we are asking a lot of ellipsis. We need to understand that ellipsis covers all of the following:

a) the element being compared—the foreclosure rate (or it)
b) a verb—was
c) a preposition—in

And on the GMAT™, that is a lot to ask of ellipsis, in fact too much for ellipsis to bear. I might talk this way in real life and think nothing of it, but in this arena, we should look for an answer that does a better job spelling out what, exactly, is being compared.


Notice that this answer choice covers all of my concerns outlined above. The comparative increase from is idiomatically sound, and we are comparing a rate to a rate, not a year, since the preposition is present. In short, there is nothing to argue against here.


The comparative up from is a little casual, but it is not incorrect. Neither is the clause necessarily incorrect. If you replace it with the foreclosure rate, the sentence is tenable. But do we need to resort to such a construct when we have a clearer alternative in (C)? In a word, no. This sentence is a worse version, through and through.


I cannot say that this information could not be correct, but this would mean that the rates in 1988 would have been sky high. The meaning conveyed is different from what we have seen in every other iteration of the sentence. Whereas before we understood that foreclosure rates had gone up since 1988, this sentence takes things to the opposite extreme, as in, 5.9 percent is only 1.1 percent of the rate in 1988. That must have been a terrible year for housing!

In short, (C) is the safest option, the only one among the five that presents no clear errors or even doubts. For this reason, we should get behind it. I hope that helps with your query. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

Thank you so much. This is very helpful. AndrewN

However, isn't "percent" a countable noun? Since, we can say 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent....etc
As Manhattan GMAT verbal guide states that to check if a noun is countable or uncountable, we can always try this test: 1 xyz, 2 xyz, 3 xyz. If it works, then it is countable, if it doesn't then its uncountable.
Example: 1 patience, 2 patience...etc doesn't work, hence it is uncountable.

And for countable nouns we use "MORE THAN".
Hence, in this option A, "more than" with "percent" isn't absolutely correct?

If it were "percentage", then it would be uncountable noun and hence "greater than" would apply here, as you suggested.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks in advance.

Pankaj0901
When we are comparing percentages, we aren't counting individual percents. We're using the percents to measure some actual proportion. So what words we use will depend on what we are measuring. We would say "Users of our toothpaste have 20% fewer cavities and 30% less plaque than users of the leading brand."

But it gets more complicated! First, "more" is not about countable/uncountable. We can follow "I want more" with "cookies" (countable) or "cake" (uncountable). However, in both cases we are measuring something: more cookies or more cake. So we can say "1.1% more foreclosures," and that's fine. However, that isn't what the sentence is saying. The underlined portion is a noun modifier for "5.9%." That percent is specifying the current foreclosure rate, so we need a modifying phrase that helps us to compare the new rate to the old one. A foreclosure rate isn't something we can have more or less of; it is a measurement of how many homes are being foreclosed. It can be lower/higher or less/greater than another rate.

Going deeper, I have to question all these answers on mathematical grounds. The question seems to expect us to know whether the rate should be 1.1% greater than the old rate of 1.1% of the old rate. I suppose we can use math to see that E doesn't make sense, since that would make the old rate more than 500%, and a foreclosure rate greater than 100% doesn't make sense (even 5.8% is tragic!).* However, we shouldn't have to do that kind of work to solve an SC. Further, neither answer really seems right. I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine the intended meaning is that the old rate is 4.7%. Any well-prepared GMAT taker can then calculate that the correct increase is 1.1%/4.7% = ~23%. (If the rate had really increased by just 1.1%, the old rate would be 5.8%/1.011 = ~5.74%.) If we want to say that the rate increased from 4.7% to 5.8%, we should say something like "an increase of 1.1 percentage points from the rate in 1988." If you look up articles on the unemployment rate, etc., you will see that this is exactly how such changes are reported. Would the GMAT make this kind of distinction? You know it would! So in short, I'd throw all 5 answers out and go back to the OG, even if GMAC didn't see fit to give us any new questions this year.

*(I'm using "more" to compare to "500," not to compare rates, just in case that looked like a contradiction of the previous paragraph.)

Hello GMATNinja,

I have a doubt regarding pronouns in this question. I think the pronoun "it" refers back to "the foreclosure rate in 2007" not just "foreclosure rate".
If my understanding is correct, then the option A makes no sense.
(The Rock Mountain News reported that the foreclosure rate in 2007 was 5.9%, 1.1 percent more than the foreclosure rate in 2007 was in 1988.)
Option C gets rid of this confusion by getting rid of the pronoun.

Hence I selected Option C.
Please correct me if my approach to the question is wrong.

Thank you

I used the same reasoning.
AndrewN Looking forward to your guidance- Is the reasoning correct?

TIA!

Hello, RenB. It is best to be conservative when you seek to interpret what a pronoun may represent in a sentence, so all other considerations being equal, I would disfavor (A) for something more explicit. That said, I would not see it and immediately write off the answer choice—conservatism works both ways, and you do not want to be too hasty to make a decision. Until you are sure other answer choices are worse, put your concern(s) on hold.

- Andrew