Jainam24
HrusheekeshJoshi
why is "that of" wrong in C?
can anybody please explain?
@VeritasKarmisha
chetan2u AndrewN GMATNinja egmat CrackVerbal I have the same doubt too
Hello,
Jainam24. I appreciate the mention alongside such company. How about we look at the sentence for context?
Quote:
In South Korea in the early 2000s, growth in the nation’s ten largest companies’ assets was fueled by the companies’ rapid expansion into new lines of business: they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice as many as in 2002.
A. In South Korea in the early 2000s, growth in the nation’s ten largest companies’ assets was fueled by the companies’ rapid expansion into new lines of business: they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice as many as in 2002.
B. In South Korea, the nation’s ten largest companies’ asset growth was fueled by their rapid expansion into new lines of business: they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly double that of 2002.
C. In South Korea, the nation’s ten largest companies experienced rapid asset growth in the early 2000s, fueled by their rapid expansion into new lines of business: they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice that of 2002.
D. In the early 2000s, South Korea’s ten largest companies experienced rapid asset growth, fueled by their rapid expansion into new lines of business: they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice as many as in 2002.
E. In the early 2000s, South Korea’s ten largest companies’ assets grew rapidly, fueled by their rapid expansion into new lines of business: they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice the number they had in 2002.
You have to be careful in SC questions not to treat the pronouns
that or
those as anything you want them to be, even though conversational English works in just this way. When we see
that of at the end of answer choices (B) and (C), it is tempting to supply the word
total and move on. However, counting words are meaningless on their own, so we have to add the implied object of the preposition to draw a proper comparison. Since you are asking about answer choice (C) specifically, I will stick to that phrasing:
they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice the total [of subsidiaries] of 2002.I would prefer a total-to-number comparison if the sentence is going to adopt such a structure, rather than the total-to-total comparison we see. Also, the mismatched prepositions ahead of the different years does stand out in a test that prefers a tight parallel structure. Compare to the same part of answer choice (D):
they had a total of 592 subsidiaries in 2011, nearly twice as many [subsidiaries] as in 2002.The comparison is clearer, and
in matches
in, so this latter iteration of the sentence is much better than the former. All other things being equal, (D) is the one to pick. (I did select (D), although I spent more than 2 minutes mulling everything over.)
Perhaps the issue makes more sense now. Thank you for thinking to ask, and good luck with your studies.
- Andrew