St. John's, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France,

Question

St. John's, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France, but in spring St. John's  residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking  shelter from a raging northeast storm.

(A) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking

(B) residents are less likely to sit at outdoor cafes, and more to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or be seeking

(C) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes, and more likely to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or to be seeking

(D) residents, instead of their sitting at outdoor cafes, they are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or seek

(E) residents, instead of sitting at outdoor cafes, are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or to be seeking

Source  :  GMAT Paper Test (Test Code 48)

daagh · Accepted Answer

If you expand the choice A, the subtle llism will pop-up

Residents are less likely (X)  to be sitting  at outdoor cafes than(Y)  to be  
 
The symmetrical and idiomatic parallelism of  " x than y ” is maintained by using ‘  to be’  for both arms of comparison ; the series parallelism is maintained by using progressive forms such as  bracing , shoveling and seeking  and the ‘ to be’  mentioned for the first factor is common to all the three factors.

On the contrary, C fouls tenets of comparative parallelism by choosing to drop the comparative cursor ‘ than ’ from the sentence and C is merely an expository statement, deviating from the focus of the text. More importantly, C breaks series llism by missing the infinitive ‘ to be’  in the second arm  ‘shoveling’.  To be perfectly parallel, it should either state “ to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, to be shoveling snow, or to be seeking”  or retain ‘to be’ for the first arm and leave it for the other two, as done in choice A.

Of course B, D and E can be dropped for various infringements. A is the eventual choice,

GMAT TIGER · Answer

A. "less x than y" is missing in all choices except in A.

seofah · Answer

Went for C. Seems to be the only one that is parallel.

bakfed · Answer

believe it's A - the only answer that preserved the "less 'than'" phrase.

daagh · Answer

The basic problem in C is that it does not make clear what is less likely .... than; in other words by failing to make a genuine comparison by using the comparative term ‘less likely than’, the sentence simply makes a statement of two facts, conjugating them with the conjunction ‘and’. C misses the spirit of comparison and hence not of logical predication as GMAT would like to so fondly call it

MisterEko · Answer

Although the right idiom would be "less likely to X than Y" could it not be acceptable to say "it is less likely to X and more likely to Y"? Or is that incorrect?

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Hey MisterEko,

I think you're right...while you so often see the GMAT expression more...than or less...than, it's definitely not wrong to say something like:

I'd like to include more vegetables and less fat in my diet.

So words like "more" and "less" don't REQUIRE a "than" in there...it's just a very common and very efficient way to set up a comparison so you'll often see that structure used in comparison-based correct answers. Your hypothetical doesn't appear to be "wrong" by any means.

Because there are so many correct ways to phrase a sentence, I'd highly recommend looking for known errors in these. C, a popular choice on this one, is simply not parallel in its list: More likely to be bracing, shoveling, or to be seeking. The first "to be" covers all three present-tense verbs; to have "to be" on two of them but not on the middle one breaks parallel list structure and is therefore wrong.

I'd look for those known-to-be-incorrect errors and save "unique" or "awkward" phrasing to the end because we simply can't become expert on all possible correct phrases, but we can get pretty efficient at rooting out the known mistakes.

Raths · Answer

Even I went for A , going by the idiom "less X than Y" , but in A , X and Y are not parallel. Can someone please explain....??

metallicafan · Answer

+1 A

Why do you think that A is not parallel?

craky · Answer

I am also for A. ANd I think there really is paralelism in the answer.

Less liketo to be -ing than to be -ing, ing, or ing.

l0rrie · Answer

I'd say A too.. Curious about the OA now..

nimrod · Answer

good question... I fell for C...
D is incorrect because of "their sitting...."
E is eliminated because of improper parallel structure...
B is incorrect again for dropping the comparative term "than"...
C again breaks the parallel structure by dropping "than"..
Left with A......

brandy96 · Answer

Looks like A should be it. ing is parallel for all the three.

naveenhv · Answer

Clearly A. 'less x than y' idiom and all things are parallel.

Ankit04041987 · Answer

St. John’s, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France, but in spring St. John’s residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking shelter from a raging northeast storm.
(A) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking
(B) residents are less likely to sit at outdoor cafes, and more to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or be seeking
(C) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes, and more likely to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or to be seeking
(D) residents, instead of their sitting at outdoor cafes, they are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or seek
(E) residents, instead of sitting at outdoor cafes, are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or to be seeking

geometric · Answer

St. John’s, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France, but in spring St. John’s  residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking  shelter from a raging northeast storm.

(A) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking
(B) residents are less likely to sit at outdoor cafes, and more to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or be seeking
(C) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes, and more likely to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or to be seeking
(D) residents, instead of their sitting at outdoor cafes, they are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or seek
(E) residents, instead of sitting at outdoor cafes, are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or to be seeking

I like this sentence. When that happens, you leave A as it is and look for errors in each of its alternatives. Let's try it:

B - Eliminate from "be seeking"
C - Eliminate from "to be seeking"
D - Eliminate from "or seek"
E - Eliminate from break in parallelism between "instead of sitting" and "brace", "shove", and "be seeking"

A it is.

bschooladmit · Answer

See the Signal Words - 
1. , , or
eliminate c b e
2. less---than or more.
eliminate d => instead of their wrong pronoun.

hence A

ChrisLele · Answer

St. John’s, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France, but in spring St. John’s  residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking  shelter from a raging northeast storm.

(A) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes than to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or seeking

'to be sitting...' is parallel to 'to be bracing...', which, in turn, is parallel to 'shoveling snow' and 'seeking'

(B) residents are less likely to sit at outdoor cafes, and more to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or be seeking

'be seeking' is not parellel with the rest of the sentence.

(C) residents are less likely to be sitting at outdoor cafes, and more likely to be bracing themselves against arctic chills, shoveling snow, or to be seeking

'to be seeking' breaks up the parallelism of 'Verb-ing'

(D) residents, instead of their sitting at outdoor cafes, they are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or seek

'their sitting at...' is awkward.

(E) residents, instead of sitting at outdoor cafes, are more likely to brace themselves against arctic chills, shovel snow, or to be seeking

'to be seeking' is not parallel with 'brace' and 'shovel.'

TooLong150 · Answer

All of the answer choices sounded bad to me, but it seems as if that A was the best answer. I was torn between A and D, but chose D, because even though it had "their sitting" it was more parallel than A, because A made the sentence seem as if the residents would be bracing themselves against "shoveling snow", which does not make any sense.

St. John's, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France,

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St. John's, Newfoundland, lies on the same latitude as Paris, France,

Prep Toolkit

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