While students in rural areas graduate from high school at rates secon

In general, if the pronoun is a subject pronoun, then it refers to the subject as a thumb rule. If hypothetically there is no suitable subject, then the pronoun may refer to the nearest object or the object of the proposition.

E.g., while ABC outperform XYZ in something, they underperform in some other thing. -- Here 'they' is a subject pronoun and hence correctly refers to the subject ABC.

Also, they cannot refer to XYZ because such a structure does not convey the correct meaning of contrast, as we can see below.
While ABC outperform XYZ in something, XYZ underperform in some other thing-- Already XYZ are underperforming ABC, and if they were to underperform ABC again, then the contrast loses its relevance.

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

A major key to solving this problem correctly is recognizing the word "While" at the beginning of the sentence. Because of the word "while," the entire portion of the sentence leading up to (and including) the word "exam" serves as a modifier to introduce the main subject-predicate of the sentence after the comma. This construction begs a subject ("they") after the comma, meaning that choices A and E - which do not include a subject after the comma - are incorrect.

Then look at the meaning of the sentence, also set up by "while" - the sentence seeks to say that although rural students have statistics that would seem to set them up for great success in higher education, they instead enroll in college and pursue masters degrees at lower rates. Choice C fails to hold that meaning, treating "they enroll in four-year colleges and universities" as a separate and parallel action to "they pursue advanced degrees at lower rates." Via that construction, "at lower rates" only applies to the pursuit of advanced degrees, making "they enroll in college" an illogical phrase to include.

Choice D is also incorrect, as it includes a bungled list. By saying "rural students enroll in four year colleges, universities, and pursue..." the sentence fails to link similar nouns (colleges and universities) with a conjunction, and/or incorrectly treats the verb "pursue advanced degrees" as another entity in which students enroll.

The correct choice is B, which correctly introduces the subject "they" after the comma and logically connects the activities that "they" do at a lower rate.

While students in rural areas graduate from high school at rates second only to those of suburban students (by a single percentage point), and perform at or above the national average on the ACT and SAT exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and pursue advanced degrees at significantly lower rates.

A exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and
B exams, they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and
C exams; they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and they
D exams, rural students enroll in four year colleges, universities, and
E exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and they

This intend of this sentence is to show contrast.

while students in rural areas graduate from high school at rates second only to those of suburban students , they enrol in four year colleges and universities and blah ..blah...

we need two independent clause here,

They perfectly refers to the subject of the firs clause.

This took me 2 minutes. Was stuck between B and D.
Finally eliminated D as it broke off colleges and universities by removing the and, and putting a comma, and we ideally want them to be one thing here. And this breaks parallelism.

While indicates a contrast should follow in the next clause, and since "while...." is a dependent clause, the main clause needs a subject, and 'they' helps with that.

Now about pronoun antecedent.
For B - they is clearly referring to students in rural areas as students in rural areas are the subject of the preceding clause. Secondly, they enroll.... and pursue... maintains parallelism.

Any other thoughts?

In order to use a pronoun, the pronoun should only have one referent throughout the sentence. They can refer to Suburban students too, hence incorrect imo.

D has no ambiguity

D has parallelism error. Students enroll in colleges, universities, and (students) pursue advance degrees. Should have and between college and universities for it to be correct.

While students in rural areas graduate from high school at rates second only to those of suburban students (by a single percentage point), and perform at or above the national average on the ACT and SAT exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and pursue advanced degrees at significantly lower rates.

A exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and - WRONG, if we observe closely, there is no independent clause at all, just subordinate clause - while .... standing alone.

B exams, they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and - CORRECT, concise and clear, pronoun correctly refers to "students in rural areas"
C exams; they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and they - WRONG, again, while... stands alone without independent clause before semicolon
D exams, rural students enroll in four year colleges, universities, and - WRONG, "and" missing between in colleges and universities, rural students sounds like they belong to one type, rural students, normal students, abnormal students.
E exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and they - WRONG, "they missing" before enroll

egmat , @veritasprepkarishma , Abhishek009 , broall , Skywalker18

I am still confused. Why can't "they" refer to Urban students?

Secondly, can we eliminate A,D,E because we should use "four-year" instead of "four year"??

Why not c?
They enroll, they pursue...isn't this an example
of parallelism?

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Hi Folks,
Whats wrong with original sentence?
Two parallel actions for students from rural areas are being described:
Action 1: graduate.....and perform.....,
Action 2: enrollment in colleges and uni...
Here, the doer of the action in second part of the sentence after comma (enroll in....) is not clear. This makes the original sentence incorrect.
A exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and : Explained above
B exams, they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and : Correct. Here, they clearly refer to the subject of the first clause - students from rural areas, no ambiguity.
C exams; they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and they : Incorrect. A semi-colon gives a bigger pause and the While clause is left hanging without a proper subordinate.
D exams, rural students enroll in four year colleges, universities, and : Incorrect. rural modifies students-Wrong. Comma between colleges and universities distorts the parallelism.
E exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and they : Incorrect. missing subject for enroll. Same as A

Hi Doer01,

One of the problems with option A is that it leads to a sentence fragment.

While students in rural areas graduate from high school at rates second only to those of suburban students (by a single percentage point), and perform at or above the national average on the ACT and SAT exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and pursue advanced degrees at significantly lower rates.

We're left with only the dependent clause introduced by while.

While students graduate, and perform, enroll, and pursue...

A exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, andThe word While used in the beginning prepares us for a contrast that would follow the comma but here the absence of a referent seems to include the apparent contradiction as part of the dependent clause
B exams, they enroll in four-year colleges and universities andcorrect
C exams; they enroll in four-year colleges and universities and theysemicolon is used to connect 2 ICs but the first one is a dependent clause+ use of they twice is awkward
D exams, rural students enroll in four year colleges, universities, andincorrect use of commas
E exams, enroll in four year colleges and universities, and theythey should be placed before enroll as it is part of our IC which has to reveal the contradictory fact

daagh generis chetan2u

Just curious...

Can we eliminate option A, D, and E solely for the usage "four year" instead of "four-year" ?

According to this: https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp

I think you can?

For the question, the question writer has given other decision points as well so knowing hyphen rules isn't absolutely necessary IMO.

I think the second "they" in answer C is redundant and wordy.

For those stuck on B vs D:

D looks appealing because it addresses pronoun ambiguity. But it messes with parallelism and meaning =>

D. rural students enroll in four year colleges, universities, and

Does this mean rural students enroll in (1) four year colleges, (2) universities and (3) pursue degrees (how do you "enroll pursue" degrees? doesn't make sense)

Does this mean rural students (1) enroll in four year colleges, (2) universities , and (3) pursue degrees (universities has no verb, what does it mean "rural student universities"? doesn't make sense)

Both versions don't make sense so that had to leaning more towards B, even though it has some pronoun ambiguity at first glance. Although my understanding is that in B, "they" can refer back to the subject of the first clause "students in rural areas" without a problem...

Is not ‘B’ a run-on sentence- two clauses joined by a just a comma rather than a semicolon?

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