Hey All,

I was asked by PM to weigh in on this one, though sid has already hit some important points. Here we go.

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Farenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

I'd start by saying that generally GMAT prefers the idiom "estimate to be", rather than "estimate at", even though it's not underlined.


Sid hit this just right. If we use "and", we're setting up parallel clauses, so we'd need some new verb to make it work.


The term Sid was looking for is "participial phrase". "thought" is a past participle, meaning it opens up a modifying clauses, in this case modifying "its 60 square miles of water".


"Considered as" is wrong, and even though this creates a parallel AND adds a verb, it's still clunky. We want a modifier because we're creating an example of how it's too cold to support life (it's water is frozen all the way through), not making a new point.


'Considered as' is wrong. This also makes the same mistake as answer choice A. In addition, as Sid said, it has no main verb after "Europa", because considered here is a participle (like "thought" later on), which is not a full verb.


Sid nailed it. We have the participle "considered" again, and "to have" is just an infinitive riffing off of "considered", like "to be" in the middle portion. With no main verb in the whole sentence, it can't work.

Well done, Sid, and I hope I cleared up any lingering questions.

\(NAIL\) \(THE\) \(ABSOLUTE\) \(PHRASES\)

#
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its

(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have

This is many of those questions, which urge us to say "what does the author wants to convey?".
GMATTERS this is an example of the Absolute Phrase question. The sentences involving this concept generally introduce two clauses of which one modifies the entire idea of the preceding clause.

Most of the GMATTERS may be able to nail the question, under 2 mins, just posted above. But I am pretty sure that they must have neglected the concept of Absolute Phrases. There are/can be several mistakes in such questions which can easily help us to find the correct answer.

Anyways the answer to the question just posted above is .
In order to tackle such questions, I developed a technique and found it pretty useful.

Whenever you see such question, break the sentence into clauses, the basic step in SC questions. This blue portion is itself the Absolute Phrase which modifies the entire idea of the preceding clause.
Anyways, break the entire sentence into clauses.
i)With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit.
ii)Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life.
iii)and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

Notice that the third clause is NOT the independent clause.

The method is Stop youself at the end of the clause after which the following clause is not independent and RAISE THE QUESTION \(HOW?\). If the forecoming clauses answers your question in exactly in its own words, then that clause is the Absolute Phrase and is the correct choice.

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, \(HOW?\)and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. Does it answers HOW in its own words? NO! Eliminate it.

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life,\(HOW?\) its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. Does it answers HOW in its own words? YES!

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life and has 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. All clauses are independent. No Absolute Phrase.

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life,\(HOW?\) and its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. Does it answers HOW in its own words? NO!


(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have
Disaster. eliminate it at once.

Other examples are:

#Sound can travel through water for enormous distances, prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a result of boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different temperatures and densities.
1)same as underlined
2)prevented from having its acoustic energy dissipated by
3) its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by
4) its acoustic energy prevented from being dissipated as a result of
5) preventing its acoustic energy from dissipating by

#Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries.

Hope all the above stuff helps to beat the Absolute Phrase.
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C, D, E OUT. consider as and consider to be are unidiomatic

Between A and B

A fails parallelism. I need another "has" to make it parallel.

B is left.

This is what I think:

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Farenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and, with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom

A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with
And is not required here. If we use AND then there should be a verb to support parallelism as in - Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, AND, with 60 square miles of water IS thought to be frozen from top to bottom

B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its
Correct answer.
Think of it like this: Europa, its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom, has long been considered far too cold to support life.
This is a type of modifier I think although I'm not sure what the construction is called.

C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has
'Considered as' is wrong.

D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its
'Considered as' is wrong.
This sentence is a fragment, it does not have a verb - considered is not a proper verb, its a participle.

E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have
This sentence is a fragment, it does not have a verb - considered is not a proper verb, its a participle.

In option A the AND introduces a parallel structure - both left and right should be parallel.

left: Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life
right: Europa thought to be frozen from top to bottom (I've removed the with 60 miles of water that modifies Europa)

In the above, left and right are not parallel. To make them parallel:
Europa has long been considered || Europa is thought to be frozen

'thought' by itself is not a verb here. If a sentence is to be constructed with 'thought' alone as a verb then I think (notice I've used the present tense of 'thought' as a verb here) it should look like: Europa thought that she was frozen from top to bottom - this construction is silly as it gives life to Europa.
The author is trying to say 'Everyone thinks that Europa is frozen from top to bottom' which is why we have 'Europa is thought to be (by everyone) frozen..'.

Hey Sid,

If you're really using all the rules without naming them, that should be enough. But I find categorization is dependent on really having the names of the categories in your head, otherwise it's too much gut. I don't know how you're scoring on SC, but if you take our free practice test and your SC percent is under 60/65% correct, definitely consider pushing it a little harder and learning all the terminology. If you're doing better than that, however, it means that whatever you're doing is working, so keep doing it!

-t

Hey Tommy,

I'd done the free test quite a while back and scored 67% in verbal. After that I bought the Manhattan sc guide 4th ed. and worked quite a bit on SC.
Recently I did the 25 questions in the SC question bank that is included with the purchase of the SC strategy guide and scored 21/25. Seems pretty ok, however the one thing I'm concerned about - All four mistakes were on 500-600 level questions where I narrowed down answers to two choices and then skipped the right choice for very vague reasons such as the right choice looking too simple or of an idiomatic construction I'd never come across.. ...Weird? I felt that this was slightly because I was aggressively looking for mistakes based on rules and that if I'd have gone with my gut feelings I'd have got those right.
Have you noticed this kind of an issue with any students, if so, how do I overcome this?

Btw, the Manhattan SC guide truly rocks!. I was never weak at verbal but the concepts this book taught me really redefined my approach to grammar. Hats off to you guys..

Sid

Hey Sid,

To take this piece by piece:



I'd done the free test quite a while back and scored 67% in verbal. -- Nice! Though definitely still room for improvement.

Recently I did the 25 questions in the SC question bank that is included with the purchase of the SC strategy guide and scored 21/25.
-That's a solid percentage.

All four mistakes were on 500-600 level questions where I narrowed down answers to two choices and then skipped the right choice for very vague reasons such as the right choice looking too simple or of an idiomatic construction I'd never come across.
--Vague reasons are tough. You should always be able to verbalize the exact reason you're crossing something off, even if it's meaning or concision ("I'm crossing out B because it's unclear what the modifier is referring to," for example).

I felt that this was slightly because I was aggressively looking for mistakes based on rules and that if I'd have gone with my gut feelings I'd have got those right.
--Remember, if you were aggressively look for mistakes based on rules, then you cross something off for a "vague reason", you're not using the rules. So you can hardly use the rules for that. If you think an issue is idiomatic or meaning, then you have to go with your gut/inherent understanding. But just recognize when you're doing it, and don't mix rule-based process of elimination with gut-based process of elimination (And always do as much of the former as possible before switching to the latter).

Btw, the Manhattan SC guide truly rocks!. I was never weak at verbal but the concepts this book taught me really redefined my approach to grammar. Hats off to you guys..
--Thanks! Glad it helped!

-t

So the answer is (B).

The important part is to understand the STRUCTURE of this sentence. It turns out this sentence uses BOTH sides of the main part of the sentence for DESCRIPTIVE PHRASES.

MAIN SENTENCE = "Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life"
DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE #1 = "With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit"
DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE #2 = "its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom."

The structure of:
[DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE], [MAIN SENTENCE] is OK.
"With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life."

The structure of: [MAIN SENTENCE], [DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE] is also OK.

"Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, with surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit"

And you can use any descriptive phrase including DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE #2 like so:
"Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom."

But what you can ALSO do - and what this question is testing - is combine these two structures like so:

[DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE #1], [MAIN SENTENCE], [DESCRIPTIVE PHRASE #2].

So combining them, you get what (B) says:

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

So they basically put descriptive phrases on both sides of the main part of the sentence.

Hope that helps!

Answer must be B
First of all we do have to consider the correct usage of "With".
ex- "With 4 childrens at home, Rachel barely has any spare time for her hobbies".
Notice that the two clauses of the above sentence are reinforcing into each other.
So the sentence must complete after the second clause. If it does'nt, then the third clause must be a modifier, modifying the preceding clause.
B does it correctly.
", its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom" is an absolute phrase that is modifying " Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life".
Whats the OA and the source?
-s
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Yes; the answer must be B

We can ditch C, D and E since all these three choices are using gmatically wrong idiom considers as and consider to be
Between A and B, we can follow Marcab’s point.

But, I have different question to GMAT PILL? What exactly is the text trying to convey by saying that Europa has 60 square miles of frozen water from top tobottom. Is it referring to the depth of the ice from top to bottom? Then, does that mean 60 miles of depth frozen water all over its surface? . Or does it mean that Europa has only 60 square miles of ice, less than an eight miles square. Normally, I thought ice is measured in cubic volumes and not in square volumes. Just for my curiosity, please.
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Other examples are:

#Sound can travel through water for enormous distances, prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a result of boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different temperatures and densities.
1)same as underlined
2)prevented from having its acoustic energy dissipated by
3)its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by
4) its acoustic energy prevented from being dissipated as a result of
5) preventing its acoustic energy from dissipating by

I think this question is testing idiom but it could be testing absolute phrase too based on the idiom I could narrow it down to A and C pick C cos its less wordy and placed correctly according to sentence structure.

#Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries.

I used parallelism / incorrect use of among for this one and eliminated most answer choices and was left with D,C and A. picked A cos of consistency.

whats the OA?

I already said in the post that the question may be done by using other methods as well.
May I know which Idiom are you talking about in the above questions. I always kept myself miles away from Idioms.
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I don't know idioms either but there are some common ones which show up more often. The first one is prevent from. I must have made a typo in the second one wanted to say consistency and said idiom instead

The idiom list so massive and don't think anyone should waste time memorizing them. BTW great post.

zeke has compiled a list here..

http://www.gmatpill.com/the-gmat-pill-m ... diom-list/

Sorry Marcab....

......whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses

Two Independent clauses are connected with and ?

Can you use Absolute phrase in ur way in this sentence !

......whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and and in a style that varies from women to women and house to house.

Hope that helps
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@Marcab;
Although I must be honest in admitting that, I haven’t gone through you note as yet, as I am hard - pressed these days for time due to some assignments, as my first reaction, I must appreciate your stupendous effort.

This, I aver, is initiative, involvement and enterprise. A big kudo to you.
_________________

Thanks daagh.
A kudo from people like you encourages me a lot.
I just hope, GMAC KUDOes me by providing a solid score.
Thnx again.
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First look - misplaced modifier, grammatical construction

(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with Wrong - "and with" must combine two like prepositional phrases, or "and" must precede an independent clause.

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its Best answer - I dislike how the predicate splits the subject and its modifying phrase (appositive), though it seems that the GMAT employs it frequently to throw off test takers. This really was a last resort.

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has Wrong - "with 60 square miles" should modify Europa, not be a predicate and demand equality to "too cold to support life." In a way, the last modifier should describe "too cold to support life" and not life.

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its Wrong - "and its" must combine two like phrases, or "and" must precede an independent clause.

(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have Wrong - fragment.

IMO B