A recently published report indicates that the salaries of t

[rschunti]

A recently published report indicates that the salaries of teachers continue to lag far behind other college-educated professionals, because they make an average of nearly $8,000 a year less at the start of their careers and almost $24,000 less a year by the time they reach the age of 50.
A. other college-educated professionals, because they make an average of nearly $8,000 a year less at the start of their careers and almost $24,000 less
B. other college-educated professionals, by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers, to almost $24,000
C. what other college-educated professionals are paid"”making an average of nearly $8,000 a year less at the start of their careers and almost $24,000 less
D. those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers to almost $24,000 less
E. those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers, and by almost $24,000

What is the correct answer and why other choices are wrong? I choce "C" which turns out to be wrong.

[brian]

This is a classic problem that offers a "split" amongst the answer choices:

You can group the answers into three buckets -- A/B, C, and D/E -- all based on the first word or words of the underlined section. Since we want to compare the salaries of teachers to the salaries of other college-educated professionals, we need to pick amongst D and E, because those are the only two answer choices that provide a clear and direct comparison the salaries of teachers to the salaries of c-e professionals.

At that point, E is your best remaining answer choice, as the parallel structure of E is preferred over answer choice D.

Hope that helps.

-Brian Lange
Manhattan GMAT

[enginpasa1]

can we argue that choice C is very very wordy and akward?

[RonPurewal]

can we argue that choice C is very very wordy and akward?

i suppose so, although a much more serious issue is the lack of proper, unambiguous subject for 'making' (which seems to refer back to the salaries of the teachers, and not to the teachers themselves as intended).

what i find more interesting than anything else about this problem is the ambiguous 'their' in the answer choice deemed correct (and indeed in all the answer choices). it seems that gmac is breaking some of its own rules here.

[mclaren7]

Dear Moderators and friends,

I have chosen D during my trial test.

What is wrong with ---- "by an average of ..... to almost?"
Or is it option D is not wrong, just that E has better parallelism?

Thanks
KH

[Ranjit]

Additionally, doesn't option D introduce redundancy by adding the word 'less' towards the end? If something is lagging with respect to the other, do we need to state 'less' explicitly? The 'less' looks out-of-place in the sentence.

Brian / Ron, Could you share your thoughts on this please? Thanks !

[StaceyKoprince]

Ranjit has it - don't forget to look at earlier, relevant parts of the sentence.

A report indicates that salaries (of one group) lag far behind those of (another group) - by 8k at the start and by 24k (later on).

Two things here - first, the numbers I'm giving are explicitly the amount of "lag" - so they lag by 8k and they lag by 24k. They can't lag to almost 24k less. Also, I want to make those two lags parallel - they're performing the same function in the sentence. And D isn't parallel, even if the language for the 24k piece wasn't already problematic.

[Guest]

Ranjit has it - don't forget to look at earlier, relevant parts of the sentence.

A report indicates that salaries (of one group) lag far behind those of (another group) - by 8k at the start and by 24k (later on).

Two things here - first, the numbers I'm giving are explicitly the amount of "lag" - so they lag by 8k and they lag by 24k. They can't lag to almost 24k less. Also, I want to make those two lags parallel - they're performing the same function in the sentence. And D isn't parallel, even if the language for the 24k piece wasn't already problematic.

I still am not convinced why D is not the right answer. Below I have set in BOLD the problem with choosing E as the answer. While D mentions that the salary is less by an average of $8000 to almost [an average of] $24000, E creates a gap in the logical structure of the sentence by suggesting that salary is less by an average of $8000 and by almost 24000 [NO AVERAGE MENTIONED - ELIPSIS] .... This means while it is less by an average of $8000 initially it lags by exact amount $24000 at the end. I don't think this should be correct. But maybe it is..

D. those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers to almost $24,000 less
E. those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers, and by almost $24,000

[RonPurewal]

Ranjit has it - don't forget to look at earlier, relevant parts of the sentence.

A report indicates that salaries (of one group) lag far behind those of (another group) - by 8k at the start and by 24k (later on).

Two things here - first, the numbers I'm giving are explicitly the amount of "lag" - so they lag by 8k and they lag by 24k. They can't lag to almost 24k less. Also, I want to make those two lags parallel - they're performing the same function in the sentence. And D isn't parallel, even if the language for the 24k piece wasn't already problematic.

I still am not convinced why D is not the right answer. Below I have set in BOLD the problem with choosing E as the answer. While D mentions that the salary is less by an average of $8000 to almost [an average of] $24000, E creates a gap in the logical structure of the sentence by suggesting that salary is less by an average of $8000 and by almost 24000 [NO AVERAGE MENTIONED - ELIPSIS] .... This means while it is less by an average of $8000 initially it lags by exact amount $24000 at the end. I don't think this should be correct. But maybe it is..

D. those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers to almost $24,000 less
E. those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their careers, and by almost $24,000

3 comments.

one:
you said (emphasis mine): it lags by exact amount $24000 at the end.
no, that's not what it says. the sentence contains the word "almost", so it's specifically NOT an "exact amount".

two:
one of the golden rules of sentence correction is that you must not change the original meaning of the sentence, except in cases where the "original meaning" is self-contradictory, ambiguous, or nonsensical.
in this case, the "problem" that you've pointed out - i.e., the fact that the first figure is given as an average and the second figure isn't - is also present in the original sentence. therefore, although it may annoy you do to so, you must preserve that meaning in the correct answer choice.
the meaning of the original is sacrosanct.

three:
i don't believe this has yet been mentioned on this thread, but (a), (c), and (d) can all be eliminated because of the "less" at the end. the sentence already contains "lag ... behind ... by", so "less" is redundant and therefore unacceptable.
in fact, if you take it super-literally (which you must), it actually creates the wrong meaning: if i say "x lags behind y by $8000 less", that actually means that x lags behind y by a margin that's $8000 smaller than the original margin.
the correct wording is "x lags behind y by $8000" or "x is $8000 less than y", but NOT both.

[manish1sinha]

Could someone help me to understand how the clause after "comma and" is an independent one.

(E) those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their
careers, and by almost $24,000

[ya1ya2]

can we argue that choice C is very very wordy and akward?

i suppose so, although a much more serious issue is the lack of proper, unambiguous subject for 'making' (which seems to refer back to the salaries of the teachers, and not to the teachers themselves as intended).

what i find more interesting than anything else about this problem is the ambiguous 'their' in the answer choice deemed correct (and indeed in all the answer choices). it seems that gmac is breaking some of its own rules here.

Ron, What does they/their refer to in these answer choices? What is the antecedent? Is it teachers or college-educated professionals? Can you also explain why. Thanks.

[tim]

Could someone help me to understand how the clause after "comma and" is an independent one.

(E) those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their
careers, and by almost $24,000

No, because it is not an independent clause..

[tim]

Ron, What does they/their refer to in these answer choices? What is the antecedent? Is it teachers or college-educated professionals? Can you also explain why. Thanks.

It's "teachers", mainly because that's the only thing that makes logical sense. Given a choice, we'd like to get rid of the pronoun altogether because grammatically it is unclear which of those two options is the antecedent (or maybe it is "salaries"), but unfortunately we're stuck with the pronoun..

[ankitp]

Could someone help me to understand how the clause after "comma and" is an independent one.

(E) those of other college-educated professionals"”by an average of nearly $8,000 a year at the start of their
careers, and by almost $24,000

No, because it is not an independent clause..

Can you/instructor elaborate more on this? " , and " in this case looks like it should be an independent clause. Is this some other type of construction.

Thanks in advance.

[RonPurewal]

Can you/instructor elaborate more on this? " , and " in this case looks like it should be an independent clause. Is this some other type of construction.

Thanks in advance.

well, the best way i can describe it is to say that it's a very writerly thing to do -- it's a rhetorical device that gives additional emphasis to this particular point.

still, it's probably easiest to put your mind at ease with the following:
the gmat does NOT explicitly test punctuation!
i.e., if you think that an answer choice is incorrect solely for reasons of punctuation, you should look for something else; this won't be the case.