At Shiprock, New Mexico, a perenially

[Jkravitz]

At Shiprock, New Mexico, a perennially powerful girls’ high school basketball team has become a path to college for some and a source of pride for a community where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are below the poverty level.

(A) where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are
(B) where they have 49 percent of the household incomes
(C) where 49 percent of the household incomes are
(D) which has 49 percent of the household incomes
(E) in which 49 percent of them have household incomes

Please remind me of when to use to Which VS Where. I am also not sure if I got this question correct, by luck or because my reasoning was correct.

I felt the problem with using "Which" in the above sentence is that "Which" refers directly back to "Community" and the sentence should refer back to Shiprock New Mexico. If so why does "Where" do that?

I elimanted D,E
I next elimanted A,B because of pronoun issues "They" and "Them" does not seem to have a clear antecedent
Leaving me with the answer Choice C.

[StaceyKoprince]

Generally "where" is used for physical locations - otherwise, we have to use a variant such as "in which." Other variants include "at which" and "for which." Both "where" and "in which" refer to the community, which has already been established as a physical location (Shiprock New Mexico), so we can use "where." We could also use "in which" - this just means "in the community" which is also grammatically correct.

The key is that the only "in which" option given has a pronoun error, so I don't have a grammatically correct option that uses "in which." That leaves me with "where" by default.

A, B, and E all have pronoun errors. D would have to have a comma before the which and the verb "has" makes the sentence awkward. The community doesn't "have" household incomes. The individual members of the community do.

[sheetal]

Generally "where" is used for physical locations - otherwise, we have to use a variant such as "in which." Other variants include "at which" and "for which." Both "where" and "in which" refer to the community, which has already been established as a physical location (Shiprock New Mexico), so we can use "where." We could also use "in which" - this just means "in the community" which is also grammatically correct.

The key is that the only "in which" option given has a pronoun error, so I don't have a grammatically correct option that uses "in which." That leaves me with "where" by default.

A, B, and E all have pronoun errors. D would have to have a comma before the which and the verb "has" makes the sentence awkward. The community doesn't "have" household incomes. The individual members of the community do.

I didn't quite understand Stacey's point in which she mentions that which has already been established as a physical location (Shiprock New Mexico), so we can use "where." . Can someone explain this?

Is it mandatory for a (grammatically correct) construct with "which" to have a comma always infront of "which" ?

Thanks in advance.

[RonPurewal]

Generally "where" is used for physical locations - otherwise, we have to use a variant such as "in which." Other variants include "at which" and "for which." Both "where" and "in which" refer to the community, which has already been established as a physical location (Shiprock New Mexico), so we can use "where." We could also use "in which" - this just means "in the community" which is also grammatically correct.

The key is that the only "in which" option given has a pronoun error, so I don't have a grammatically correct option that uses "in which." That leaves me with "where" by default.

A, B, and E all have pronoun errors. D would have to have a comma before the which and the verb "has" makes the sentence awkward. The community doesn't "have" household incomes. The individual members of the community do.

I didn't quite understand Stacey's point in which she mentions that which has already been established as a physical location (Shiprock New Mexico), so we can use "where." . Can someone explain this?

Is it mandatory for a (grammatically correct) construct with "which" to have a comma always infront of "which" ?

Thanks in advance.

stacey is saying that you can't use the word 'where' unless you've established that you're talking about a physical location. in this particular problem, you have indeed established such a thing, because shiprock, n.m., is definitely a physical location.

stacey is not saying that the word 'which' has been established as a physical location, in case you read her sentence that way.

--

re: your other question
as far as we can tell from our rather extensive research, the gmat does not use 'which' without commas. if you have a modifier that is not preceded by a comma - i.e., an essential modifier - then you use 'that', not 'which'.

[anoo_anand]

where 49 percent of the household incomes are

should not the highlighted portion be singular ? in C ?

10% of workforce - i remember was singular in some other question.

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

where 49 percent of the household incomes are

should not the highlighted portion be singular ? in C ?

10% of workforce - i remember was singular in some other question.

Thanks

nope.

"X% of Y" is singular if Y is singular, and plural if Y is plural.

since "workforce" is singular, "49% of the workforce" is also singular.

since "household incomes" is plural, "49% of the household incomes" is also plural.

(since "this household's income" is singular, "49% of this household's income" would also be singular)

[gowrishankar.ts]

Absolutely loving the explanations.
I understand that E is wrong coz of hte pronoun, but I still cant wrap my head around the use of where.
I am led to believe that we can use "where", if we can establish that the noun that it modifies is a location, but in this case, the sentence starts off with At Shiprock, new mexico...yada yada, the community...
This implies that, AT shiprock mexico, the community did something....i strongly feel the construction of the question is wrong...the correct answer choice should have had a correct version of "in which"

[RonPurewal]

Absolutely loving the explanations.
I understand that E is wrong coz of hte pronoun, but I still cant wrap my head around the use of where.
I am led to believe that we can use "where", if we can establish that the noun that it modifies is a location, but in this case, the sentence starts off with At Shiprock, new mexico...yada yada, the community...
This implies that, AT shiprock mexico, the community did something....i strongly feel the construction of the question is wrong...the correct answer choice should have had a correct version of "in which"

the "community" in this problem very clearly refers to a physical, location-based community, so the use of "where" is just fine.
i'm not sure whether you could use "where" to refer to less geographically defined communities. for instance, the use of "where" to refer to a community of posters on the internet would probably be suspicious.

...but maybe not. i also remember another official problem in which "where" was used to refer to a society. so perhaps we should extend our use of "where" to include networks such as community, family, society, etc.

[phuonglink]

Thanks all for your explanations and questions related to this SC. This is a kind of SC from which i've learnt many invaluable things.

[jnelson0612]

phuong, that's great to hear.

[vinay.rsm]

was looking for an explanation to this question.

I am a customer of MGMAT and must say that is just pure brilliance from their staff!

[tim]

hi Vinay, i hope you found what you were looking for!

[sudhir.18n]

Hi Ron, Stacey and all...

I'm just wondering whether the meaning in C is right?

The question says "for a community where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are" this means Household income of 49% of people have income below

C says : where 49 percent of the household incomes are
this means 49% of the household income i

isnt the meaning of C completely different? am I missing anything?

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron, Stacey and all...

I'm just wondering whether the meaning in C is right?

The question says "for a community where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are" this means Household income of 49% of people have income below

C says : where 49 percent of the household incomes are
this means 49% of the household income

isnt the meaning of C completely different? am I missing anything?

Thanks

remember that you can use common sense to decide which of two possible interpretations is more sensible.

if you are talking about household income, then the only reasonable way to quantify that statistic is according to the number of households, not according to the number of people. (in the case of per-capita income, it would be the other way around.)
since this is the more reasonable interpretation, you should switch the meaning to accommodate it.

[shyamsundar1.g]

I understand the explanation for correct option.May i know why option D is wrong.I can see it has pronoun error.But can an expert take us thorough this.

(D) which has 49 percent of the household incomes

Thanks for your support.