Beat The GMAT a GMAT & MBA community

brief explanations:

(a)
"and with ..." isn't parallel to anything.
AND sets up parallelism, so there must be something to which "with..." can be parallel (other prepositional phrase, or other adverbial modifier). there is no such thing.

(b)
correct.
this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (i have no idea what it's called - sorry)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

note that the presence of frozen water SUPPORTS the claim that europa is "far too cold to support life", so it should be a MODIFIER.
this is done here.
it's inappropriate to place these two things in parallel with AND.

(c)
AND is rhetorically inappropriate (see above).
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(d)
this is not a sentence. (the clause before "and" doesn't have a verb; "considered" is a participle, not a verb, here)
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(e)
i don't think "considered to be" is wrong, although it's wordier than just "considered..."
this sentence has no verb at all! the only verb forms present are participles and infinitives, none of which is eligible to be the main verb of the sentence.

_________________
Ron is a Director of Curriculum Development at Manhattan GMAT. He has been teaching various standardized tests for almost 20 years.

He wears white after Labor Day, gets 55% of his calories from protein, and takes standardized tests for fun.

Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron o en inglés o en español.

If you send Ron a private message, please allow 1-2 weeks for a response.

Learn more about ron

this is indeed a correct pattern, but it only works if the noun in question is an ABSTRACT noun (i.e., not a concrete object, person, etc). such as "activity", "finding", "idea", "notion", "statistic", etc.

this sort of modifier (COMMA + ABSTRACT NOUN) can be used to refer back to the WHOLE IDEA of the preceding clause.

let's say that scientists discover that X is 60 percent of Y, and that they are shocked by this finding.

then:
recent studies have shown that X is 60 percent of Y, which has shocked many in the scientific community.
incorrect.
this sentence implies that Y itself has shocked many in the scientific community. that's not true.

recent studies have shown that X is 60 percent of Y, a finding that has shocked many in the scientific community.
or
recent studies have shown that X is 60 percent of Y, a statistic that has shocked many in the scientific community.
these are correct.
the abstract noun "finding" or "statistic" may refer to the whole idea of the preceding clause.

in fact, that's the whole point of these modifiers. they are fatally awkward in spoken language (i.e., you can NEVER EVER say them out loud), but they do things that more "normal-sounding" modifiers (such as "which") aren't allowed to do.

for 2 problems that use this sort of modifier, see:
* #59 in the purple OG verbal supplement (in which this sort of modifier is present in the NON underlined section)
* #79 in the same source (in which it's present in the correct answer choice)

--

on the other hand, COMMA + CONCRETE NOUN is normally used to refer to the preceding noun (much like "which").

for instance:
james went for dinner and drinks with mr. easton, a consultant from the west end.
here, "a consultant" is a concrete noun. it only describes "mr. easton", not the whole idea of the preceding clause.

james went for dinner and drinks with mr. easton, an outing that was much more enjoyable than working all day.
here, "an outing" is abstract. it describes the whole previous clause (going for dinner and drinks).

_________________
Ron is a Director of Curriculum Development at Manhattan GMAT. He has been teaching various standardized tests for almost 20 years.

He wears white after Labor Day, gets 55% of his calories from protein, and takes standardized tests for fun.

Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron o en inglés o en español.

If you send Ron a private message, please allow 1-2 weeks for a response.

Learn more about ron

brief explanations:

(a)
"and with ..." isn't parallel to anything.
AND sets up parallelism, so there must be something to which "with..." can be parallel (other prepositional phrase, or other adverbial modifier). there is no such thing.

(b)
correct.
this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (i have no idea what it's called - sorry)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

note that the presence of frozen water SUPPORTS the claim that europa is "far too cold to support life", so it should be a MODIFIER.
this is done here.
it's inappropriate to place these two things in parallel with AND.

(c)
AND is rhetorically inappropriate (see above).
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(d)
this is not a sentence. (the clause before "and" doesn't have a verb; "considered" is a participle, not a verb, here)
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(e)
i don't think "considered to be" is wrong, although it's wordier than just "considered..."
this sentence has no verb at all!
the only verb forms present are participles and infinitives, none of which is eligible to be the main verb of the sentence.

_________________
Ron is a Director of Curriculum Development at Manhattan GMAT. He has been teaching various standardized tests for almost 20 years.

He wears white after Labor Day, gets 55% of his calories from protein, and takes standardized tests for fun.

Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron o en inglés o en español.

If you send Ron a private message, please allow 1-2 weeks for a response.

Learn more about ron

no.
look, you're right - this construction is going to look really strange if you've never seen it. in fact, i acknowledged exactly this point above - it's a really weird construction.
here's what i wrote:
remember the following principle, which will greatly simplify your test-taking life:
* if it appears in an officially correct answer, it's correct.
i don't know whether it says so above, but this is an official problem (it's from the gmatprep software). given that fact, any time you spend trying to question the officially correct answer is 0% productive and 100% wasted.

also, remember the following principle:
it's much, much more important to RECOGNIZE EXAMPLES of grammatical constructions than to explain the actual rules behind those examples.
really.
think about the way you evaluate your own native language. if you come across an example of sloppy writing in your native language, HOW do you recognize it as sloppy? do you actually apply a bunch of formal rules to it?
no, you don't - you just realize, "hey, that doesn't look like what i've seen before." it's pure recognition.

you should try to get to this point with sentence correction.
when you get to this sort of obscure construction, just remember what it looks like and in what context it's found, so you can recognize similar examples in the future.

the poster above has been kind enough to provide the label for this structure: it's called an "absolute phrase". (i didn't know this before.)
that is tremendously useful for looking up more examples online, but, if you actually have to use such labels while you're solving sentence correction problems, you're going to be in some trouble as far as time management is concerned.

_________________
Ron is a Director of Curriculum Development at Manhattan GMAT. He has been teaching various standardized tests for almost 20 years.

He wears white after Labor Day, gets 55% of his calories from protein, and takes standardized tests for fun.

Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron o en inglés o en español.

If you send Ron a private message, please allow 1-2 weeks for a response.

Learn more about ron