Sentence Correction

The fanatical, young group of girls have been waiting in the concert line all night by the time the tickets go on sale.

a) have been waiting in the concert line all night
b) will have been waiting in the concert line each night
c) will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night
d) had been waiting in the concert line all night
e) has been waiting in the concert line the whole night

later

vipulgoyal wrote:The fanatical, young group of girls have been waiting in the concert line all night by the time the tickets go on sale.

a) have been waiting in the concert line all night
b) will have been waiting in the concert line each night
c) will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night
d) had been waiting in the concert line all night
e) has been waiting in the concert line the whole night

In A, have (plural) does not agree with group (singular).
Eliminate A.

Always look for TIME CLUES: words and phrases that pertain to time.
Here, by the time the tickets go on sale refers to the FUTURE.

D: The group HAD BEEN WAITING by time the tickets go on sale.
Here, had been waiting (past perfect) cannot serve to refer to a moment in the future (by the time the tickets go on sale).
Eliminate D.

E: The group HAS BEEN WAITING by the time the tickets go on sale.
Here, has been waiting (present perfect) cannot serve to refer to a moment in the future (by the time the tickets go on sale).
Eliminate E.

B: The group will have been waiting EACH NIGHT.
Here, will have been waiting implies CONTINUOUS ACTION, while each night implies an action taking place ONLY AT NIGHT.
The result is an unclear meaning.

The correct answer is C.

The FUTURE PERFECT is composed of will have + participles(s).
Its purpose is to express a future action that will be completed BEFORE ANOTHER MOMENT IN THE FUTURE.
C: The group will have been waiting the entire night by the time the tickets go on sale.
Here, will have been waiting (future perfect) implies the following sequence:
When the tickets go on sale -- sometime in the FUTURE -- the act of waiting the entire night will no longer be happening.

vipulgoyal wrote:The fanatical, young group of girls have been waiting in the concert line all night by the time the tickets go on sale.

a) have been waiting in the concert line all night
b) will have been waiting in the concert line each night
c) will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night
d) had been waiting in the concert line all night
e) has been waiting in the concert line the whole night

C

There are two key things that matter in this one. One is subject verb agreement. The other is tense.

Mitch already went over the details, so I am just going to describe a quick and dirty way to get it right even if you are not an expert on the concepts, because while it's great to know the concepts, when taking the test you might not know all of the concepts all the time.

So check this out.

When you look at the original form, if you are an expert, you probably know that the expression the group of takes a singular verb. If, however, you are not sure whether the verb should be singular or plural in form, you could still get this question right.

Here's how.

First you notice that the not underlined section talks about something going on in the future and in the original form the underlined part is talking about something going on in the past. Without much expertise, you can tell the two don't match up, unless possibly the sentence is being used by the director of a movie to describe a scenario. This is a GMAT practice question though. So before we choose such a convoluted path to a right answer, we can look for an answer that doesn't require such a stretch.

We can be pretty sure A is out.

D and E have basically the same thing going on. They have verbs in the singular and plural form, yup, but once again that distinction doesn't even matter because the past tenses in the underlined sections don't work with the future event discussed in the not underlined section.

So it looks as if D and E are out and we are down to B and C. Three down. Two to go.

Is there really anything wrong with B? Well, each is a little undefined and I guess it doesn't really make sense.

Looking at C, we see an easy choice. The sentence formed in using C is The fanatical, young group of girls will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night by the time the tickets go on sale.

Mercifully, when using C we don't even have to worry about subject verb agreement because will is both a singular and plural form.

The tense in C matches what's discussed in the not underlined part.

Meanwhile, C just makes sense, creating a sentence that clearly conveys that the group will have been waiting the entire night by the time the tickets go on sale.

So C is better than B, which has the unexplained each in it, and it looks as if by working it out, even without knowing all that much we can get the right answer.

Choose C.