Sentence Correction

After decreasing steadily in the mid-1990's, the percentage of students in the United States finishing high school or having earned equivalency diplomas increased in the last three years of the decade, up to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and 84.8 percent in 1998.

(A) finishing high school or having earned equivalency diplomas increased in the last three years of the decade, up to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and
(B) finishing high school or earning equivalency diplomas, increasing in the last three years of the decade, rising to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and from
(C) having finished high school or earning an equivalency diploma increased in the last three years of the decade, and rose to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and from
(D) who either finished high school or they earned an equivalency diploma, increasing in the last three years of the decade, rose to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and
(E) who finished high school or earned equivalency diplomas increased in the last three years of the decade, to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and


OA is E .

Could someone explain A and C please, why they are wrong. ALl reasons please.

(A) finishing modifies United States
(B) increase and rise redundant
(C) increase and rise redundant
(D) either X or Y... X and Y not parallel
(E) who finished high school or earned equivalency diplomas increased in the last three years of the decade, to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and
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shovan85 wrote:(A) finishing modifies United States
(B) increase and rise redundant
(C) increase and rise redundant
(D) either X or Y... X and Y not parallel
(E) who finished high school or earned equivalency diplomas increased in the last three years of the decade, to 86.5 percent in 2000 from 85.9 percent in 1999 and
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A has Verb+ing modifier error. "finishing" modifies US instead the "students".

To cross check, try remove the prepositional phrase "i n the United States ", now finishing modifies to students.

E: {relative pronoun & parallelism & idiom, parallelism }

{who, & finished high school or earned equivalency diplomas & from ..to, in 1999 and in 1998. }

All things are rightly and properly used.

1. NOUN + Verbing:
The verbing without comma modifies the NOUN immediately before the verbing.

Example
I know the boy working in the factory.

This sentence has two meaning:
1. I know the boy who is working in the factory.
2. I know the boy while I was working in the factory.
This kills A, B , and C

2. Either X or Y-X and Y MUST be grammatically parallel.
This kills D.

Answer is E.

shovan85 wrote: (D) either X or Y... X and Y not parallel

I was able to get down to E as other seems bad...
runner up was D
but that was not reason i crossed D....infact it seems to follow either x or Y pattern to distract things...

Problems were
either finished high school or they earned an equivalency ......use of they which adds ambuity
and increasing in the last three years of the decade, rose to
increasing and rose give same meaning ...dont need both
so easy kill eventually..

frank1 wrote:

shovan85 wrote: (D) either X or Y... X and Y not parallel

I was able to get down to E as other seems bad...
runner up was D
but that was not reason i crossed D....infact it seems to follow either x or Y pattern to distract things...

Problems were
either finished high school or they earned an equivalency ......use of they which adds ambuity
and increasing in the last three years of the decade, rose to
increasing and rose give same meaning ...dont need both
so easy kill eventually..

Whatever is the reason if you remove the either finished high school or from D you can clearly see the redundancy who they thus X and Y are not parallel

gmat_perfect wrote:1. NOUN + Verbing:
The verbing without comma modifies the NOUN immediately before the verbing.

Example
I know the boy working in the factory.

This sentence has two meaning:
1. I know the boy who is working in the factory.
2. I know the boy while I was working in the factory.
This kills A, B , and C

2. Either X or Y-X and Y MUST be grammatically parallel.
This kills D.

Answer is E.

could you please explain why D is out