Sentence Correction

Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules in favor of clients; auditors may, for instance, allow a questionable loan to remain on the books in order to maintain a bank's profits on paper.

(A) clients; auditors may, for instance, allow
(B) clients, as an instance, to allow
(C) clients, like to allow
(D) clients, such as to be allowing
(E) clients; which might, as an instance, be the allowing of

Really challenging question. Don't know how to eliminate wrong choices here.

vishalwin wrote:Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules in favor of clients; auditors may, for instance, allow a questionable loan to remain on the books in order to maintain a bank's profits on paper.

(A) clients; auditors may, for instance, allow

This works. The semicolon connects two independent clauses, the modifiers work and everything is clear.

(B) clients, as an instance, to allow

So the clients are an instance? Also, if we cut out part of the sentence, we get Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules, as an instance to allow... What that means I do not know.

(C) clients, like to allow

What is like what???

(D) clients, such as to be allowing

Do you know what this means? I don't know what this means.

Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules such as to be allowing...

(E) clients; which might, as an instance, be the allowing of

The structure created using this choice does not have two independent clauses separated by the semicolon. Even if you don't know about semicolons, the modifier starting with which might seems to modifying clients, creating a nonsensical sentence.

If you seek to get this right by looking up rules in a rule book, you may have trouble figuring out which answer is best. If you read for meaning and just look to see which choice creates the most effective sentence, you will pretty readily find that the best choice is A.

can you please explain why OPTION C is wrong. I thought "to allow" is parallel to bend" or "to remain"

vishalwin wrote:can you please explain why OPTION C is wrong. I thought "to allow" is parallel to bend" or "to remain"

Hi vishalwin.

You seem to be getting way too focused on technical rules.

Even if to allow is similar to to bend and to remain, those three constructions are not parts of a list. So it does not really make sense to call them parallel, and it does not make sense to choose an answer choice merely because it contains those three similar constructions.

Let's look at the sentence created using choice C.

Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules in favor of clients, like to allow a questionable loan to remain on the books in order to maintain a bank's profits on paper.

This first part makes sense.

Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules in favor of clients

However, the modifier, like to allow..., does not really work.

Like is usually used to begin modifiers that modify nouns. Here is an example.

Jim, like John, is a person who prefers honesty to diplomacy.

So like John modifies Jim.

In the sentence created using choice C, however, like is used in an unidiomatic way and seems in a way to be beginning a modifier that modifies clients, but that does make sense.

To simplify what we are looking at, let's take out in favor of clients.

Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules, like to allow a questionable loan to remain on the books in order to maintain a bank's profits on paper.

I guess I can see why someone might think that that is correct, but the use of a modifier that begins with like is not really right in that situation. It's just not idiomatically correct.

What would be more correct is the following.

Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules in favor of clients by, for instance, allowing a questionable loan to remain on the books in order to maintain a bank's profits on paper.

vishalwin wrote:can you please explain why OPTION C is wrong. I thought "to allow" is parallel to bend" or "to remain"

X is like Y.
In this context, like is a preposition that means SIMILAR TO.
Conveyed meaning:
X is similar to Y.

Generally, COMMA + like serves to refer to the NEAREST PRECEDING SUBJECT.
An OA from GMAC:
Dr. Barbara Mc-Clintock reported that genes can jump, like pearls moving mysteriously from one necklace to another.
Here, like pearls serves to refer to genes -- the nearest preceding subject -- conveying that GENES are similar to PEARLS.

C: Growing competitive pressures may be encouraging auditors to bend the rules in favor of clients, like to allow a questionable loan to remain on the books.
Here, like to allow seems to refer to auditors -- subject of the nearest preceding action to bend -- implying that AUDITORS are similar to TO ALLOW.
This meaning is nonsensical.
Eliminate C.

Also:
An infinitive (to + VERB) may not serve as the object of a preposition such as like.

GMATGuruNY wrote: Generally, COMMA + like serves to refer to the NEAREST PRECEDING SUBJECT.
An OA from GMAC:
Dr. Barbara Mc-Clintock reported that genes can jump, like pearls moving mysteriously from one necklace to another.
Here, like pearls serves to refer to genes -- the nearest preceding subject -- conveying that GENES are similar to PEARLS.

Hello Mitch, wanted to know if this is something special with COMMA + like or does like behave in the same manner even without a comma. For example:

Larry Bird played aggressively like Magic Johnson.

Is this a correct sentence? Or should it be:

Larry Bird played aggressively, like Magic Johnson.

Basically is there a special role that the comma is playing? I do understand that comma is required in the following case:

Larry Bird, like Magic Johnson, played aggressively.

Hello Mitch, can you please reply to my post above.

Note the difference in meaning:

John plays basketball, like Michael Jordan.
Conveyed meaning:
John is SIMILAR TO Michael Jordan.

John plays like Michael Jordan.
Conveyed meaning:
John plays IN THE MANNER OF Michael Jordan.