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hard question

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by ArunangsuSahu » Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:40 pm
Here two parallel structures are

a) to pay off the debt
b) and to profit richly

also it will be pay the debt with
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by mourinhogmat1 » Mon Jan 16, 2012 5:54 pm
Actually the correct way to look at the question would be to look at the verb which initiates the parellelism. In this case, the correct subject-verb pair is "investors borrow huge sums of money" -- to do what?

1) to buy companies
2) to profit richly.

Answer is E.

PS: Do not try to do 3-2 split at the beginning of the sentence, because I believe all the answers appear correct at the start of the underlined section.
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by shekhar.kataria » Mon Jan 16, 2012 8:16 pm
Hi All

I was down to choices A and E and i had no idea od singular/plural possessives which i just read in the posts following the Question.

Though i find no reason to eliminate one between "with using" and "by using ", i choose the later and hense chosen A, which unfortunately is not the correct choice.

Can anyone explain any way out to choose between A and E except using possessives information.

Thanks in advance.
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hard question

by e-GMAT » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:40 am
Hi,

In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt by using the company's earnings and to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

Image

"¢ In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to do two things:
o to pay off the debt with companies' earning, and
o to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

Image

1. "pay off debt by using..."is unidiomatic. We can say: The company plans to "pay off debt by the end of this year" or "by January 2014". After "by" we can refer to a time frame. But the correct idiomatic expression to "pay off debt" using something is "pay off debt with...". Hence we have idiom error here. Consider this sentence from an article published in The Wall Street Journal on Jan 30, 2011:
Under the terms of the new deal, SL Green will pay off the debt with a short-term bridge loan, people said. https://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 54144.html

2. Notice that throughout the sentence, "companies" has been referred to as plural entity - "buy companies", "resale of the companies or their divisions". Hence, use of singular "company" in the underlined portion of the sentence is not correct.

POE:

A. by using the company's earnings and to profit: Incorrect as discussed above.

B. by using the companies' earnings and by profiting: Incorrect.
a. Same idiom error as in A.
b. This choice changes the entities in the parallel list and hence distorts the meaning of the sentence. The sentence now means: In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt :
i. by using the companies' earnings and
ii. by profiting richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions. Now this is non-sensical because investors cannot pay debt by making profits through resale.

C. using the companies' earnings and profiting: Incorrect.
a. In absence of preceding commas, "using" and "profiting" non-sensically refer to "debt".

D. with the company's earnings, profiting: Incorrect. Same parallelism and hence the meaning error as in B.

E. with the companies' earnings and to profit: Correct. This choice uses the correct idiom, the entities in the list are parallel and plural "companies" is consistent throughout the sentence.

Image

1. Identify the logical parallel list in the sentence.
2. The entities in the list must be grammatically as well as logically parallel.
3. Change in the list may lead to change in the logical intended meaning of the sentence.
4. If there is no comma before the verb-ing, then it modifies the immediate preceding noun.
5. Idioms must be correctly worded.

The concepts tested in this sentence have been covered in e-gmat concepts:
1. Level 1 - Parallelism - Identify and Correct
2. Level 1 - Parallelism - Helpful Tips
3. Level 1 - Modifiers - Verb-ing (This concept features in Level 1 Preview Concepts that are available for free. Just register and learn.)

@Shekhar: Apart from the number of "companies", use of incorrect idiom is another error in choice A.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

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by shekhar.kataria » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:47 am
Thanks Shradha

For clearing the doubt about the idiom and now i have one more idiom in the list of idioms.
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by [email protected] » Thu Jun 13, 2013 11:57 pm
No one except E follows the parallelism... IMO is E
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by tarik » Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:58 pm
Wrongly chose answer B.
I agree with the explanation of Mitch.
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by Java_85 » Mon Sep 23, 2013 9:13 am
IMO E,
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by pareekbharat86 » Mon Oct 28, 2013 7:48 pm
bupbebeo wrote:In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt by using the company's earnings and to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

A. by using the company's earnings and to profit
B. by using the companies' earnings and by profiting
C. using the companies' earnings and profiting
D. with the company's earnings, profiting
E. with the companies' earnings and to profit

Please give me right answer and explanation in details
One should take care of parallelism here. 'By hoping to pay' should be followed by 'to profit' and not 'profiting'. Therefore, eliminate B, C, D. Between A and E, E is the clear choice since it uses the word companies'. Notice that the original sentence has 'investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies' i.e. 'companies'. We should use plural throughout with respect to companies. My money is on E.
Thanks,
Bharat.
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by [email protected] » Mon Dec 09, 2013 9:02 pm
It should be E- Coz its parallel to "Hoping to pay off the debt and to profit richly"


bupbebeo wrote:In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt by using the company's earnings and to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

A. by using the company's earnings and to profit
B. by using the companies' earnings and by profiting
C. using the companies' earnings and profiting
D. with the company's earnings, profiting
E. with the companies' earnings and to profit

Please give me right answer and explanation in details
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by jaspreetsra » Thu Nov 13, 2014 12:23 am
In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt by using the company's earnings and to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

A. by using the company's earnings and to profit
B. by using the companies' earnings and by profiting
C. using the companies' earnings and profiting
D. with the company's earnings, profiting
E. with the companies' earnings and to profit

should be either B or C. Not sure!
My preference is B.
:(
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by GMATGuruNY » Thu Nov 13, 2014 3:59 am
jaspreetsra wrote:In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt by using the company's earnings and to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

A. by using the company's earnings and to profit
B. by using the companies' earnings and by profiting
C. using the companies' earnings and profiting
D. with the company's earnings, profiting
E. with the companies' earnings and to profit
In A and D, company's (singular) does not agree with companies (plural).
Eliminate A and D.

B: investors...hoping to pay off debt...by profiting richly
C: investors...hoping to pay off debt...using earnings...and profiting richly
B and C imply that profiting richly is HOW investors will pay off debt.
Not the intended meaning.
Rather, profits are the GOAL:
investors...hoping TO PROFIT RICHLY.
Eliminate B and C.

The correct answer is E.
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by nikhilgmat31 » Tue Jul 14, 2015 12:25 am
bupbebeo wrote:
pradeepkaushal9518 wrote:in sentence correction i learned that

1.first compare all answer find the words which changes its form in each sentence.
2. find the error and eliminate the options
3.find the rules whether parallel,idioms,singular/plural forms/modifiers etcs then then eliminates other options.
4. when left with 1 or 2 options listen which sentence sounds better normally 80 % works
5.then choose yr answer

pradeep


3/2 is basic elimination stategy in SC in GMAT.

Mostly 3 out of 5 choices differ from other 2 choices based on 1 word or preposition etc.

you can directly eliminate 3 or 2 choices.
plz post your learnings also

I see many people use 3/2 split. what does it mean? anyone can answer me?
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by nikhilgmat31 » Tue Jul 14, 2015 12:28 am
Excellent elimination by GMATGuru.
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by supratikchanda » Sat Sep 26, 2015 2:00 am
option a
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