lheiannie07 wrote:In a recent poll, 86 percent of the public favored a Clean Air Act as strong or stronger than the present act.
(A) a Clean Air Act as strong or stronger than
(B) a Clean Air Act that is stronger, or at least so strong as,
(C) at least as strong a Clean Air Act as is
(D) a Clean Air Act as strong or stronger than is
(E) a Clean Air Act at least as strong as
What is wrong with other options?
OA E[/i]
This question tests us on the concepts of
Comparisons and
Parallelism. The GMAT requires that the two elements being compared are (logically and grammatically) parallel. There are couple of constructions that the GMAT favors for doing a comparison, namely -
A.
as +
adjective/adverb +
as - e.g., as
many as, as
much as, as
less as, as
few as, as
great as, as
high as, etc. Note that in this construction the first and second '
as' are
mandatory, and should come in a
pair. The example illustrates this concept:
John has as much money - INCORRECT: we need the first
as
John has as much money as Sam - CORRECT
B.
any comparative (more/greater/better/higher/less/fewer etc.) +
than - On the GMAT, any comparative (i.e., a word that compares two things, and [usually] ends with an '-er')
MUST be followed by a '
than', and not other constructions such as 'as compared to', 'when compared to', 'rather than', etc.
Example -
John has fewer apples than Sam - CORRECT
John has fewer apples when compared to Sam - INCORRECT
Now, let us apply these concepts to the question above:
Option A - a Clean Air Act
as strong or stronger than -
INCORRECT: we need the second '
as' as per the construction A
Option B - a Clean Air Act that is
stronger, or at least
so strong as, -
INCORRECT: we need a '
than' after 'stronger' (construction B); Additionally, there is no such construction as
so..as - we need a
as..as OR a
so..as to (for indicating a cause-effect relationship)
Option C - at least as strong a Clean Air Act as is -
INCORRECT: While this option does use the correct comparison construction in A, the whole sentence is written in a very indirect and convoluted manner. What the public favored ('a Clean Air Act') should come immediately after the verb instead of 'at least'. Furthermore,
as strong a Clean Air Act (
noun)
as is (
verb) is not in parallel.
Option D - a Clean Air Act
as strong or stronger than is -
INCORRECT: same as A; 'a Clean Air Act' (
noun) is not parallel with 'is the..' (
verb).
Option E - a Clean Air Act at least as strong as -
CORRECT: This option correctly used the comparison construction '
as..as', and is perfectly parallel.
Hence option E is the correct answer.
Please let me know in case anything doesn't make sense.
