In the admissions process, universities have begun to focus more and more on recommendations from teachers and personal statements from students, in part that their student body should acquire diversity and partly because recommendations provide more personal appraisals of students' abilities.

A) in part that their student body should acquire diversity[pronoun THAT lacks an antecedent]
B) in part for the acquisition of diversity in their student body[although grammatically correct fails to maintain parallelism ]
C) partly because of their student body acquiring diversity[ present continuous tense is used when only present tense is required]
D) partly because diversity should be acquired by their student body[passive voice , eliminate]
E) partly to acquire diversity in their student body[correct , only E conveys the meaning and maintains parallelism]

the two things that the universities are trying to achieve through personal statements are :

1.acquire diversity in their student body

2.because recommendations provide more personal appraisals of students' abilities.

These two things are linked correctly by parallelism marker AND .

Its not always necessary when two clauses are made parallel they must start with same word , instead the parts that are parallel should convey the meaning and make sense.

Hey what is the source of this question?
This is a tweaked cousin of an OG question- cattle breeders one.

fibbonnaci wrote:Hey what is the source of this question?
This is a tweaked cousin of an OG question- cattle breeders one.

I agree the OG question has "partly to acquire diversity in their streets" ....


But I think I have read this one in OG verbal review .

rockeyb wrote:

fibbonnaci wrote:Hey what is the source of this question?
This is a tweaked cousin of an OG question- cattle breeders one.

I agree the OG question has "partly to acquire diversity in their streets" ....


But I think I have read this one in OG verbal review .

Nopes not that..
There is one partly to acquire certain traits in their cattle.....
It is a cross breeding of cattle question.

@fibbonnaci

This is the question :

"In recent years cattle breeders have increasingly used crossbreeding , in part that their streets should acquire certain characteristics and partly because crossbreeding is said to provide hybrid vigor "

yupp. so i want to know whats the source of the question posted!!!offlate i have observed a lot of these tweaked questions coming up. I want to know the source of these questions. quite puzzling!!

How is parallelism working in option E.

Option D, though in passive voice is parallel to partly because recommendations ... by using partly because diversity.

So any reason everyone is opting option E?

hai1 wrote:How is parallelism working in option E.

Option D, though in passive voice is parallel to partly because recommendations ... by using partly because diversity.

So any reason everyone is opting option E?

I agree with you my friend and may people will fall for the trap . Its a classic GMAT example .

Many will see "partly because diversity AND partly because recommendation"

and will consider it parallel (X AND Y)

In option D X (partly because diversity should be acquired by their student body- is passive voice) AND Y(partly because recommendations provide more personal appraisals of students' abilities. - is active)

Had it been the case that both X and Y are in passive voice then D would have been considered parallel but when clauses are made parallel we must see that both the clauses agree in tense and mood .

Also passive voice is almost always not preferred in GMAT unless it is absolutely necessary to convey the meaning .

Hope this helps.