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Please explain

by Puja3838 » Tue May 29, 2012 11:59 am
Question from "The Princeton Review"

Q. The First Choice to be made during a car audio system BEING INSTALLED IS IF TO BUY an amplifier to increase the strength of the signal that the speakers will receive.

A . ....
B. being installed is whether they should be buying
C. being installed is whether or not to to buy
D. installation is if they should buy
E. installation is whether they should buy

The correct answer is E - I wonder "they" used in answer refers to whom/what?
Please explain.

Thank You.
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by Mike@Magoosh » Tue May 29, 2012 12:59 pm
Puja3838 wrote:Question from "The Princeton Review"

Q. The First Choice to be made during a car audio system BEING INSTALLED IS IF TO BUY an amplifier to increase the strength of the signal that the speakers will receive.
A . ....
B. being installed is whether they should be buying
C. being installed is whether or not to to buy
D. installation is if they should buy
E. installation is whether they should buy

The correct answer is E - I wonder "they" used in answer refers to whom/what?
Please explain.
Dear Puja3838

To be honest, I am not impressed with the quality of this question. There are many sources for GMAT practice questions, and not all of them are of high quality.

One of the splits in this question is the "if"/"whether" split, and that's a good one to understand. See this blog for more on that:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-sente ... s-whether/

It's true that "during ... installation" is more direct and less awkward than "during ... being installed." BUT, you are perfectly correct: the pronoun "they" has no clear antecedent, and that would never ever, never in a 1000 years, be the least bit acceptable on the real GMAT. The GMAT regularly created wrong answer choices with pronouns lacking clear antecedents --- it skewers folks who think choices like (E) are correct on the real test.

Soon, Magoosh will be releasing GMAT book reviews on our blog, but I'll give you a preview right now. Princeton Review got a D+. By contrast, here's some high quality SC help ---

Check out this free video lesson:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/600-gen ... strategies

Here's a SC practice question:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/1105
When you submit your answer, the following page will have the complete video explanation. Each of our 800+ questions has its own video explanation.

I hope that's helpful. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Mike :)
Magoosh GMAT Instructor
https://gmat.magoosh.com/
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