Sentence Correction

According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business
Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge
tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year than those that charge over $16,000.

A. than those that charge
B. than are charging
C. than to charge
D. as charge
E. as those charging

[spoiler]Please explain your answer choice.IMO's will not help[/spoiler]

sandy217 wrote:According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business
Officers, more than three times as many independent institutions of higher education charge
tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year than those that charge over $16,000.

A. than those that charge
B. than are charging
C. than to charge
D. as charge
E. as those charging

[spoiler]Please explain your answer choice.IMO's will not help[/spoiler]

According to a 1996 survey by the National Association of College and University Business
Officers, more than three times [color=darkred]as many[/color] independent institutions of higher education charge
tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year than those that charge over $16,000.

A. than those that charge
B. than are charging
C. than to charge
D. as charge
E. as those charging


The un-underlined portion has "as many", so should be ended with another as as "as many as" is the correct usage.

Hence A, B and C are wrong

In option D the pronoun "those " is missing i.e. independent institutions of higher education are being compared to nothing.

In simple terms:

more than three times as many independent institutions charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as charge over $16,000.

more than three times as many independent institutions charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year as those charging over $16,000.

as many x as y

where x is independent institutions.

In option D y is missing and in option E y is the pronoun "those".

Suprisingly OA is different. D

Then it's really a surprise.
What is the source of the question and what is the explanation given?

GMATToppers wrote:Then it's really a surprise.
What is the source of the question and what is the explanation given?

No explanations given. Source is some PDF, which is collection of questions from various sources
(OG,1000SC.....etc)

Hi,
OA-D could be a typo. This has been discussed recently in another thread. In case you want to look into that thread for opinions, follow:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/comparison-t83475.html

E cannot be the answer, because then there would be no main verb in the latter part of the comparison ("charging" is not a verb).

EducationAisle wrote:E cannot be the answer, because then there would be no main verb in the latter part of the comparison ("charging" is not a verb).

Hi,
Can you let us know the answer with explanation.

Since there is no change in tense and context getting justified in the original sentence, changing charge in the first part of the sentence to charging in the second part (as in E) is making it non-parallel.

An easy way to tackle this question (as it works for many comparison problems) is to break it down simplistically:

a. X independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees of under $8,000 a year
b. Y independent institutions of higher education charge tuition and fees over $16,000 a year

The ideal choice would have been: as those that charge.

But, given the answer choices, D looks the best.

Hi Mitch,

Could you please shed some lights on D and E? which one is right and why?

I think the completed version should be: x times as many institutions charge A as those charge B.

and here we cannot change "charge" to "charging" but the "those" can be omitted as it has appeared in preceding sentence. Is this understanding right?

thank you very much!

Kajiabeat wrote:Hi Mitch,

Could you please shed some lights on D and E? which one is right and why?

I think the completed version should be: x times as many institutions charge A as those charge B.

and here we cannot change "charge" to "charging" but the "those" can be omitted as it has appeared in preceding sentence. Is this understanding right?

thank you very much!

I posted an explanation here:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/comparision- ... tml#351640

Thank you very much!