Sentence Correction

Unlike mainstream American businesses, more than half of which fail, the failure rate for
businesses in the Amish community hovers around 5 percent.

A. Unlike mainstream American businesses, more than half of which fail
B. Unlike mainstream American businesses, in which the failure rate is more than half
C. Unlike mainstream American businesses, where more than half of them fail
D. While the rate of mainstream American businesses failing is more than half
E. While more than half of mainstream American businesses fail

OE E

Why E and not D?Please Explain

akash singhal wrote:
Why E and not D?Please Explain

D: the rate is...more than half
Half of WHAT?
Eliminate D.

the rate of business
in d
is not logic

if we use our common sense of this world.

Hi Mitch,

I've intially chosen option D) as it sounded parallel to me while E) didn't

"While the rate of...., the failure rate..." -> while the X..., the Y

So why E doesn't need to be parallel?

Is "failing" in option D) wrong?" The rate of american business failing"
Does the usage of " failure" correct it??

Thanks.

Joe

When we start a sentence with "unlike X, Y", we have to follow the following rules:
1. A comparison has already been started between X and Y.
2. X cannot be a clause.
3. X cannot be a prepositional phrase.
4. X and Y MUST be grammatically and logically parallel.

For this question, we have to use COMPARISON and MEANING to pick the correct answer.

Unlike mainstream American businesses, more than half of which fail, the failure rate for businesses in the Amish community hovers around 5 percent.

A. Unlike mainstream American businesses, more than half of which fail
Wrong. incorrect comparison (mainstream American business vs the rate)

B. Unlike mainstream American businesses, in which the failure rate is more than half
Wrong. incorrect comparison (mainstream American business vs the rate)

C. Unlike mainstream American businesses, where more than half of them fail
Wrong. incorrect comparison (mainstream American business vs the rate). Also "where" is wrong because where is only used to refer places.

D. While the rate of mainstream American businesses failing is more than half
Wrong. correct comparison, but WRONG MEANING. "The rate is more than half" does not make sense. Half of what? half of 1% (0.5%); or half of 100% (50%). We never say "the rate is half". It's wrong.
i. The expression "businesses failing" the way it appears in this choice is not idiomatic.
ii. The phrase "rate is more than half" is not idiomatic. The correct expression is "rate is less than 50%" or "rate is more than 10%".

E. While more than half of mainstream American businesses fail
Correct. "more than half of X fail" = the rate is more than 50%. MEANING is the first priority in this question.
The first thing to note here is that we are not bound by the limitations of "Unlike" in this choice. Here "more than half" denotes the rate of the mainstream American businesses that fail. So the comparison is logical. And construction is also parallel because we have clauses on both sides of comma for comparison. This structure is more relaxed than that with "unlike"

GMATGuruNY wrote:

akash singhal wrote:
Why E and not D?Please Explain

D: the rate is...more than half
Half of WHAT?
Eliminate D.

Hi Mitch,
Apart from the reasons you mentioned...
Is my reasoning correct?
Here failing is a VERBing modifier and it modifies American Businesses.
Words such as ALTHOUGH,WHILE,EVENTHOUGH are conjunctions and should have a subject and verb
So WHILE is not followed by a subordinate clause. It being a conjunction.