Household incomes

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Household incomes

by Ashujain » Tue May 29, 2012 9:55 am
At Shiprock, New Mexico, a perennially powerful girls' high school basketball team has become a path to college for some and a source of pride for a community where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are below the poverty level.
(A) where the household incomes of 49 percent of them are
(B) where they have 49 percent of the household incomes
(C) where 49 percent of the household incomes are
(D) which has 49 percent of the household incomes
(E) in which 49 percent of them have household incomes

Can someone explain what is correct here - 'where' or 'which'?
Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by Mike@Magoosh » Tue May 29, 2012 3:38 pm
Dear Ashujain,

I'm happy to help with this. :)

Here's a post you may find helpful:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-sente ... use-where/

The scoop is: the GMAT likes the use of the word "where" only for physical locations. Constructions such as ---

"... a situation where..."
"... a topic where..."
"... a discipline where..."

--- are all always wrong on GMAT SC: in all three cases, the word "where" should be replaced with "in which."

This sentence is a little trickier, but even though the community itself is technically not a location, it is inseparably associated with a particular location, so that "where" is acceptable.

Also, notice, there is no antecedent for the pronouns "they" and "them", and pronouns with ambiguous or absent antecedents are the kiss-of-death on GMAT SC. That's why (C) has to be the answer.

Does all this make sense?

Here's another related SC question for practice:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/1121
When you submit your answer, the next page will have the complete video explanation. Each of our 800+ GMAT question has its own video explanation.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

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

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