Sentence Correction

thephoenix wrote:Last year, medical schools in the United States received only about half as much applications for admission as they had 25 years ago.

A. only about half as much applications for admission as they had

B. only about half as many applications for admission as they had

C. only about half of the applications for admission that they did

D. about only half as many applications for admission as they did

E. only about half as many applications for admission as they received

the only grammatically viable answer here is (e).

2 problems with (b)

1. "they had" doesn't make sense:

as some posters have pointed out above, "they had" reads primarily as just "they had" (i.e., in their hands). the sentence isn't properly structured for "had" to stand for "had received".

the difference is this: "received" is a PAST-TENSE VERB in the first clause; it's not a participle. therefore, you can't omit the past participle "received", which is the second half of the past perfect "had received".

analogy:
they were more tired than they had ever been --> CORRECT
they were more tired than they ever had --> INCORRECT (you're trying to omit "been", when there is no "been" in the first part)
the problem in this analogy is a lot more obvious, because "were" and "been" are different words.
but, the point is -- if i write
they received more applications than they had ever received before
then BOTH instances of "received" are necessary, since one of them is a past-tense verb (like "were") and the other is a past participle (like "been"). the fact that they are written in the same way, in this instance, is pure coincidence; they aren't the same word, and shouldn't be treated as though they are.

MORE IMPORTANTLY,

2. you don't have to use the past perfect:

you CANNOT just assume that, whenever you have any two past events, the earlier one takes the past perfect. that's a gross oversimplification.

you use the past perfect in the following two situations:
* the first event has to have a DIRECT IMPACT ON or RELEVANCE TO the second event / time marker.
* the first event is a CONTINUOUS ACTION / STATE that PERSISTS UP TO the second event / time marker.

in particular, if a sentence contains two completely unrelated "point" (non-continuous) events from the past, it does not have to use the past perfect, unless there is some other special circumstance or idiom that dictates the past perfect.

in this sentence, the 25-year-old applications have no direct impact on, or relevance to, last year's applications, and they did not persist up until last year. therefore, the usage of the simple past tense for both verbs is totally fine in this instance.

--

incidentally, "they did" in choices (c) and (d) is totally fine!

in this case, "received" is a PAST-TENSE VERB, so "did" (another PAST-TENSE VERB) makes 100% total sense in substituting for that verb.

those choices, however, have problems elsewhere in their construction.

(c) ("of the applications...") suggests that the medical school is receiving half of THE SAME applications that it received 25 years ago.

(d) "about only half" is an incorrect word order.
as in other languages, the order of consecutive adverbs/adjectives in english is completely random -- a matter of idiom -- and, unfortunately, must consequently be memorized by second-language speakers.
e.g., it's correct to say "a big red dog", but incorrect to say "a red big dog". there's no simple logical reason for this**; it just is.

--

**if any of you are seriously interested in this sort of thing, check out the works of Steven Pinker, an author who delights in exposing the (surprisingly complicated) derivations behind such linguistic conventions.

girish3131 wrote:Ron

very few times u respond these days...

hmm?

i'm copying the following from directly below:

Most Active Experts in Last 30 Days
1. Stuart Kovinsky
Kaplan GMAT Teacher 70 posts
2. lunarpower
Manhattan GMAT Teacher 69 posts
3. Testluv
Kaplan GMAT Teacher 51 posts
4. Bryant@VeritasPrep
Veritas Prep 43 posts
5. Lisa Anderson
Stacy Blackman Consulting 40 posts

...basically, stuart and i have posted by far the most of any moderators these days.

there are, of course, far more posts than we can reasonably hope to answer, but we do our best.
also, i try to answer all of the posts for which users send me links in private messages, although that process can sometimes be delayed when the number of messages is high.

thephoenix wrote:when am i going to see a book written by you on "how to crack verbal" on my nearest book stands......

heh. well, i've had a hand in the writing of many of mgmat's strategy guides, so you already can find some of my writing on the shelves.

we are thinking of putting together an "advanced SC guide" with, among other things, many of the takeaways i've seen on this forum. unfortunately, however, that project is not at the front of the line; we have more exigent tasks at hand first. stay tuned!