In general, you should not try to apply the grammatical/stylistic guidelines that are valid for SC questions to the CR section of the test. The texts written for RC or CR may not fully conform to the quirks of the SC rules. Although SC insists that it merely reflects standard English grammar, the truth is that it also follows some very particular interpretations of grammar and stylistic preferences that are by no means universal - but peculiar to the minds of those who devised Sentence Correction.

As for your questions, in Q7 the meaning of "so as to" is: "enabling them", or "with the result that they are able to accept...".

In Q 9, the phrase also means: "with the result that they fill any empty spaces, etc..

Kind of agree with the first part of your post Ilana, but just that some prep companies claim that so as to is a wrong usage straight away, much like "being". ON the other hand- Gmat is coming with all kinds of tricks for making usage of "being,having etc" correct. So wanna be sure abt this one.


So you mean to the say the usage of "so as to" in the above CR's is actually GMAT SC rules wise correct ?

There is nothing wrong with "so as to" in general. In some Sentence Correction questions, it might be considered stylistically inferior, or inappropriate, when compared with an answer choice that uses a clearer phrase which is more appropriate in a particular occurrence. But certainly, there is absolutely no reason to eliminate an answer choice that uses "so as to" - without considering its usage relative to the other choices.