The underlined text “that managed airport screening” appropriately modifies “private companies,” telling which private companies are being discussed. Then “during the twentieth century” correctly modifies “managed airport screening,” telling when this action occurred. The verb “managed” is correctly in the simple past tense, and there are no other issues. Suspect that (A) is correct but skim the other choices in case you overlooked an error.
As is common in questions that test modification, each choice arranges the elements differently. Suspect that some modifiers will not be near the thing they modify. There is no effective way to group these choices, so just proceed to evaluate them one by one.
In (B), the passive construction “there were” leaves unclear what was managing airport screening. This sentence loses the original’s clear, direct connection between the private companies and their function. (C) makes it sound as though either all private companies in the twentieth century managed airport screening or the twentieth century managed airport screening. Either reading is illogical. (D) opts for the less preferred passive voice and, in the process, says that the airport screening itself did various things. However, as the original sentence makes clear, the companies that ran the screening set various policies; it’s not right to say the screening itself did these things. Finally, (E) says that the twentieth century performed the list of actions; eliminate (E). Choice (A) is indeed correct.
The underlined portion is preceded by a modifying phrase. An opening modifier should be followed immediately by the person or object being modified. However, the underlined portion makes that “the International Style of architecture.” But that wasn’t completed and designated a landmark—the Farnsworth House was. The underlined phrase should begin with “the Farnsworth House.”
(A) starts with the International Style. (B) and (C) change the opening to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. And (D) and (E) change the opening to the Farnsworth House.
(A), (B), and (C) can be eliminated for putting the wrong subject immediately after the opening modifier. Furthermore, (B) uses the idiomatically incorrect phrase “example for” instead of “example of.” And (C) uses the present perfect “has designed” for something that was completed in 1951.
(D) and (E) provide the right noun after the opening modifier, but (E) flips the logic of the sentence. (E) suggests that the architectural style is an example of the house, and it also suggests that Mies van der Rohe designed the architectural style instead of the house. Eliminate (E). (D) is the correct answer. To confirm this, read it back into the original sentence:
Completed in 1951 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006, the Farnsworth House was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and serves as a prominent example of the International Style of architecture.
The underlined portion is the primary sentence, with the first portion being an extended modifying phrase. The modifying phrase is talking about a plot device called deus ex machina. However, when the underlined portion starts, it refers to that singular item with a plural pronoun (they). That needs to be changed. (If the phrase deus ex machina is unfamiliar, there are clues in the non-underlined portion to indicate its singular nature. First, it is referred to as “a plot device.” Also, the verb “has . . . been ridiculed” is in the singular form.)
(A) and (B) begin with “they,” while (C) and (E) begin with “it.” (D) moves the subject of the sentence but eventually uses “it.”
(A) and (B) can be eliminated for using the word “they” to refer to the singular subject. The remaining choices properly change the pronoun to “it.” However, (D) moves the phrases around and, with the word “and,” puts the modifier “effectively” in the same series with “contrived and unartistic.” The positive descriptor “effectively” needs to be contrasted with the negative descriptors, so (D) can be eliminated. By substituting “being used” for “been used,” (E) fails to provide an active verb to connect with “has,” leaving the sentence incomplete. Eliminate (E). That leaves (C) as the correct answer. To be sure, read it back into the original sentence:
While the deus ex machina, a plot device involving a sudden and unlikely resolution to a seemingly unsolvable problem, has often been ridiculed for being contrived and unartistic, it occasionally, according to some critics, has been used effectively.
The underlined portion contains the verb “are,” which correctly refers to Babel’s writings. The word “as” indicates a comparison, which is logically drawn (the one book is filled in the same way as other writings are). However, the last word of the underlined portion is “of,” which is connected to the verb “filled.” That’s the wrong idiomatic expression. A book is filled with certain details, not filled of those details.
The beginning of each choice does not allow for easy grouping. However, (A), (C), and (E) all end with “of,” while (B) and (D) end with “with.”
(A) can be eliminated for using the word “of” instead of “with.” (C) contains the same error and changes the wording of the modifying phrase, shifting the action from passive (the book is filled) to active (Babel filled his other books). That’s not parallel. Eliminate (C). And the wordier passiveness of (E) does not make up for the improper use of “of” at the end. Eliminate (E).
(B) and (D) change the “of” to “with,” but (D) changes the modifying phrase to make it sound as if Babel’s writings did something, which they didn’t. The writings didn’t fill themselves. That eliminates (D), leaving (B) as the correct answer. To confirm, read it back into the original sentence:
Inspired by the circumstances he witnessed and documented during the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, Isaac Babel wrote Red Cavalry, a short story collection that is filled, as are many of Babel’s writings, with brutal and often horrific depictions of war.
The underlined portion begins with “for trapping European hedgehogs,” which is the first of two actions that are part of the conservationists’ plan. The second action comes at the end of the sentence: “relocate them.” (To see this two-part construction, it may help to read the sentence without the modifying “which . . .” clause between commas.) However, “for trapping” and “relocate” are not parallel. Furthermore, the phrase “plans for trapping” is incorrect. Idiomatically, it’s proper to say plans to do something instead of plans for doing something.
(A) and (B) use “for trapping,” while (C), (D), and (E) use “to trap.”
Eliminate (A) for using “for trapping,” which is idiomatically incorrect and not parallel to “relocate” at the end. (B) adds some unnecessary words that do nothing to fix either issue. Eliminate (B).
(C), (D), and (E) begin with “to trap,” which properly creates the parallel construction “plans to trap . . . and relocate.” However, (C) changes “which are” to “being.” This creates the phrase “being invasive . . . and have been blamed,” which is not parallel. Eliminate (C). And (E) removes the verb altogether, creating the phrase “invasive . . . and have been blamed.” That’s an illogical combination of an adjective and a verb. Eliminate (E). (D) remains and is the correct answer. Read it back into the original sentence to confirm:
On the Scottish island of Uist, conservationists have spent many years working on plans to trap European hedgehogs, which are invasive to Uist and have been blamed for reducing the population of several wading birds, and relocate them to the mainland.
The underlined portion begins with “just like,” which suggests a comparison. Before that, the sentence uses the structure A is to B (Hephaestus is to Greek mythology). However, the construct A is to B just like C is to D is not idiomatically correct. Instead of “just like,” the word “what” is needed.
Each choice begins with a different phrase, so there is no effective way to group the choices. Evaluate them one at a time.
(A) can be eliminated because “just like” is idiomatically incorrect. (B) and (E) can be eliminated for changing “just like” to “the same as” and “the way that,” respectively, neither of which creates a correct idiomatic expression. Furthermore, (B) removes parallelism by changing the end from “is” to “relates to.” (E) disrupts the parallelism by moving the placement of the modifying phrase (“as son of Odin and god of thunder”); also, the addition of “as” in this phrase is unnecessary and unparallel. (D) replaces “just like” with “as,” which can be used in certain circumstances. However, (D) ultimately fails by changing the ending to “is part of,” which is not parallel to the first half of the comparison. Eliminate (D). That makes (C), the only answer to properly create the A is to B what C is to D pattern without adding any new errors, the correct answer. To confirm, read it back into the original sentence:
Many scholars dismiss the view that Hephaestus, son of Zeus and god of fire, is to Greek mythology what Thor, son of Odin and god of thunder, is to Norse mythology, despite observations that both deities are typically depicted wielding a hammer.
The original sentence contains several errors. An efficient approach when a large amount of text is underlined is to focus on one error, evaluate the choices, and then proceed to the next error. Because days are countable, the sentence should state that the journey was completed in six fewer days.
There’s a 3-2 split between (B), (C), and (D), which use “fewer,” and (A) and (E), which use “less.”
Since you identified “less” as an error in step 1, eliminate (A) and (E). To evaluate the three remaining answer choices, consider the modifying phrase between commas, “completing the journey . . . done.” It must refer to the first noun that follows the phrase, but “the record” did not complete the journey; it was François Gabart as written in (D). Eliminate (B) and (C) for committing this error. (D) is correct.
The underlined portion contains the word “both.” When listing two items, the word “both” should be paired with the word “and” (both X and Y), and the two items should be presented in parallel form. The word “and” is used properly, but the structure is not parallel. There’s already an “of” before “both,” so the “of” distributes to both items. There’s no reason to repeat the “of” before “a down word.” It should be “part of both an across word . . . and a down word.”
(A), (B), and (C) start with “part of both,” while (D) and (E) start with “both part of.” Either arrangement could work, so the correction will be made elsewhere in the choices. Furthermore, grouping by other parts of the choices can be counterproductive because the correct format will be based on how the underlined portion starts.
(A) is eliminated for repeating the “of” and making a non-parallel part of both X and of Y structure. It should be part of both X and Y, without the added “of.” (C) contains the same problematic “of,” so (C) can be eliminated. (B) makes the quick fix by getting rid of the offending “of.” To make sure this is the correct answer, confirm that the remaining choices have errors.
(D) and (E) move the phrase “part of” to after the word “both.” That would be fine, as long as there were still parallelism. The rest of the sentence would have to read: both part of X and part of Y. However, (D) leaves out the second “part,” reading “a single letter is of a down word” instead of “a single letter is part of a down word.” Then (E) leaves out “part of” entirely while also creating the structure both X . . . as well as Y, which is not idiomatically correct. The conjunction is both X . . . and Y. (D) and (E) can be eliminated, confirming (B) as the correct answer. As a final step, read it back into the original sentence:
In a standard crossword puzzle, the black boxes are placed to make the grid diagonally symmetric, and each empty box gets filled with a single letter that is part of both an across word, which is entered horizontally, and a down word, which is entered vertically.
The word “like” that begins the underlined portion of the sentence indicates that the sentence is comparing two things. Comparisons must be logical and parallel. Here, “[b]rand management” should logically be compared to some kind of management, but instead it is compared to “any industry.”
(A) and (C) start with “like,” (D) and (E) start with “as in,” and (B) starts with “similar to.”
Eliminate (A) for the errors identified in step 1. (C) starts with “like” as (A) does, but it solves the comparison problem by inserting the term “brand management” into the second part of the comparison. However, when one thing “is” another, the two things must be expressed in parallel form, and “[b]rand management . . . is the artistic defining” is not parallel. Eliminate (C). (B) substitutes “similar to” for “like” but still doesn’t compare “management” to management, so it’s incorrect.
(D) and (E) solve the comparison problem by using “as” to compare how brand management is in one industry to how brand management is in any industry. However, (D) breaks parallelism after the comma with “[b]rand management . . . is artfully defining,” since “brand management” is a regular noun while “defining” is an -ing verb form acting as a noun. (E) uses the same noun form in both parts of the structure—“brand management . . . is the art”—so it is correct. Read it back into the sentence to confirm:
Brand management in the personal care industry, as in any industry, is the art of defining consumer perceptions of the utility and value promised by the product line and the personality projected by the company.
In the underlined portion, the sentence is listing features of the Palace of Versailles that are often celebrated. When items are listed, they should be in parallel form. In this case, there are three features: architecture, decor, and gardens. Each is described by at least one adjective (impressive Baroque; extravagant; elaborate and expansive), so everything is consistent. There appears to be no error.
(A), (B), and (C) have a comma after “architecture,” creating a list. (D) and (E) remove the comma, creating a combined element of architecture and decor.
(B) and (C) both keep the list format of the original sentence. However, (B) adds “for” and “it has,” creating a for X . . . , for Y . . . , and it has Z structure that is not parallel. Eliminate (B). Similarly, (C) adds “for” to the end, creating a for X . . . , Y . . . , and for Z structure. That extra “for” leaves the middle item nonparallel, so (C) can be eliminated.
(D) and (E) change the structure completely, combining the architecture and decor components. This unnecessarily separates the third component (the gardens), a phrasing that would technically be okay if the choices didn’t also contain grammatical errors. (D) leaves the final portion dangling at the end with the verb “having,” which has no clear subject and is not parallel to anything else in the sentence. And (E) starts the last phrase with “and the . . .,” creating a whole new clause that fails to include an active verb. (D) and (E) are eliminated, confirming that the sentence was correct as written. (A) is the correct answer.
The underlined text begins with the pronoun “it,” which could refer to either “lactase” or “milk.” The pronoun is thus ambiguous. Read on for other errors or potential errors to watch for in the answer choices. The last underlined word is another pronoun, “their.” This clearly refers to “cats” and is correct.
Like (A), (D) begins with the pronoun “it.” (B), (C), and (E) begin with the noun “milk.”
Since (D) repeats (A)’s error by using the ambiguous pronoun “it,” eliminate both choices.
To compare (B), (C), and (E), note how their endings differ from each other: (B) says “its,” (C) says “those cats," and (E) says “their.” Since the author’s intent is to say that cats experience various signs of illness after drinking milk, eliminate (B) for inappropriately referring to only one cat. And since the text that immediately follows the semicolon refers to “such cats” becoming sick, clearly indicating the cats without enough lactase to digest milk, the phrase “those cats” in (C) is unnecessarily repetitive. The more concise “their” in (E) can refer only to the sick cats and thus is unambiguous. Eliminate (C) and read (E) into the sentence to confirm that it is correct:
Like some humans, some adult cats lack a sufficient quantity of the enzyme lactase to digest milk; as a result of drinking milk, such cats become sick, as evidenced by their vomiting or excreting diarrhea or gas.
The phrase “[s]ince 2007” is a clue that verb tenses are being tested. “Since 2007” and “has maintained” indicate the program began in the past and is still continuing, so the past tense “considered” at the end of the underlined segment is incorrect. Another issue is the idiomatic usage of “consider.” On the GMAT, “consider” is used without a following connecting word or phrase. A correct use of “consider” in this sentence would be many scientists who consider these phenomena to have natural explanations.
There’s a 3-2 split between (A) and (E), which use past tense verbs at the end of the underlined segment, and (B), (C), and (D), which use present tense verbs.
(A) and (E) can be eliminated for being on the wrong side of the split. Since “that” is not underlined and can’t be changed, eliminate (B) and seek a choice that doesn’t end with a form of the verb “consider.” (C) incorrectly states “the views . . . believe . . .” The views don’t believe; the scientists believe. (D) is correct. Confirm this by reading it back into the sentence:
Since 2007, the Department of Defense has maintained a program designed to investigate unidentified flying objects, despite the views of many scientists who believe that these phenomena will be found to have natural explanations.
The original sentence contains an error in subject-verb agreement. The subject “rise” requires the singular verb “has enabled” at the beginning of the underlined portion, rather than the plural verb “have enabled.” This error may be hard to spot with the intervening phrase containing plural nouns, but a vertical scan of the answer choices shows that some use “have” and some use “has,” highlighting this verb error.
There’s a 2-3 split between “have” and “has.” (A) and (B) use the plural verb, while (C), (D), and (E) all use the singular verb.
Eliminate (A) and (B) for being on the wrong side of the split. Read the remaining three choices in parallel. The first difference is in the position of “rapidly.” (E) moves “rapidly” to describe the rate of specialization instead of the rate of growth, changing the meaning of the sentence; thus, it can be eliminated. Continue reading (C) and (D). By placing “only” before “successful companies,” (D) says that entrepreneurs have started nothing but successful companies, but the intention of the original sentence is that these companies are successful even though their products have limited markets. Reading (C) back into the sentence shows that it’s correct:
The rise of alternative funding opportunities, such as microloans, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer networks, has enabled many small entrepreneurs to rapidly grow successful companies specializing in products that are of interest only to niche markets.
The underlined portion of the sentence includes an unidiomatic phrase, “credited as to.” When a quality of a person is being attributed to a source, the correct form is credited to. Here’s another example: He credited his high GMAT score to his diligent study habits. The original sentence also includes the redundant “known to be famous for.” Someone can be known for or famous for something, but not both.
Three choices, (B), (C) and (D), use “known for” at the end, while (A) and (E) use different constructions.
(A) can be eliminated for the errors found in step 1. (E) uses “known as,” which eliminates the redundancy but introduces an illogical comparison, comparing Simone to her “renditions” of music; it can be eliminated as well. The remaining three choices all correctly use “known for,” so check them for other errors. The first part of (C) is wordier than the original, and “credited with” gives credit for her classical training to her technique, when the relationship is the other way around. (D) rearranges the words to say that Simone is given credit for a distinctive technique because she received classical training; this distorts the original’s meaning. (B) uses the correct “credited to” and the succinct “known for.” This choice is correct, which can be confirmed by reading it back into the sentence:
Nina Simone, whose distinctive technique is credited to her early classical training, is known for her renditions of blues, jazz, and folk compositions as well as for her impassioned civil rights activism.
The underlined portion contains a comparison, “higher than,” which is idiomatically correct (X is higher than Y). In addition, the pronoun “they” makes the comparison parallel and logical: the author compares last summer’s sales to this summer’s sales. The sentence appears to have no error, so suspect (A) is correct. Check the other choices just to confirm you haven’t overlooked anything.
(A), (B), and (C) start with “5 percent,” while (D) and (E) change that to “higher than 5 percent” and “more than 5 percent,” respectively.
The first thing being compared is sales from this summer. They should be compared to sales from another time period. (B) and (C) make the comparison between one season’s sales and another season rather than another season’s sales. Eliminate (B) and (C).
By moving the phrase “higher than,” (D) suggests that this summer’s total sales were over 5%—but 5% of what? Sales should be a figure, not a percentage. Further, this choice suggests that this summer’s sales somehow occurred last summer. Eliminate (D). Unlike (D), (E) correctly identifies the sales as 5% higher. However, (E) still suggests that this summer’s increase occurred last summer. Eliminate (E). There was never any error to fix, so the correct answer is (A).