MGMAT Exam Question

[Guest]

Noting that the price of oil and other fuel components, a major factor in the cost structure of an airline, have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their outlook for the upcoming quarter.

A) have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their
B) have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the
C) will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the
D) has risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their
E) will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their

Please explain why:
1) have (plural) is incorrect. "Isnt the price of oil and other fuel components" a compound subject?
2) why is "have risen and will continue to rise" considered redundant? Arent they two different ideas?[/u]

[Guest]

Sentence talks about price, so it's singular.

[Guest]

What is OA? Is it C?

[StaceyKoprince]

"Price" is the singular subject. "of oil and other fuel components" is a prepositional phrase; it does not contain the subject. Just because an "and" is in there doesn't mean that you have a compound subject - you actually have to have two nouns in there that both apply to the verb. "other fuel components... have risen" doesn't make sense - the components themselves don't rise.

The redundancy comes with the use of the word "continue." If I just say the price has risen and the price will rise, those are two separate pieces of info. But when I say something will "continue to rise" that means that it has already been rising.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, though. There are other things you can use to narrow this down.

[StaceyKoprince]

oops, sorry, yes, OA is C.

[SaahilR545]

Hello,

I still feel that with the OA, the meaning (as intended by option A) is compromised. The management was not just pessimistic about any outlook but its own outlook only. With the pronoun taken off, the sentence sounds ambiguous to me.

I hope we do not face such situations in the GMAT.

[RonPurewal]

Hello,

I still feel that with the OA, the meaning (as intended by option A) is compromised. The management was not just pessimistic about any outlook but its own outlook only. With the pronoun taken off, the sentence sounds ambiguous to me.

I hope we do not face such situations in the GMAT.

two things:

1/
'pronoun ambiguity' is not tested on this exam, so, thinking about it is a big mistake.

2/
as you have noted yourself, "their" is WRONG!
thus there is no possible issue here. the issue is absolutely black-and-white.

[RonPurewal]

I hope we do not face such situations in the GMAT.

...you absolutely could see this sort of thing on the test, because, as noted above, it's a perfectly black-and-white situation.

the choices with 'their' are INCORRECT, because they are using a plural pronoun ('their') to stand for a singular noun ('management').
so, those choices are gone.

the corresponding part of the remaining choices is identical (it's 'the' in both of them), so there's no issue.

--

"...ok, why is ron going on and on and on about this?"

the reason i'm writing so much here is that, by thinking this way, YOU are making this exam much more difficult than it actually is.

the actual situation here is:
• 3 choices have an incorrect pronoun;
• the other 2 choices don't.

you're seeing it like this:
• 3 choices have an incorrect pronoun;
• "hmm, maybe i think 2 choices might possibly be ambiguous"

...but the worst thing is that you're thinking of "hmm maybe possibly ambiguous" things on the same level as WRONG things!
that's the real problem here.
it's a problem because you actually saw that 'their' is incorrect—but you still thought there was some sort of competition there.
nope. it's black and white. absolutely black, and absolutely white. there is no gray at all.

don't make this test harder than it actually is!

[RonPurewal]

lastly, this thread is now locked because it appears to be in the wrong place (the original post cites it as an MPrep problem).

if there are any further questions, please post a new thread in the correct folder. thanks.