SC Guide 8, 3rd ed - page 71 and page 187

[ooisuankim]

In SC Guide 8, 3rd ed - page 71:

Question 3: "Many teachers choose to seek employment in the suburbs rather than to face low salaries in the city". - Please clarify if there is a need for the insertion of "to", as in "rather than to face low salaries", or that the sentence can stand without the word "to", which then reads as "rather than face low salaries".

Question 6: "The joint business venture will increase employee satisfaction and will improve relations between upper management and staff" - Please clarify if there is a need for the insertion of "will", as in "employee satisfaction and will improve relations", or that the sentence can stand without the word "will", which then reads as "employee satisfaction and improve relations".


As a separate question, in page 187 of the same book, the sentence "The judge considers the law to be illegal" is labelled under the "suspect" category. My question is, when is the construction "to be" correctly used?

Would appreciate any of the instructors' views. Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

Q3
You do need the first instance of "to" but, in this case, you do not need to repeat the "to" for the second infinitive verb.

Q6
Likewise, you do need the first instance of "will" but, in this case, you do not need to repeat the "will" for the second part.

I do want to mention that there are circumstances in which you would have to repeat the second instance. For example:

"Many teachers choose not only to seek employment but also to retire early."
In this case, you cannot say "many teachers choose not only to seek employment but also retire early" because you have a 2-part idiom: not only X but also Y. "rather than" is only a 1-part idiom (X rather than Y - nothing before the X).

[aishwaryakala]

Had a couple of questions,

1. Is the form "will X and will Y" incorrect ?

2. AS per the recommendation for 2 part idioms, will the clause ""many teachers choose to not only seek employment but also retire early" be correct i.e. the form choose to " not only X but also Y"?

[jnelson0612]

Had a couple of questions,

1. Is the form "will X and will Y" incorrect ?

2. AS per the recommendation for 2 part idioms, will the clause ""many teachers choose to not only seek employment but also retire early" be correct i.e. the form choose to " not only X but also Y"?

Hello! To answer your questions:

1) Not necessarily. It's unlikely that the GMAT would repeat the "will" but there is nothing grammatically incorrect about doing so.

2) If I understand your question correctly, then yes, that usage would be fine.

Best wishes! :-)

[aishwaryakala]

Thank you Jamie!!

[tim]

:)

[philipp.schams]

I am referring to page 57 of the newest MGMT SC Book.

Wrong: I want to retire to a place WHERE I can relax AND I pay low taxes.

Right: I want to retire to a place WHERE I can relax and WHERE I pay low taxes.

Here we have also a one part idiom (and).... but we have to repeat WHERE.... Why is that?

[jlucero]

To avoid the ambiguity in what is parallel. Is it:

I want to retire to a place WHERE (1) I can relax AND (2) I pay low taxes.

or

(1) I want to retire to a place WHERE I can relax AND (2) I pay low taxes.

Remember that clear meaning is more important than concision.

[puttukoni8]

Q3
You do need the first instance of "to" but, in this case, you do not need to repeat the "to" for the second infinitive verb.

Q6
Likewise, you do need the first instance of "will" but, in this case, you do not need to repeat the "will" for the second part.

I do want to mention that there are circumstances in which you would have to repeat the second instance. For example:

"Many teachers choose not only to seek employment but also to retire early."
In this case, you cannot say "many teachers choose not only to seek employment but also retire early" because you have a 2-part idiom: not only X but also Y. "rather than" is only a 1-part idiom (X rather than Y - nothing before the X).

Hi Stacey,
My query is regarding Q3 above - Many teachers choose to seek employment in the suburbs rather than face low salaries in the city.

OG Verbal review 2015 - page 292 states that -
The construction "X rather than Y" requires parallelism between X and Y

Thus I think it is mandatory that we repeat the "to" for the second infinitive verb. i.e. - it should be -
Many teachers choose to seek employment in the suburbs rather than to face low salaries in the city.

Kindly let me know if I am going wrong anywhere .

Thanks
Mohit

[tim]

Seek employment. Face salaries. Do you see anything that is not parallel about those two things? Remember, you don't get to choose what word X starts with; the GMAT does. You can get a clue about what word X starts with by looking at what Y starts with, which is why you should always start with the Y part (i.e. the part AFTER the parallel marker).

[cyy12345]

Hello ManhattanPrep,

Here's my analysis on the "Many teachers choose to seek employment in the suburbs rather than facing low salaries in the city" question:

There are two possibilities in constructing this sentence:

Possibility 1 (with a focus on teachers)
Many teachers [choose to seek employment in the suburbs] rather than [face low salaries in the city]

Possibility 2 (with a focus on teachers' choice)
Many teachers choose [to seek employment in the suburbs] rather than [(to) face low salaries in the city]

I would argue, In order to distinguish these two possibilities, one should use "to face low salaries" in constructing the sentence for the possibility 2. By omitting the "to", there could be ambiguity: Did the teachers choose A rather than choosing B (choose to face low salaries), or did the teachers choose A rather than doing B (face the low salary)?


Or, I am wrong..

[RonPurewal]

the difference in meaning between those two sentences is negligible, so there is no 'ambiguity'.