By choosing glass apartments towering a hundred feet over brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seemingly younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic that accentuated their luxury-laden lives.

A By choosing glass apartments towering a hundred feet over brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seemingly younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic that accentuated
B By choosing glass apartments towering a hundred feet over brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seeming younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic that accentuates
C In choosing glass apartments in hundred-foot towers instead of brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seemingly younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic that accentuates
D In choosing glass apartments in hundred-foot towers instead of brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seemingly younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic that accentuated
E In choosing glass apartments towering a hundred feet over brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seeming younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic, accentuating

Mt reasoning : Highlight to view
C is the right answer
A and D are gone because of accentuated (past tense)
B and E are gone because of the use of seeming.

Yep! You've got it. The past tense "accentuated" clashes with the present perfect "have embraced." Elim A and D. And "seeming / seemingly" is modifying the adjective "younger-than-ever" - adverbs have to modify adjectives, so we need the "seemingly" version of the word. Elim B and E. And you're done!

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

Bumping up the thread to understand whether the usage of 'instead of' is correct.
Please clarify. Thanks.

'instead of' here is ok, because it's used with a NOUN (instead of brownstone units...)
note that you could also use 'rather than' in the same context. ('rather than' is more general - it's acceptable with nouns, adjectives, verbs, ...just about anything - while 'instead of' is strictly limited to nouns and constructions that act as nouns.)

note that the use of 'over' here is unacceptable, because it creates as unintended interpretation: the glass apartments tower 100 feet over the brownstones (= they're standing next to each other, and the glass buildings are 100 feet taller). the use of 'instead of' results in a sentence free of ambiguity.

Hi Stacey can u please explain why The past tense "accentuated" clashes with the present perfect "have embraced

thanks

Based on the structure of the sentence, "accentuated" should be a result of "have embraced". This is illogical, as something in the present perfect tense cannot have an effect in the simple past..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

The following sentence from NYTimes uses the idiom 'towering over'.

Watching the interaction that followed, Mr. Luna noted that Mr. Guingona stood too long at the couch, towering over the women, which probably made them uncomfortable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/nyreg ... ver&st=cse

Is the use of 'towering over' in option B incorrect because the phrase, 'a hundred feet' is inserted in between?

Would the following be a correct option?

Option F: By choosing glass apartments towering over brownstone units designed for earlier generations, seemingly younger-than-ever moneyed professionals have embraced a modern design ethic that accentuates

Thanks,

actually, the original sentence is not using the phrase "towering over". instead it implies people are "choosing [x] over [y]" and the apartments are "towering a hundred feet". so "towering over" is not actually the issue here..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor