Confusions about comparison objects

[ysyanshi]

Hi instructor, I met with below two sentences when I were doing GMAT SC practices:

[redacted]

Both of these two sentences are from correct answers. I am now very confused about the comparison objects.

[redacted]

Now I am totally confused...

Please help me, thank you very much!

[RonPurewal]

with comparisons, you just have to find stuff that matches.

whatever follows "than" is the second half of the comparison.
from context, you should know what matches it.
if the matching part is there, the comparison is fine.

e.g., in the second example, "than" is followed by "last [year]". in context, this is parallel to "this year".
if "this year" is there, the comparison is perfectly parallel.

[RonPurewal]

most importantly, DO NOT try to learn to WRITE comparison sentences.

that's way way WAY too hard. even most well-educated native speakers of english can't do that properly, most of the time.

that's not your job here. your job is just to choose the winner of a beauty contest.

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... tml#p82808

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... ml#p113659

[RonPurewal]

also, i'm just noticing now that these are pieces of OG sentences.

since i just spent a bunch of time typing those responses, i'll leave this thread up. but, from now on, any question citing OG sentences -- or pieces of OG sentences -- will be immediately removed, as per the forum rules.

please read those rules before posting. thank you.