"In the hope of" vs. "with the hope of"

A quick comparison in COCA shows that in the hope is more commonly used.

Even ODO has this expression used in its example sentence to demonstrate the usage of hope.

hope

feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen:

he looked through her belongings in the hope of coming across some information

Though in the hope of and with the hope of are pretty much interchangeable.

Please take note that in hopes of can have a different meaning, as suggested by the New Oxford American Dictionary. (I don't find it in other dictionaries though.)

in hopes of

with the aim of: I lay on a towel in the park in hopes of getting a tan.

Both are grammatical. There seems to be little difference in meaning, but a detailed corpus search might show that they were used in different contexts. What corpus evidence does show is that in the hope is more popular than with the hope. It occurs nearly four times as much in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and nearly eighteen times as much in the British National Corpus.

All variants of hope in this context are somewhat informal, and therefore don't really match the tone of OP's sentence. So I'd suggest using "with the aim/intention of".

In less formal contexts, I would slightly favour "in the hope of". But it really is just a stylistic choice between several alternatives, all of which would normally be semantically identical...

Source

The source of this sentence is PlatinumGMAT. The essence of answering this question is not in finding out flaw in the usage of in the hope or with the hope - both are used interchangeably (in the hope is more common), but in the usage of correct idiom - issued X with Y.

For reference of usage of issued please refer to http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+issue+with

Hope this helps! :)

I'd say in the hope of + doing (gerund) or with the hope + that + clause (S-V-O) More people are moving to cities in the hope of finding jobs. More people are moving to cities with the hope that they will find jobs. Your thoughts?

For the actual answer to the GMAT question, this question is now online as a practice GMAT question. The OP seems to have remembered the choices incorrectly. The correct choices are:

A) in the hopes to ending
B) in the hope to ending
C) with the hope to ending
D) with the hope of ending
E) in the hope to end

The key to answering this question is not in versus with, but the preposition after hope. Note that all but one of the answers have the wording in/with the hope(s) to end(ing). We don't use the hope to end(ing), but the hope of ending. Both in and with would be correct in this sentence.