Unlike the United States, where farmers can usually depend on rain or

We covered this one in a recent YouTube webinar on comparisons, so if you prefer your explanations in video form, head on over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsa-RaX765o


The word “unlike” should always jump off the page at us, because it’s arguably the most straightforward type of comparison you’ll ever see on the GMAT. “Unlike the United States…” needs to be followed by something that can logically be compared with “the United States.”

In this particular sentence, there’s a modifier in the way (beginning with “where farmers can usually depend…”), but once we get past that, we have a mess: “Unlike the United States,… the rains in most parts of Sri Lanka…” You could logically compare the United States to many things (insert bad geopolitical joke here), but “the rains” are not among them.

So (A) is out.


(B) changes a couple of small things, but it has the same fundamental problem as (A): “Unlike the United States farmers,… the rains in most parts of Sri Lanka…” OK, so now we’re comparing “farmers” to “the rains”, and that makes no sense, either. So (B) is gone.


OK, now we’re getting into some fun stuff. The phrase “those of” (or “that of”) should always jump off the page at us too: “those” and “that” are both pronouns, and often give us some nice, easy eliminations – and both seem to show up quite a bit in comparison questions. (More on “that” and its use as a pronoun in this article.) Basically, you’ll always want to identify the antecedent for “those” or “that”, and then insert it back into the sentence to see if it makes sense.

So in (C), “those” seems to refer to “parts”, and we end up with absolute nonsense: “Unlike parts of the United States…, most parts of Sri Lanka's rains…” Huh? It doesn't make any sense to compare “parts of the United States” with “parts of Sri Lanka’s rains.” We're comparing regions of the United States to the rains in parts of Sri Lanka.

If you wanted to argue that "those" refers to "farmers"... well, I think that's weird, since "farmers" is part of the modifying phrase. But let's roll with it. We'd have: "Unlike farmers of the United States..., most parts of Sri Lanka's rains…” Huh? It doesn't make any sense to compare “farmers of the United States” with “parts of Sri Lanka’s rains.” So no matter how you slice it, the comparison is nonsense.

That was fun. (C) is out.


The hits keep coming: “In comparison with the United States…, the rains in most parts of Sri Lanka…” That’s also wrong, because it’s literally comparing the United States itself to the rains in Sri Lanka. So (D) can be eliminated.


Well, we’ve already eliminated all of the other answer choices, so I hope we like (E), or else we’ll be starting over, and that’s about as much fun as licking frozen doorknobs.

Fortunately, the comparison looks pretty good here: “In the United States, farmers can usually depend on rain or snow all year long, but in most parts of Sri Lanka the rains…” Hey, that’s not bad. Basically, the sentence is telling us what happens “in the United States”, and then it tells us that “in most parts of Sri Lanka”, something else happens. That’s perfect.

So (E) is our answer.