November is traditionally the strongest month for sales of light truck

As has been our habit with the QOTDs lately, this question also appeared 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


On these comparison questions, you always want to ask yourself: what, exactly, is the heart of the comparison? In this case, look at the stuff that surrounds the phrase “when compared with”: “sales this past November, even when compared with sales in previous Novembers…” Hm, that looks pretty good.

Not much else going on here besides the comparison, so let’s keep (A) for now.


The word “it” is the first thing that jumps out at me in (B), so we need to look for a nice, singular noun that “it” could refer back to. The only thing that could possibly make sense is for “it” to refer to “this November”, but that’s not an option, because of the structure of the phrase after the comma: “this past November’s sales” is plural, and “November’s” is possessive.

So “it” can’t refer to “this November” since that phrase is possessive, and “it” can’t refer to “this November’s sales” because “sales” is plural. For that reason, (B) is out.

And for what it’s worth: even if you do assume that “it” somehow refers to “this past November”, the sentence still wouldn’t be great. We’d have “…even when [this past November] is compared with previous Novembers, this past November’s sales…” That’s weird: it would be sooooooo much more direct to just compare the sales to each other, instead of comparing the “Novembers”, and then restarting the sentence about the sales.



Once again, the pronoun “they” should jump off the page at us. “They” seems to refer to “sales of light trucks”, and that gives us “…even when [sales of light trucks] are compared with previous Novembers…” This literally compares sales to months. That’s nonsense. Let’s ditch (C).


If we look at (D) very strictly and literally, the comparison still doesn’t make sense. “…compared with previous Novembers, sales of light trucks this past November…” We can’t compare “previous Novembers” to “sales of light trucks.” So (D) is gone, too.


In a vacuum, I guess the comparison is OK here: “this past November’s sales” are compared with “previous Novembers’ sales.” I can live with that.

But let’s talk about “so that.” The phrase “so that” suggests some sort of purpose, or at least expresses a rationale for accomplishing something. You could say “I eat burritos so that I will someday weigh as much as an aircraft carrier” or “Domenico posts regularly on GMAT Club so that other people can kick ass on this ridiculous exam.” In both cases, a purpose or effect follows the phrase “so that.”

But there’s no good reason to use “so that” in this particular sentence: “November is traditionally the strongest month for sales of light trucks, so that this past November’s sales… accounted for a remarkably large share of total vehicle sales.” That makes no sense at all, because the second phrase, “this past November’s sales… accounted for a remarkably large share…” is definitely NOT the purpose or effect of the first phrase, “November is traditionally the strongest month for sales of light trucks.”

For that reason, we can ditch (E), and we’re left with (A).