Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better

Meaning 1: Browing was considered better among her contemporaries than her husband was considered among his contemporaries.

Hi, there is no his contemporaries anywhere in the sentence and hence, cannot be assumed.

It's just her contemporaries.

I am sorry I respectfully disagree.

The structure is such that it creates ambiguity.

To eliminate option B, do we use
1. idiom(Consider X Y) ?
2. Comparison issue - she was later overshadowed by his success? (We also have a similar construction in option A, though A is incorrect because Although.. should be followed by EBB)

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma , generis , EducationAisle , other experts - please enlighten

Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow it down to the correct choice quickly! First, here is the original question with any major differences highlighted in orange:

Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.

(A) Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.
(B) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered among her contemporaries as a better poet than her husband, she was later overshadowed by his success.
(C) Later overshadowed by the success of her husband, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry had been considered among her contemporaries to be better than that of her husband.
(D) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success was later overshadowed by that of her husband, among her contemporaries she was considered the better poet.
(E) Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry was considered among her contemporaries as better than her husband, but her success was later overshadowed by his.

While there is a lot we could focus on, there are 2 main areas we can start with:

1. How Browning is compared to her husband (Idioms)
2. How Browning was overshadowed by her husband (Parallelism)

Let's start with #1 on our list: how the sentence compares Browning to her husband. This is an issue of idiom structure with comparisons. We need to make sure that each sentence follows the general rules of how to compare two items:

X is better than Y
X is considered Y
X is considered to be Y

Let's take a close look at each sentence and determine if each uses the proper idiom formats. If not, let's eliminate them:

(A) Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.

considered...to be = OKAY
she was...better than her husband = OKAY

(B) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered among her contemporaries as a better poet than her husband, she was later overshadowed by his success.

considered...as = WRONG
Browning was...better than her husband = OKAY

(C) Later overshadowed by the success of her husband, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry had been considered among her contemporaries to be better than that of her husband.

considered...to be = OKAY
Browning's poetry had been...better than that of her husband = OKAY

(D) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success was later overshadowed by that of her husband, among her contemporaries she was considered the better poet.

she was considered... = OKAY
she was...the better poet = OKAY

(E) Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry was considered among her contemporaries as better than her husband, but her success was later overshadowed by his.

considered...as = WRONG
Browning's poetry...better than her husband = OKAY

We can eliminate options B & E because they use one or both idioms incorrectly. Now that we have it narrowed down to 3 options, let's tackle #2 on our list. We need to make sure that the items being compared in each sentence are parallel!

(A) Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.

This is INCORRECT because it's not idiomatically correct to say that Browning is "the better poet than" her husband. It's best to say she is "a better poet" than her husband, or just say that between the two of them, she is "the better poet."

(C) Later overshadowed by the success of her husband, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry had been considered among her contemporaries to be better than that of her husband.

This is INCORRECT because it contains a misleading modifier. Who/what was overshadowed by the husband's success? The wife! It doesn't make sense to compare the husband's success to the wife's poetry - that's not parallel. The sentence needs to clearly contrast the husband's success with the wife's success to be parallel.

(D) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success was later overshadowed by that of her husband, among her contemporaries she was considered the better poet.

This is CORRECT! It uses parallel structure to compare Browning's success to her husband's success, and it correctly handles the comparison of their abilities as poets by saying she is "the better poet."


There you have it - option D is the correct choice!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

Hi EMPOWERgmatVerbal,

Thanks for your explanation. I have a question regarding the use of "consider". I saw other user mentioned that "consider" can only be used in certain ways. Quote"The correct idiom is Consider x y and not consider x as y or consider x to be y or consider x as y or any other form." I saw you treated these as correct in your explanation. I want to confirm with you the correct idiom of "consider". Thanks!

Hi in option choice D, shouldnt it be Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success was later overshadowed by that of her husband's, among her contemporaries she was considered the better poet?

Husband's and not husband. If not, what is the reasoning for the same?

Pronoun reference is a vexatious issue. There are worse cases in which one can find many suitors for the antecedence for a given pronoun. So it is not possible to convincingly dismiss pronoun ambiguity or antecedence that easily.

Even so, in the given case, there is not even an element of equivocation in the given question. Elizabeth is the only female antecedent in the prompt and the pronoun ‘she’ can only refer to that lady. In other words, this is the way GMAC wants us to avoid too much nuancing on pronoun reference.

One may note that all other choices are idiomatically unacceptable as per GMAT norms.

Hi Daagh or any other expert,

There was another official question in which "considered to be" was used in all the options. Hence, how do we know which is a "Bigger error" which warrants rejection?

Clearly, if the same flaw appears in all the choices, you don't have to worry about that flaw, because it's not a decision point if it appears in all the choices.

Regarding your question, when faced with a Sentence Correction question with five flawed choices, the move is to compare issues and, hopefully, find a clear difference.

For instance, if one choice has a subject-verb agreement error, while another uses "considered to be," the one with the subject-verb agreement error is blatantly and unarguably incorrect, while the one that uses "considered to be" has a minor flaw, and in fact, in using "considered to be," uses an expression that many people use often.

So, in that case, there is a clear difference between the two issues, and you'd choose the one that uses "considered to be" over the one with the subject-verb agreement error.

Generally, you can find that kind of difference between the flaws.

If, somehow, you are forced to choose between choices that are flawed in ways that are not clearly different in terms of egregiousness, then you have to do your best to figure out which the writer of the question felt to be the better choice. Doing so is not always easy, but generally, there's some aspect of the wording of one choice or a theme in the question that tips you off to the fact that a certain choice is the one that the question's writer considered correct.

Thanks a lot Marty for your detailed explanation. How often do you think or based on your experience, would one have to go through such situations?
I have recently come across a series of exceptions, which otherwise i would reject straightaway, for eg. which modifying a noun by jumping over a verb, If used with a present perfect, etc.

I'm not 100 percent sure, but maybe 1 out of 50 SC questions has a "correct" answer that is flawed in some minor but definable way that a grade school teacher would have an issue with and that would make a GMAT test-taker wonder whether the answer should be eliminated.

That said, in many many SC questions, the "correct answers" are rather poorly constructed.

That said, some of the things you are calling "exceptions," such as a modifier jumping a verb, are uncommon structures rather than flawed structures.

Thanks Marty.
Can you please suggest any tip which can help in identifying these uncommon structures such as "which jumping over a verb to modify the noun in that clause" and "IF followed by present perfect and not simple present" ?
A tip which can prevent me from rejecting a correct choice straightaway?

You can be wary of being too rule driven when you answer questions. Especially if you are not 100 percent sure that something is "against the rules," don't be too quick to eliminate a choice.

Also, be ready to go back and de-eliminate a choice if you don't find one that works. You may have to go with something that seems to break the rules.

Of course, by answering more SC questions, you will see more of these uncommon structures and become prepared for them.

Based on the meaning alone I chose B over D.

The problem with D is the possessive pronoun rule which I thought would be greater of the 2 errors present in each of the options(B has idiom error) whereas D has this as mentioned.

GMATNinja - can you kindly help out here with the explanation?