PrepTest 129, Section 2, 17. Poetry journal patron:…

How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?

Only the right answer will add support for disagreeing with the conclusion, or for the opposite conclusion.

Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:

if your magazine also published an anthology of poems first printed in your magazine, you could depend less on donations.

Poetry journal patron: [BACKGROUND]. [SUPPORT]. So, [CONCLUSION]. After all, [SUPPORT].

You caught that the author is using a comparison to support their conclusion, right? Recognizing that makes the list of answer choices way easier to deal with. The conclusion relies on a similarity between “your magazine” and “The Brick Wall Review“, so the right answer will almost definitely spell out a difference between them.

Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:

(A) Neither The Brick Wall Review nor the other magazine…

This answer tells us about another similarity between the magazines, which if anything would only support the author’s conclusion.

(B) …rejected for publication by the other magazine…

This does sort of tell us about a difference between these publications, but it doesn’t map to the key terms in the conclusion. What does this answer tell us about “an anthology” or whether the magazine would “depend less on donations”? You’d need to add in a couple steps of your own reasoning to connect this info about rejected poets to income from an anthology.

(C) The only compensation poets receive…

This is bringing in something totally new that isn’t mentioned in the passage. That can only work when it’s clear common sense how this impacts the argument. In this case the “compensation poets receive” is irrelevant.

(D) …operating expenses not covered by income from anthology sales.

Okay cool, but this is just another similarity between the two publications. This info could only serve to strengthen the comparison the author made.

(E) …always contains a number of poems by famous poets…

The test expects you to see that “famous poets” would help sales of the anthology. It would be nice if they’d spelled this out a little more and told us there are no celebrities involved in “your magazine”, but that’s what makes this one ⭐⭐⭐⭐ difficulty. This is a potential difference that explains why you might not make as much money selling anthologies as the Brick Wall folks.

(E) is the correct answer.

Common pattern/s in this question: I’ve seen people eliminate all these answers when they’re not focused on weakening the comparison the author made. When the right answer is as weak as this one, pattern recognition is that much more valuable for avoiding a mistake.