The Great Migration

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct76% picked this

   Expected financial gains alone may not be a reliable indicator of the likelihood that an

   Why this is right

   We should be very attracted to considering this answer because of how marvelously soft the language is: "X by itself may not be a reliable indicator of Y". To support this, we only need one example in which if we only looked at X we might get the wrong impression about Y. This is an idea we can derive from the authors' main point. They were saying, "the Great Migration continued for as long and as strong as it did because even though the economic draw of the North became less juicy over time, the challenges of moving to the North became less daunting over time." Thus, the Great Migration is an example that you can't only look at the benefit side of moving (the expected financial gains) in order to predict whether people will be willing to migrate. You also have to look at the "expected pains of moving/adjusting". If we only considered expected financial gains, we wouldn't have guessed the Great Migration would continue for as long or as strong as it did, because the North-South income differences were narrowing in the later decades of the Migration.

   Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   76%
2. B

   Too Strong: must11% picked this

   A complete explanation of the Great Migration must begin with an account of what triggered nineteenth-century

   The authors seem totally fine with saying that the official start of the Great Migration was 1915. At the beginning of the 2nd paragraph, they say: In short, the Great Migration began in 1915 and not earlier, because it was only then that the North-South income gap became large enough to start such a large-scale migration.

   11%
3. C

   Too Strong: most1% picked this

   The Great Migration is not parallel in its broadest patterns to most other

   We don't have any sentence in the passage that would allow us to talk about more than 50% of known migration movements. And the way the authors are talking in the 3rd and 4th, they seem to be acting like "general things we know about migration" can be applied to and inferred from the Great Migration.

   1%
4. D

   Too Strong: most Opposite, if anything5% picked this

   Most large-scale migrations can be adequately explained in terms of the movement of people

   We can't point to anywhere in the passage where the authors are saying what's true for more than 50% of large-scale migrations. Also, the main point of these authors is that we shouldn't just look at the income gap between North and South. That wouldn't adequately explain the later decades of the Great Migration. We need to also understand how "migration develops momentum over time as current migration reduces the difficulty and cost of future migration".

   5%
5. E

   Too Strong: generally6% picked this

   Large-scale migrations generally did not occur until the early twentieth century, when significant interregional income differences arose as

   We have no basis for saying more than 50% of large-scale migrations didn't occur until the early 20th century. The passage is discussing one large-scale migration that occurred in the early 20th century.

   6%