Sentence Correction

High school students with high verbal Scholastic Assessment Test scores are characterized not so much by the ability to write well than that they have a large vocabulary .

than that they have a large vocabulary
but by a large vocabulary
than by a large vocabulary
as a vocabulary that is large
as by a large vocabulary

E

Why though?

Thought: [spoiler]I thought the idiom was not by, but by? [/spoiler]

not so much by x as by y:

doclkk wrote:High school students with high verbal Scholastic Assessment Test scores are characterized not so much by the ability to write well than that they have a large vocabulary .

than that they have a large vocabulary
but by a large vocabulary
than by a large vocabulary
as a vocabulary that is large
as by a large vocabulary

E

Why though?

Thought: [spoiler]I thought the idiom was not by, but by? [/spoiler]

Even i chose B thinking on similar lines. But i guess the right idiom would be "not x but rather y" and not "not x but y". However this idiom is to give the contrasting thoughts and not for comparing. For comparing the right idiom is "not so much X as Y".