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“Impecunious” describes having little or no money; it derives from Latin roots meaning “without cattle/money,” historically a stand-in for wealth. Within the sentence, the concessive cue “Despite his brilliance” contrasts intellectual success with financial scarcity during graduate school, making “destitute” (C) the best match. Choice A, “affluent,” is the direct opposite and contradicts the struggle implied. Choice B, “indebted,” focuses on owing money; someone can be impecunious without carrying formal debt. Choice D, “extravagant,” concerns spending style rather than income or assets and could apply even to wealthy people. Nelson–Denny vocabulary items often hinge on recognizing register and collocations: “impecunious student/artist/scholar” is a common pairing in expository prose. A fast strategy is the substitution test: “the young researcher was destitute” preserves the sentence’s logic and tone. Build semantic clusters to accelerate recognition under time constraints: impecunious, penurious, indigent ↔ affluent, opulent, prosperous. Distinguishing “impecunious” (lack of funds) from “parsimonious/miserly” (unwilling to spend) protects against traps that swap ability to spend with willingness to spend—two different ideas the test likes to contrast.