Making amends to your mistakes
The correct option is B: new, overwhelming.
Adjectives are usually used to modify nouns. In this case, in the sentence "[although] the new students worked hard, they could barely keep up with the overwhelming amount of homework", "new" modifies "students" and "overwhelming" modifies "amount of homework".
The other options contain "barely" which is an adverb, not an adjective. Moreover, "hard" is also used as an adverb in the sentence. Adverbs such as "barely" modify a verb. That is to say, they add information about HOW an action is.
Well having animals around could mean there’s a good environment for them to thrive, but not a lot of information to derive