January Vocab Comparison

<p>From the Jan. 2012 CR thread, I pulled out the following vocab words from both sentence completion and passage based reading:</p>

<p>aberrant, adroit, aloof, ambivalent, analogous, apprehensive, awe, cathartic, consensus, cultivate, deferential, digress, distorted, docile, eluded, erudition, evasiveness, expostulate, forestall, histrionics, humbuggery, inquisitive, lauded, loquacious, magnitude, meticulous, obdurate, objective, phenomenon, prescient, quackery, rapacious, ruminant, scoundrel, self-effacing, transcribe, underscore, unequivocal, voluptuous</p>

<p>Then I compared Direct Hits to the free Sparknotes and free Powerscore lists. In some cases, a form of a word was used. For example, Sparknotes has aberration instead of aberrant. Here are the results.</p>

<p>DIRECT HITS (Core Vocabulary)
adroit, aloof, ambivalent, digress, lauded, meticulous, obdurate</p>

<p>DIRECT HITS (Toughest Vocabulary)
consensus, histrionics, loquacious, obdurate (it was on both lists)</p>

<p>SPARKNOTES (Top 250--None were found on the 250 Most Difficult)
aberrant, adroit, aloof, ambivalent, analogous, consensus, cultivate, deferential, docile, eluded, erudition, forestall, inquisitive, lauded, meticulous, obdurate, prescient, ruminant, self-effacing (efface), unequivocal</p>

<p>POWERSCORE
adroit, ambivalent, analogous, awe, cathartic, consensus, deferential, digress, docile, erudition, histrionics, inquisitive, lauded, loquacious, meticulous, obdurate, objective, phenomenon, underscore, unequivocal</p>

<p>Two more comparisons:</p>

<p>The Essential 300 Words (eBook): Aberrant, Adroit, Ambivalent, Analogous, Cathartic, Digress, Eluded, Evasive, Forestall, Histrionics, Loquacious, Meticulous, Obdurate, Prescient, Underscore, and Voluptuous</p>

<p>Barron’s High Frequency and Hot Prospects: Aloof, Ambivalent, Analogous, Apprehensive, Consensus, Digress, Eluded, Erudition, Lauded, Meticulous, Obdurate, and Phenomenon</p>

<p>I used Essential + Barrons and did really well!</p>

<p>Princeton Review’s Hit Parade: Adroit, Ambivalent, Docile, Erudition, Meticulous, and Prescient
Just OK. But to be fair PR’s math tips helped me a lot.</p>

<p>Hot Words for the SAT: Aloof, Ambivalent, Cathartic, Digress, Erudition, Laud, Loquacious, Meticulous, and Obdurate.</p>

<p>looks like Powerscore and Sparknotes are the way to go since they are free!</p>

<p>Let me see if I can define them all without consulting a dictionary :D:</p>

<p>aberrant: abnormal.
adroit: skillful; tact.
aloof: distant
ambivalent: vacillating between two positions, paths, etc.
analogous: akin to; similar to
apprehensive: cautious
awe: wow!
cathartic: purging of one’s emotions
consensus: agreement
cultivate: bring up
deferential: obsequious
digress: to deviate
distorted: deviate from the original (lol!) … e.g. lens distortion (AP Physics)
docile: easily controlled
eluded: avoid
erudition: scholarly
evasiveness: quality of being good at avoiding something
expostulate: to set forth as an explanation (ex: out; postulate: like a theory)
forestall: hinder; stop
histronic: maudlin; excessively theatrical
humbuggery: fraud; fake
inquisitive: questionining
lauded: to praise highly
loquacious: talkative
magnitude: component of a vector
meticulous: careful; circumspect
obdurate: hardened in wrongdoing
objective: fair
phenomenon: aurora lights; natural occurrence
prescient: able to tell the future
quackery: fraud
rapacious: you got me :\ …
ruminant: meditate over; think deeply about
scoundrel: cheater; fraud
self-effacing: to debase oneself (I’m fat … I’m ugly … I’m not OK …)
transcribe: to write down (as in taking notes during a lecture)
underscore: emphasize
unequivocal: absolute; definitely
voluptuous: sensual …</p>

<p>Ha - I was able to define all but one :D. I recognized a ton of words as I was defining them from DH and the 300 Essential Words, and a couple from Barron’s.</p>

<p>could someone link me to the sparknotes sat vocab?</p>

<p>Sparknotes: [SAT:</a> Improve SAT Score with SparkNotes: SAT Vocabulary](<a href=“SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides”>SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides)</p>