First of all, has anyone taken the redesigned SAT yet? We’ll if you have or haven’t, any guesses on what they mean by there will not be “any obscure vocabulary”?
I have taken the new SAT, and there is no “obscure” vocabulary per se (“obscure” referring to words that are rare/antiquated/you are unlikely to come across, such as “firmament,” “stultifying,” etc…basically the kind you’ll see here: https://quizlet.com/9339679/old-sat-vocab-flash-cards/).
PrepScholar published an article that seems to answer your question: http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-study-vocabulary-for-the-new-2016-sat
There is plenty of old-school SAT vocab on the test still, despite what the CB and others say. It comes out in passages, in questions, and in answer choices. Practice test one, for example, features the following (and more):
deferential, unseemliness, mediation, disparagement, ambivalent, attribution, unfounded, magnitude, calibrate, reciprocate, substantiate, permutations, complement, template, replication, procession, vantage, spire, aesthetic, queer, fresco, traipsing, agitate, pulpit, venerable, cloisters, coronations, candor, solidarity, conducive, momentous, pressing, pervasive, commodity, flurry, celestial, desolation, pristine, stewardship, broach, reservations.
And that’s just what I found flipping through a single test for 3-4 minutes.
Now, we can quibble about where to draw the line, of course, but the words above are all classic SAT vocab list words, the kind that have always been tested, and I find that, just like on the old test, the new test requires excellent knowledge of advanced vocab.
These seem like non-obscure words that I would come across in normal life and reading.
did you study vocabulary at all? and if so, what did you use to study them?
haha, nevermind, read the article
Reading a lot is the best way to build vocabulary. Some of us liked the old SAT vocab. 
Like I said, we can quibble about where to draw the “obscure” line, but for the vast majority of college-bound high schoolers, I believe many words on that list are not well known. I read a lot, so none of them are “obscure” to me, but that’s how I felt about the old test’s vocab as well. I’m pretty confident that words like “cloister” “unseemliness” “traipsing” and “complement” are “obscure” by high school student standards, and the vocab tests I’ve given kids have born that out.
Here’s data point you might find interesting:
Sample size: 60 students, mid-10th and mid-11th grade.
Test: first day diagnostic vocab quiz, “SAT words” from the lists I’ve developed over the last decade or so
Results: Students who scored 75% or higher all got to mid-700’s on the rSAT in two weeks; Students who scored 65% or lower all failed to reach 650 in two weeks (except one outlier).
Correlation/causation caveats apply, of course, but it’s the only empirical data I’ve seen going into this summer.
I initially took Coleman et al at their word, but the more I analyze tests and the more student data I gather the more convinced I am that nothing’s really changed in terms of vocab needs. The only change is that knowing vocab no longer gifts hard-cramming students 250 points (via sentcom).
With respect to “obscure” vocabulary words, I think the main difference between the new and the old SAT is that the vocabulary words – however obscure they may or may not be – are tested in the context of a reading passage on the new SAT, whereas before they were tested in the form of sentence completion, the latter perhaps easier to cram for.
Sure, that’s a reasonable assessment, @LoveTheBard . That said, sentcoms are “context” as well, and the vocab-in-context Qs on the new test definitely aren’t testing “SAT vocab.” On the new test, my analysis tells me that “SAT vocab” is used as clues in passages and of course in answer choices, both right and wrong.
Those words were not obscure to my kids, who were big readers. And they had great CR scores. Not to sound curmudgeonly, but the SAT is being dumbed down.
I tend to agree, @intparent . Knowing words is pretty essential to real literacy, and sophisticated texts have words like those in them.