<p>This summer I examined how a number of vocab books and lists performed on the March, May and June SATs. I posted my analysis on CC. One of my key conclusions was that the best vocabulary strategy is to study the words in Direct Hits, Princeton Review (Hit Parade) and Rocket Review's Power Ranked Core Words. So did the strategy work on the October 08 SAT?</p>
<p>Yes, it did! Thanx to the great work of joon9823 (see Oct SAT cr posts 730 and 733) and SilverDragon795 (Compilation of CR answers Post 2) we now have a good consensus on the key vocabulary words. Based upon the consensus there were 20 key vocabulary answers:
cerebral, momentous, trivial, inapt, magnanimous, cosmopolitan, nuance, paradox, unambiguous, enigma, prolific, pedestrian, edifying, precipitous, irreverent, derisive, lucid, munificence and wry. Direct Hits had 10 hits, Rocket Review had 8 hits and Princeton Review had 5 hits. There was some overlap. For example, all three had enigma. Taken together the three lists have just over 500 different words. If you knew all 500 or so of these words you got 16 direct hits. That comes to 1 hit for every 31 words. Not bad.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note that compiling the lists helped me alot. Did anyone else notice that NUANCE was on the June 08 SAT and lo and behold was on the October 08 SAT? Similarly,COSMOPOLITAN and WRY were on the March 07 SAT, Cerebral was on the Nov 07 SAT and INAPT was also on a recent test. All of this was reported in the test summaries on CC!</p>
<p>So to sum up if you studied Direct Hits, PR and RR plus reviewed the CC summary reports you would have hits on 18 of the 20 key words. While PEDESTRIAN and EDIFYING were not on these lists I got that one right anyway. Direct Hits had an incredible number of indirect hits - words on the test but not the right answer. I knew all the wrong answers and used POE to get to pedestrian and edifying.</p>
<p>Greatly thank for your previous statistic. I memorized Direct Hits, RR, Hit Parade and saw only 2 unknown words in October SAT. However, I still did wrong on some SC questions. So sad !</p>
<p>I did Barron's CR workbook and only came across a couple words I didn't know. I left 1 sentence completion blank because I forgot what a two words meant (meaning they were on the list).
It was only about 800 words, I studied it for about 4 days.</p>
<p>Thanx for the great post. I studied Direct Hits and Rocket Review. I believe I aced the vocab. My only concern is that there were a number of CR questions that were very debatable. Yes, I noticed that NUANCE was on the June 08 SAT and was back on the October 08 SAT. I'm not complaining since I got it right. But how fair was that?</p>
<p>Great suggestion. I am going to give it a try for the Nov or Dec SAT. Looks like I will have to take the test again. Missed more than I thought.</p>
<p>MY ANALYSIS FOR BARRON'S HOT WORDS FOR THE SAT 3rd EDITION</p>
<p>WORDS:
1) trivial
2) magnanimous
3) nuance (This was not a word on the list but was used in the intro and appendix.)
4) unambiguous (This book had "ambiguous" so by using prefix you could have easily gotten the meaning for this word.)
5) enigma
6) prolific
7) pedestrian (This word was using in a sentence completion.)
8) edifying (This word was using in a sentence completion.)
9) irreverent (The book had "revere" so using prefix and suffix, you could have gotten the meaning for this word easily.)
10) derision (It was used in a sentence for "deride".)
11) lucid
12) munificence (This word was used in a sentence.)</p>
<p>good to know! Now I'll definitely study Direct Hits, Princeton Review (Hit Parade) and Rocket Review's Power Ranked Core Words.
Now I can laugh at all the people who hopelessly study Barron's 3500 list. I only I have to study 1/7 of it :)</p>
<p>I have a copy of the 3rd edition of Barron's Hot Words. The book contains 396 featured words. Each of these words is listed in the index. Lucid, Pedestrian, Edifying, Nuance and Irreverent are not featured words and are not in the Hot Words index. I agree with you that ambiguous and unambiguous are essentially the same word. However, I believe it is a stretch to go from reverent to irreverent and count it as a hit. Other books/lists specifically had irreverent. Based upon the methodology I have been consistently using Barron's Hot Words had 7 hits out of 396 words.</p>
<p>^My point exactly. I included words that were used in the book at least once even if they weren't part of the list. You should have the decency of checking the meaning of a word that you don't know. I believe that was one of the advice in the book...</p>
<p>I've got to side with the Dark Knight on this one. IMO a hit should be a boldface numbered word. If there is an index it should be listed in the index. Reverent and Irreverent is a close one. As many noted, the use of IRREVERENT on the October SAT was part of a difficult question that was open to some debate. It would be better if the word was specifically listed. Oh by the way, I checked my copy of Direct Hits. Dark Knight you made a mistake. LUCID is a boldface word that is defined on page 74 of volume 2. So Direct Hits actually had 11 hits.</p>