<p>This is an interesting thought.</p>
<p>I randomly started thinking today about these purported "SAT words" (see what I did there? ;) ). Why are myopic, quixotic, and dexterous "SAT words"? Why shouldn't TCB just be able to open up a dictionary and test any word in there?</p>
<p>Of course, there are many people here who argue over the value of studying for words and how much one should study.</p>
<p>I've always seen studying for SAT words as a sort of sneaky way of preparing for the test. Technically, these are words you're supposed to either know from reading books or be able to figure out from context clues and previous knowledge. But today I checked my e-mails and there was one from TCB asking me to take a survey. In the e-mail, it used the word plethora and followed it with (SAT word!).</p>
<p>So TCB itself referred to a word as an "SAT word". My point is, this sort of proves that there indeed are words that are more prone to be on the SAT. </p>
<p>So, what's the criteria for a word to be considered an SAT word? How do you think TCB chooses what type of vocab it will test?</p>
<p>Interesting point you make. I have been thinking about something similar to this. The problem with categorizing words into “Easy, Medium, and Hard” lies in that different people have different vocabulary exposures.</p>
<p>For example, some people may know what “hubris” means from their elementary school vocabulary book while others might view this word as a “hard” vocabulary. I was quite nonplussed by TCB’s defining this word as “hard” on a sentence completion question especially because I learned the word hubris in my elementary school. It is incorrect when people claim some words are “SAT words” when the words are beyond regular conversational words.</p>
<p>However, there is definitely a set of words that appear more frequently than others. It is no coincidence that words like aesthetic, ambivalent, and qualify reappear after every other test. This is exactly why I refuse to neglect the efficacy of some SAT vocabulary lists. Some words definitely appear more often than others–some vocabulary lists are successful in predicting, or rather, compiling these words. This is why Barron’s 3500 list covers nearly all of the hits in the SAT; it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Barron’s 3500 list is only a compilation of vocabulary words that appeared on the past SATs. This is also why people can effectively study for the upcoming SATs by taking previous QAS for practice. After doing 10-20 QAS, people can be sure that they would know all but one or two words on a real SAT.</p>
<p>I define an SAT word by its occurrence rate in SATs. I think TCB has a set of words it wishes to test; the secondary definitions of words like qualify, wanting, and bent. It also has some critical words that one must know to do well on the CR section: underscore, undermine, and ambivalent.</p>