One difference between the digital SAT and the prior version (2016-2023) is that while the 2016-2023 version had long articles such as history with difficult vocab words in them, the 2023 digital SAT only contains short paragraphs and practically no old historical texts. This means a huge weakness for students who didn’t study APUSH (AP US History) is effectively removed. Gone from my old CORE VOCAB List are historical words such as abolition, enfranchisement, inalienable, republicanism, etc. While these may have been useful in parsing history texts on monarchies, women’s suffrage, or slavery, they don’t seem to be very useful so far on the digital SAT.
Another difference I’ve noticed is that for the digital SAT, there are very few subject-oriented words—words that only apply to a specific topic or situation (such as the afore-mentioned history words) or rarer words. By contrast, the pre-2005 SAT and the 2006-2015 SAT had harder, sometimes subject-oriented words and included testing of rarer words, such as “phlegmatic”, “troglodyte”, or “bellicose”. Digital has none of these.
*update June 2023: apparently Collegeboard decided to test the extremely hard words ineluctable and insuperable.
So it looks like they’re just throwing random hard words at students from time to time.
Instead, if I could offer my insight into what kind of words the digital SAT tests, it’d be more general words that can relate to a variety of situations, across science, art, history, and psychology, words such as ‘reconcile’, ‘arbitrary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘substantial’, ‘imminent’, ‘peripheral’, ‘aggravate’, ‘speculate’, ‘latent’, and ‘resilient’.
They also favor words related to argumentation, words such as ‘underscore’, ‘undermine’, ‘buttress’, ‘bolster’, ‘repudiate’, ‘rebut’, ‘refute’, ‘concede’, ‘infallible’, ‘proponent’, ‘posit’, ‘corroborate’, ‘evince’, ‘substantiate’, ‘negate’, and ‘vindicate’, among others.
All in all, by carefully learning the words in this book, I can confidently say you will be extremely well-prepared for the vocabulary section. That said, there is yet a curveball: as old Literature passages often contain the real texts of passages from before 1922 (seems like Collegeboard found it easier to use out-of-copyright texts), these old literature texts often contain old-style vocabulary which can be difficult for modern readers, including words such as ‘divulge’, ‘plaints’, ‘lament’, ‘ever and anon’, ‘coxcombical’, ‘jackanapes’, and more. Most students will probably find it an acceptable risk to forgo learning these words and do their best based on context clues, and I don’t disagree with that strategy. I do think picking up one old literature book from before 1922 can’t hurt. I recommend a Jane Austen novel or Frankenstein, or whatever captures your interest. Anything on Gutenberg.org’s top 50 downloaded list should work! (Gutenberg.org offers free out-of-copyright books).
Final Statement:
The CORE VOCAB 400 is not an exhaustive or final list, but many of the words will be useful as they reappear on new tests. Other words are rare and have a small chance of appearing, but are included because if they do appear the student is likely to be in big trouble. All words thus are chosen for the impact they have on a student’s SAT final score.
Best of luck with your vocab journey.
Alan
NALAPREP Creator
