Best SAT Vocab Book

sydneysider009
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:34:28 +0000

I have seen the Dark Knight and JefferyJung’s posts about “which list performed best” on different tests. I found them interesting and compiled lists for the December 2011 US and International SATs and the November 5 2011 International SAT. Several CCers have asked me to do a list for the November 19, 2011 International SAT. Based upon my findings in the CC archive I came up with a list of 17 consensus vocabulary words that were answers. Here they are:

Acrimonious, Anomalies, Arrest, Bias, Baleful, Confound, Eclectic, Feasible, Fundamental, Inflame, Incongruous, Miscellany, Mollify, Posthumous, Proliferation, Quiescent, Unnerved

I then compared this list of answers to the leading vocabulary books, eBooks, and free online lists to see which performed best. Here is what I found:


The Essential 300 Words: 341 words (based upon the index); 14 hits; one
hit per 24.3 words; eBook only
Direct Hits 4th edition: 568 words (based upon boldface words in the Fast
Review); 10 hits; one hit per 56.8 words; book only
Barron’s High Frequency and Hot Prospect Words: 540 words; 9 hits, one
hit per 60 words; book only
Princeton Review Hit Parade: 250 words; 4 hits; one hit per 62.5 words;
book only
Hot Words: 402 words (based upon the index); 4 hits; one hit per
100.5 words; book and eBook
Kaplan’s Score Raising Dictionary: 1000 words, 8 hits; one hit per 125
words; book only
SparkNotes: 1000 words, 6 hits; one hit per 166.7 words; free online list
MajorTests.com: 1000 words; 5 hits; one hit per 200 words; free online list
Blue Book: 669 words (based upon the list compiled by MajorTests.com);
3 hits; one hit per 223 words
Sesamewords: 450 words, 2 hits; one hit per 225 words
VocabVideo: 500 words; 2 hits; one hit per 250 words
Word Smart: 1505 words; 5 hits; one hit per 301 words


It is interesting to note that none of these books/lists had Miscellany. Essential
was the only source that had Unnerved and Baleful. The College Board Blue
Book continued to be a very poor performer with just 3 hits out of 669 words.