August 22 SAT First Report + Vocabulary
Hello MJTP families!
I’m out and about, writing on the go, but I want to share early reports from my international and US students that are coming in. Here's what I've heard so far.
Reading and Writing
The first module was straightforward for most of my students. Several of them think they missed about four questions across the whole section.
Keep in mind an estimate isn't a score, and scores don't post until Friday, September 4th. Four wrong questions can add up very differently depending on their relative difficulty as measure across the test. We'll know in two weeks.
The vocabulary
The vocab was relatively straightforward for most of my students. One mentioned difficulty with “regale,” a new word on the SAT this time around.
My students sent me the words they remembered. I cross-checked those against the r/SAT test-day reports and ended up with twenty words. Then I ran all twenty against my frequency database, which now covers 25 administrations going back to March 2024.
Nine of the twenty had already appeared on previous tests.
There are a few results in the table worth explaining.
Idiosyncratic showed up again. It is one of my Elite Three, along with eschew and ubiquitous. It had six appearances before Saturday and now it has seven. Students who worked through the Round 1 quiz this summer likely knew that word.
Detrimental moves into the high-frequency tier. It had two appearances before, which placed it in the middle group. Saturday makes three, so it now belongs with the words I tell students to learn first. That said, it’s a relatively common word.
Heterogeneous is up to five appearances. That places it near the top of the Power Twelve, alongside attenuate. It has now appeared on five tests since May of last year, and I expect it to keep appearing.
Rectify repeated for the first time. It had shown up once before, and now it has shown up twice.
Portentous counts as a repeat. Portend has appeared once before. Portentous is the adjective built from the same verb, and both words come from the Latin portendere, meaning to foretell or to point ahead. My database has always counted variants under a single base form, which is why eschewing, eschewed, and eschew are one entry rather than two, and why incongruent and incongruous are filed together. Portentous follows the same rule, so I have recorded it as portend's second appearance.
The remaining eleven words are new to the database. They go into the pool, and some of them will come back. Adhere was brand new in the Spring School-Day report and it repeated on May 2nd, roughly six weeks later.
These are first-round numbers. I will update the counts as better information comes in. The August quiz will be built from the final list.
What did not show up
Phrasal transitions were the surprise of the day. We drilled those all summer and they did not appear the way I expected. The work still counts, because understanding how one clause relates to the next helps you throughout this test, but I will admit that I did not see that coming.
One result worth noting
Everything else looked balanced across the topics and skills. The one exception is that a student reported seeing three passage structure questions in a single module, which is more than I would expect.
Our “Last Part Sort” method worked like a charm for the structure questions that I saw.
A typical SAT
There was nothing strange in the format and no surprises in the structure of the test. I did not hear about anything that should have thrown a student off, especially if you put in the work.
Congratulations to all of you who put in the time this summer. You gave up time with friends to invest in your future. Pat yourself on the back, regardless of the outcome.
Think about September 12th
The next test is three weeks out. Registration closes Friday, August 28th, and late registration runs through Tuesday, September 1st.
Three weeks sounds tight, but that is the main argument for taking it. The pacing, the question types, and the vocabulary are all still fresh. If you wait until October, you will spend the first two weeks getting back to where you already are this morning, so you may as well build on what you just did.
Plus, you won’t have to worry about midterm tests at school.
If you are not sure, reach out and we will talk it through.
Keep grinding.
— Mr. John
Vocabulary compiled from MJTP student reports gathered on test day and cross-checked against test-taker reports on r/SAT, including the test-day collection maintained by moderator "yodatsracist," then run against the MJTP frequency database. The SAT is a registered trademark of the College Board, with which Mr. John's Test Prep has no affiliation nor endorsement.
