With the help of reports from Reddit's r/SAT, I’ve compiled a list of the most common and challenging vocabulary from the December 2025 INT SAT. I've put these into a quiz format for students and parents to challenge themselves. Good luck!

SAT Vocabulary December 2025 International - Round 1 - Warm-up Reading Passage

Instructions: Read this passage carefully before taking your quiz. All 14 vocabulary words from December 2025 International SAT Round 1 appear in context. Pay attention to how each word is used naturally in the story.

The Museum Restoration

Dr. Elena Vasquez had spent fifteen years directing archaeological expeditions across the Mediterranean, but nothing had prepared her for the challenge of restoring the Castellani Collection—a heterogeneous assemblage of artifacts spanning three thousand years of human civilization. The diverse collection included everything from Bronze Age pottery to Renaissance manuscripts, each piece requiring specialized conservation techniques.

The restoration project had been mired in contentious debates from the beginning. Board members argued constantly over funding priorities, preservation methods, and which artifacts deserved the most attention. The most heated dispute concerned a Roman marble statue that some experts believed was a forgery—a controversy that threatened to derail the entire initiative.

Elena's leadership style evinced a deep respect for both scientific rigor and artistic sensitivity. Her careful documentation and transparent decision-making demonstrated qualities that earned her the trust of skeptical colleagues who had initially doubted whether an outsider could manage such a prestigious project.

Unlike many of her predecessors, Elena chose to eschew traditional hierarchical management in favor of collaborative teams. She deliberately avoided the top-down approach that had alienated staff members in the past, believing that the best ideas often came from junior conservators working directly with the objects.

The collection represented a remarkable amalgam of cultural influences—Greek mythology intertwined with Egyptian iconography, Persian textile patterns combined with Chinese silk-weaving techniques. This mixture of traditions made the artifacts extraordinarily valuable to scholars studying ancient trade networks and cultural exchange.

Within weeks, Elena's exceptional organizational abilities became apparent to everyone on the team. It was obvious that she possessed a rare combination of technical expertise and interpersonal skills that the museum had desperately needed.

The project's success would ultimately manifest in the reopening of three previously closed galleries. The tangible results of the team's work would become visible to the public for the first time in over a decade, transforming the museum's reputation.

Elena convened weekly meetings where conservators, curators, and historians could share discoveries and coordinate their efforts. These gatherings brought together specialists who rarely collaborated, fostering unexpected breakthroughs in understanding the collection's provenance.

The established protocols for artifact preservation—procedures that had been in place since the museum's founding in 1892—proved inadequate for many of the collection's more delicate pieces. These long-standing methods worked well for stone and metal but damaged organic materials like textiles and papyrus.

Elena introduced subtle modifications to the lighting system that dramatically improved the visitor experience without compromising conservation standards. These understated changes were barely noticeable to casual observers but made a significant difference in how the artifacts appeared.

When a water main burst and flooded the basement storage facility, Elena led the emergency effort to salvage as many pieces as possible. Her team worked through the night to rescue waterlogged manuscripts and retrieve bronze artifacts from the murky water before corrosion could set in.

The new climate control system operated with nearly complete autonomous capability, automatically adjusting temperature and humidity based on real-time sensor data without requiring constant human oversight. This independent functioning freed staff to focus on more complex conservation tasks.

Elena's approach transcended the traditional boundaries between art history and materials science. Her methods went beyond conventional museum practice, integrating cutting-edge technology with centuries-old craftsmanship in ways that redefined what artifact restoration could achieve.

One characteristic element of Elena's leadership was her insistence on mentoring young professionals. This typical feature of her management style ensured that institutional knowledge would be passed to the next generation of conservators.

By the project's conclusion, even the most skeptical board members acknowledged that Elena had transformed not just the collection but the museum's entire approach to preservation. The restored galleries attracted record attendance, and the Castellani Collection once again took its rightful place among the world's great cultural treasures.

Vocabulary words practiced: evince, eschew, characteristic, manifest, convene, established, subtle, salvage, amalgam of, apparent, contentious, transcend, heterogeneous, autonomous