With the help of reports from Reddit's r/SAT, I’ve compiled a list of the highest frequency words from 2024 and 2025 and analyzed those trends in my 2026 report. I've put these into a quiz format for students and parents to challenge themselves. Good luck!

SAT High-Frequency Vocabulary - Round 1 - Warm-up Reading Passage

Instructions: Read this passage carefully before taking your quiz. All 13 vocabulary words represent the most frequently tested SAT words from 2024-2025. Pay attention to how each word is used naturally in the story.

The Urban Renewal Debate

City Councilwoman Maria Santos had become the most vocal proponent of the controversial downtown redevelopment plan. As an advocate who had championed affordable housing for over a decade, she believed the project represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform neglected neighborhoods into thriving communities.

Not everyone shared her enthusiasm. Critics argued that the plan's environmental impact assessment was too equivocal—the language so deliberately ambiguous that residents couldn't determine whether the construction would genuinely protect local wetlands or merely pay lip service to conservation. The council needed clear answers, not bureaucratic hedging.

The debate grew increasingly heated as summer temperatures began to abate. What had been scorching August afternoons gradually subsided into cooler September evenings, but the political climate remained intense. Protesters gathered outside City Hall every evening, their numbers sometimes swelling, sometimes dwindling, but never disappearing entirely.

Santos chose to eschew the traditional approach of closed-door negotiations. She deliberately avoided backroom deals, instead hosting a series of town halls where residents could voice concerns directly. This transparency was idiosyncratic for a politician of her generation—most of her colleagues found her peculiar insistence on public deliberation both admirable and naive.

The opposition's primary conjecture centered on funding. Their speculation, based on incomplete budget documents, suggested the project would cost taxpayers three times the official estimate. Without access to the full financial records, however, this remained educated guesswork rather than established fact.

To address these concerns, Santos commissioned an independent audit that would serve as an index of the project's true costs. This comprehensive indicator would measure everything from construction expenses to long-term maintenance, providing concrete data where previously only estimates had existed.

The audit revealed that initial cost projections needed to be attenuated significantly. The original scope had been far too ambitious, and reducing the project's scale would make it financially viable without sacrificing its core mission of creating affordable housing.

Meanwhile, affordable housing shortages had become ubiquitous across the metropolitan region. The crisis was present everywhere—in suburban developments, in urban cores, in communities that had never before struggled with housing accessibility. No neighborhood remained untouched.

Some council members worried that scaling back the project would exacerbate existing tensions with community groups. Making an already difficult situation worse seemed politically dangerous, especially with elections approaching. But Santos argued that a smaller, successful project would build trust for future initiatives.

The benefits of the revised plan were manifest to anyone who examined the updated proposals. The advantages were clearly apparent: lower costs, faster construction timelines, and stronger environmental protections. Even former critics acknowledged that the changes addressed their primary concerns.

To make the 400-page proposal more accessible, Santos hired a team to abridge the document into a 20-page summary. This condensed version preserved all essential information while eliminating technical jargon that had confused residents during earlier hearings.

The new community center's design featured capacious meeting halls that could accommodate hundreds of residents. These spacious rooms would host everything from neighborhood association meetings to job training programs, ensuring the building served multiple community needs.

When the final vote came, the council approved the revised plan unanimously. Santos had demonstrated that patient engagement, transparent communication, and willingness to adapt could transform bitter opposition into genuine consensus. The project broke ground the following spring.

Vocabulary words practiced: proponent, equivocal, abate, eschew, idiosyncratic, conjecture, index, attenuate, ubiquitous, exacerbate, manifest, abridge, capacious