The October 2025 SAT Vocab Survey + Quiz - US Version (Round 1)

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

SAT Vocabulary October 2025 US - Round 1 - Warm-up Reading Passage

Instructions: Read this passage carefully before taking your quiz. All 11 vocabulary words from October 2025 US SAT Round 1 appear in context. Pay attention to how each word is used naturally in the story.

The Investigative Reporter

Maya Chen stood at her desk, reviewing the pharmaceutical company's leaked documents one final time. The evidence before her would underscore the critical importance of investigative journalism in protecting public health. She knew that powerful corporations routinely attempt to undermine reporters who expose their misconduct, but the stakes were too high to back down now.

Her assignment was clear: enumerate every instance where the clinical trial data appeared manipulated. Maya had spent three months compiling a comprehensive list—fourteen separate violations, each meticulously documented with supporting evidence. The financial disclosures were deliberately intermingled with patient safety records in ways that obscured the true risks of the experimental drug, making independent verification nearly impossible for regulators.

As Maya analyzed the research papers more closely, she identified several troubling indices of systematic fraud. The data showed statistically impossible recovery rates, suspiciously uniform patient responses across demographically diverse test populations, and enrollment numbers that fluctuated inexplicably between reports. Most damning was the redundancy in certain measurements—identical lab results appearing at supposedly independent testing facilities thousands of miles apart, as if someone had simply copied and pasted the same numbers into multiple documents.

The incongruence between the company's public statements and internal communications was startling. Press releases celebrated the drug's "exceptional safety profile" and "breakthrough efficacy," while confidential emails between executives revealed serious concerns about adverse reactions, including several patient deaths that had been systematically excluded from published findings.

Maya's confidential sources warned her to prepare for reprisal. The pharmaceutical giant had a well-documented history of aggressive retaliation against critics—filing frivolous lawsuits, hiring private investigators to dig up personal information, and pressuring employers to terminate whistleblowers. Her editor remained supportive but cautious, insisting they verify every claim before publication.

Despite pressure from the newspaper's legal team, Maya refused to abridge her investigation. Every documented violation deserved inclusion in the final article, regardless of how lengthy the piece became. The public had a right to know the full extent of the deception, not some sanitized summary that minimized the company's wrongdoing.

The corporation's attorneys had already begun manufacturing pretexts for dismissing Maya's findings before she'd even published. Their prepared statements claimed she misunderstood complex scientific methodologies, lacked proper medical credentials, and relied on disgruntled former employees with personal vendettas. These carefully constructed justifications were designed to discredit her work without actually addressing the evidence itself.

Several colleagues cautioned Maya against making wild conjectures with insufficient proof, reminding her that speculation could undermine her credibility and expose the newspaper to devastating libel suits. She understood their concerns and appreciated their warnings. But Maya had been scrupulously careful—every assertion in her article was supported by documentary evidence, expert testimony, or both. She wasn't guessing; she was reporting facts.

Three weeks later, her investigation appeared as the front-page story. Within forty-eight hours, federal regulators announced an emergency review of the clinical trial data. The company's stock price plummeted twenty-three percent. Two senior executives resigned. Patient advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit. Congressional committees scheduled hearings.

Maya received both praise and criticism. Industry defenders accused her of sensationalism and scaremongering. But the documentary evidence spoke for itself—and as subsequent government investigations confirmed, her reporting had been accurate in every material respect.

The experience reinforced Maya's fundamental belief about journalism's role in democracy: that rigorous, fact-based investigation serves the public interest even when it provokes powerful opposition. Sometimes the most important stories are precisely those that the powerful work hardest to suppress.

Vocabulary words practiced: underscore, undermine, enumerate, intermingled with, indices of, redundancy, incongruence, reprisal, abridge, pretexts for, conjectures with