Hot Words for the SAT

I am a career coach who helps young people optimally position themselves to college, grad school and employers. I am also a parent who was very proactive about seeking out and purchasing SAT books which would give my son the tools to improve his standardized test scores.

Linda Carnevale's book was a powerful vocabulary-building tool for my son. Its unqiue strength is its categorization of words in related-meaning clusters, so a student can learn a number of words that have similar meanings, but nuanced differently. I believe this fits with the way we file away words in our minds, so there is something very natural and organically effective about this approach.

My son and I worked together with this book, and it was an enjoyable way to learn. Not only did my son improve his own vocabulary skills, but I learned a great deal myself. You can't beat that! This little book is a painless, but valuable addition to a college-bound teenager's toolkit. Buy it, it's a no-brainer!

-Kris Hintz, wwww.positionu4college.com

This book was awesome. I am able to remember 1 lessons per 2 days by using this book. I love cluster and the key to memorize the words.

I am taking the SAT in a week. This book uses a technique called clustering, where vocabulary words with similar meanings are grouped and studied together. It's been very helpful, as it also comes with mini self-tests and reviews.

Let's face it, chances are, we are not going to see any of these words in the SAT tests. Nevertheless, it's always good to know a few big words. This book certainly makes it easy to memorize vocabs. But if you just want to improve your SAT scores, it may not help you at all.

I am a mom with a 10 year old who is begging to study SAT words. (Don't ask why...she just really wants to learn them) I saw this book being used by the 10th graders at the local private school and I was very impressed. The organization of words into groups with similar meanings is fabulous. It really helps you to talk about those "shades of meaning" that you get with different word choices. Of course, these are not the most difficult of the SAT words, but I think it is perfect for the average to above average student. The highly gifted child who is taking the SAT as a senior should probably know the majority of these words already, but for most students I think it is perfect.

HERE IS THE TRUE SECRET to the vocab section. Go through the entire 10 test prep book and underline each and every word that you do not know. (The college board book with the cheap grey paper, costs about 20 bucks). Then make 3x5 cards. By the time you have gone through all 10 sample tests, you will know all the vocab you need to know. This is how my 12 year old got a 750 on the verbal last year.