Vocabulary study gets a bad rap. You know, Princeton Review, Kaplan and all those study guides designed to subvert the SAT? They target the student who has not acquired enough vocabulary to get into the college of his choice (usually due to lack of advanced reading and too much TV). So he memorizes a bunch of those big words, slips by, and forgets them within a month.
Let me say it clearly: this is not what we do here. Vocabulary study cannot compete with a lifetime of day in and day out vocabulary building. It is about learning vocabulary for life, and this vocabulary must be used over and over again in reading and writing, or it will be lost. Stephen King understood this: "Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule." In other words, vocabulary must be fully imbibed to be wielded with effect.
There are about 10,000 words that might show up on the SAT. Specific words (such as scientific jargon), easy words, and really obscure words will not show up. Easy words are picked up in day-to-day living. Specific words are needed only if you enter those particular fields. Obscure words are, well, obscure. It is the remaining ten thousand challenging words we wish to master. Not just because they are on the SAT, but rather because they will improve the student's educational productivity for the rest of his life. Those 10,000 words can be culled down with care to 7,500 by focusing on root words, and this is what Core has done.
The university testing racket seems silly, but it is smarter than you think. People with great vocabularies perform better statistically in the university (and naturally later in life) for a good reason: they possess a critical tool for transferring information. Remember, if you know less vocabulary, you will understand less and have a more difficult time expressing yourself.
Another reason the vocabulary testing game is quite clever is that there are only so many words one can cram in a year or two, so it's nearly impossible for even really smart students to truly subvert the SAT and move into that top five percent using a good memory alone. The student simply has to actually know the words, and this requires using the words over time. From the university's point of view, it's a fair bet any student commanding a massive vocabulary is well read and an advanced student. Hence, vocabulary is a pretty good metric for university admission criteria - and scholarship money.
This vocabulary program provides an organized system for the student to memorize and use difficult words, starting as young as six years old by using audio files. Ten years later, when the student is moving towards the SAT, he will have been using these difficult words for many years, not just memorizing and forgetting them. Students who are on the "conveyor belt" of institutional school will lack this year after year consistency. At best, they learn some words here and there, and then attempt to cram in difficult vocabulary during the final few years of high school. There is simply no competition: the Core student will have memorized and reviewed yearly every single word that will be on the SAT for years, as well as been recognizing these words in their reading and using them in their daily essays.