SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. So the SAT went digital, and most families have no idea what that actually means for their kids' score. Today, an SAT prep expert with multiple perfect scores and nearly 60,000 YouTube subscribers is going to break it all down for us and tell exactly how do you beat this test without spending a fortune. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. Families often ask me how to navigate the maze of college prep without wasting thousands of dollars and years of time. And the answer usually involves finding people who've figured out the rules of the game that schools aren't telling you. And that's why I'm thrilled to have Mike Sattel here today. Mike is a John Hopkins grad, multiple perfect SAT and ACT scorer, the author of the SAT packet study guide, and the creator of one of YouTube's most trusted SAT prep channels, again, with nearly 60,000 subscribers. Mike, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Absolutely. Living that LA life, man. I'm I'm definitely jealous because I uh I could take trips and I come back to Pittsburgh and I go, why do I live here? Like it's 77 today. It's it's gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah, it's 40 today. It'll be 80 by the end of the week. And that's pretty much been the story for the past four months or four weeks, I'm sorry, and why I can't be healthy in my life right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

So just it makes a difference when it's when you don't have the weather giving you an excuse, you know, oh, I can't go for a jog today. It it gets easier to do that stuff. Yeah, it does. There's uh the lack of I can still come up with a good excuse, but yeah, it's harder.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I like like I visited I visited, I love Scottsdale, Arizona. I'm now like I've visited Florida probably about four times in the past five months. I'm like, yeah, people are healthier down here because it's just easier. It's easier. You don't have like I'm obviously it's it's April and I'm in a sweater. Like it's freezing still.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So I've been watching, I'm an Orioles fan, so I've been watching some of the Orioles games, and they were in Pittsburgh for a little bit, and now they're in Chicago, and they are bundled up. And I'm happy to be watching it on the TV.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Absolutely. So um, Mike, how did you get started? So you're a Hopkins grad. Um, how did you get all started in this SATP journey? Like, tell us where it started and where you are now.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, I mean, I had tutored people in high school, but just in random subjects, you know, math, whatever, neighbors who needed help with things who were a little bit younger, you know, friends, things like that. So I had been tutoring for a long time. And then uh during my freshman year at Hopian, this basically I was um, you know, so I saw this kind of a flyer in my mailbox of like, you know, apply for this job. It's a tutoring job and tutoring SATs for a course. And um was like, oh, I've I've tutored. I could probably do this. So I applied for the job. I got the job. And it was just um my part-time job all through college, uh, tutoring, doing the classes, um, doing it during the week, all sorts of things. So um I just got better and better at it the more I did it. And then when I graduated, I moved to DC. I was kind of debating what I wanted to do. I was kind of looking for um like political jobs um and having, you know, some success. But also the SAT stuff just was still on my plate and it paid better. And I liked it. So I ended up working for the company that I had worked for part-time. They hired me to do full-time courses, running the courses, helping with training and materials and all sorts of stuff, and just kind of expanded the role. So just a different, different piece of it. And then when I ended up moving to LA, I just kept doing it. So it's just been something I kind of fell into, but enjoyed enough never to really want to quit.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

So a political science and philosophy major, is that what I'm reading? Yes, that is correct. And you decide not to pursue your avenue in politics and just kind of go full time with SAT tutoring.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah, well, I I guess I also decided not to become a professional philosopher, so you can look at it from both directions.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

I think I found the reason why Congress is so dysfunctional, actually.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah, I mean, if I were there, you know, but no, it was uh you know, it was something that I was interested in. It was also, you know, something that kind of fell into my lap. I went to Hopkins thinking I would be doing math and science because that's what I was good at in school, but I just took some classes and and fell in love with it. And uh I did, you know, live in DC. I, you know, I've volunteered in some campaigns and things like that. But weirdly enough, I think both the political science and the philosophy training also helped me be a better teacher. You know, it kind of forces you, philosophy especially, to put yourself in other people's shoes and think like, okay, how are they thinking? Why are they coming to this conclusion? What is the weakness in their argument? And so many times with my students, I'm using those same skills that I was using to write philosophy papers, just kind of trying to understand why they are picking this answer choice and which what's the pattern in their thinking that we need to fix? Things like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

One of my first college classes ever at a small college that I went to in Pennsylvania was philosophy and pop culture. And it literally mirrored together philosophical concepts with pop culture references, and I thought it was such a cool way of teaching it. It's one of the reasons I actually switched from poly side to teaching because of just how inspired I was. Plus, I didn't want to go to law school for three more years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I I totally get that. I didn't take anything like that. Ours were more, I probably took a couple that were on the like more modern side of things, but a lot of them were like the classics, but it was still stuff I had never really experienced in high school. So I love that about colleges. You get to see like there's whole departments devoted to things you've never studied in high school. So very cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Well, you are you've attended a school that I a lot of our families seek as one of their target schools. So I want to go to Johns Hopkins. Um well, if I can, it's Johns Hopkins.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

There's an S at the end, and they're very sensitive about that. I don't know. It's just the guy's name. Yeah. It was just the guy's name.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Johns hundreds. There we go. Um well, but a lot of people know Johns Hopkins from the medical field, right? Like they're they're uh it's still one of the well Pittsburgh medicine has kind of gone really really hard into the corporate life. So it's like both healthcare systems have kind of taken a little bit of a nosedive in in overall quality. So if you really if you want to get a second opinion, you're going to Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins. You're driving four hours one way or the other. Well, Cleveland's only two hours. But so you're you went full-time SAT, you moved out, you're your own one-man band when it comes to the SAT program. And, you know, it went fully digital a couple of years ago. Uh, for families who've taken the SAT previously, like what is actually different now? What do families need to know about the format change?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah. So if uh, you know, you have a kid right now who's gearing up for the SAT, the experience you had as a parent when you were in their shoes is probably pretty different. Um, you would just have uh, you know, the the days of the number two pencil are basically gone. You should bring a pencil to the test because you have scratch paper, but everything's done on the computer. Um, and it's a much shorter test, which is a good thing. Uh used to be three and a half hours or so. Now we're down to like two and a half of testing, plus some logistics on either side. But in terms of the content, I don't know that it's that different from what would have been on the test 30 years ago. You know, you still have passages and you have to understand some sometimes, sometimes some difficult vocabulary words. Uh, mathematics hasn't changed. Numbers are still the same numbers they've always been. So you have algebra, you have geometry, the balance might have shifted. Um, and the biggest addition to the SAT since basically when I took it was 2005. They added the writing section, which was a lot of grammar and some other things. And that was at the time its own 800 score section, but now that's been fully merged into the reading. And that's not something that was on the test in like the 90s. It would have been its own little separate thing, but now that's part of it. The reading, there's all there's still a lot to read. There's still lots of passages, but it's it's shorter overall because it's then kind of balanced with some other skills that are not as dense. But otherwise, it's what it's always been. It's the stuff you've learned in high school, at least the content. The format, obviously, different.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Because we've gone from 1600 to 2400, right? And then back to 1600.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

That was the year my I took it first. Like they changed it my year of junior year of high school. Yeah. And then 10 years later, they went back, yeah, to 1600. Yeah, like I got a six, I got a 1600, but it was out of 240.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Then that's not so great. But yeah, it's out good for that first half of this ends. Yeah, right, right. So uh I actually don't even remember what I got on my SD. So um, I didn't take any of this stuff. It's funny because we provide all this stuff. I didn't take any of it seriously as a high school student. So um now it's just the game has changed so much 20 years later. Um what is it what does it mean that it's gone adaptive? Like how does that different and how does it affect scores ultimately? Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

So that's I think the biggest change, right? Obviously, it's on a computer. And because it's not a printed booklet, it gives them a lot of ability to kind of change things. And the adaptive piece is probably the most kind of confusing for anyone because there are just aren't as many testing experiences that are like this. So the way it works, basically, is for both sections, reading and math, you have two modules, they call them, right? So subsections. And for everyone, I'm gonna lie a little bit to start just to make it easier to explain, but I'll fix the lie later. The first module for everyone is basically exactly the same. You all get a kind of an even difficulty module. It's got some easy questions, some hard questions, some medium questions, probably like a third of each thing. And depending on how well you do in that first module, the test is programmed to either put you in a harder or an easier second module. Roughly speaking, if you get between somewhere between six and 10 questions wrong, it depends, but it roughly somewhere in that range, you risk getting placed in the easier second module. And if that happens, you will get much easier questions. You'll have a few hard ones still, but mostly easier ones. The balance basically becomes like two-thirds easy questions. And it also limits your score in that subject. So you wouldn't really be able to get better than like a 610, 620, even if you got everything right in that second section. So it just limits you because you're not really answering that many hard questions. Um, however, if you do well enough in the first section, the first module, they'll put you in the harder second module. And now you're gonna have like two-thirds of the questions will be hard. It's gonna feel much harder, it's gonna be much more rushed, it's it's just a very different experience. And you know, you do have a chance still now at an 800, but um, there's only really these two paths. So if someone gets nothing wrong in that first section, they'll be placed in that hard module. If someone gets like four questions wrong in that first section, they'll be placed in the hard module. Even though they did slightly worse, they're still gonna get the exact same hard module that the other person got with zero wrong. So when we think of adaptive testing, we tend to think of a test that's kind of adapting as you answer questions. Every time you get something wrong, it kind of adapts and punishes you, versus if you get something right, it adapts and gives you harder questions. That's not how the SAT works. It's a fork in the road and there's two paths, and you're taking one or the other, basically based on that threshold from the first module. Now, all that said, if I can just add one more thing, because the test is digital, I it kind of oversimplified. It's not the case that everyone gets the exact same first module, second module, because in order to prevent cheating, what the college board has done is basically created an ability to like shuffle questions, swap questions, all sorts of things. So you're not going to have the same exact test as anyone else who's testing with you in that room, but the difficulty will be the same. The paths will be the same kind of places you can go. And the experience overall will be basically the same. It's adapting in one specific way, but everything else is pretty consistent across all the people who take it.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

What um why don't you walk us through your approach and how it's different in terms of let a student comes to you for SAT prep, where do you start? You've obviously written SAT pack of study guides, and you know, just kind of tell talk us through your process and how you approach getting kids ready for the SAT.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah. So I basically just if I've got some sort of like PSAT score that they're coming to me with, or if they've taken a practice test at some point, that's great because I have some amount of kind of knowledge, some sort of data I can I can use to start off. But honestly, even if I don't have any of those things, for most students, I'm starting with the same things. I want to hit some big picture strategies that are gonna work for every level, every, you know, no matter how skilled you are, there are certain things that everyone needs to be doing. So I hit those topics first. Usually I start with grammar because it's a nice, easy win. Most people speak English, but don't necessarily have a good knowledge of English grammar. So it's an easy place to kind of fill some gaps. Also, math strategies I'll do early on because I don't need to necessarily get into the nitty-gritty of certain topics. There are certain strategies that just are kind of across the board going to be useful. I can teach that big picture idea. And in the process of doing that, I'm learning like, oh, this student doesn't remember how to find the slope of a line. This student doesn't know geometry very well. So I'm able to learn about the student for future lessons while I'm teaching them those big picture ideas. And then we'll probably, you know, do the reading, the other kind of reading strategies, the passages, the vocab, all those other things. And usually after about two or three sessions where we've hit those big picture ideas, it's usually time to then take a practice test and let them kind of experiment with those new ideas. They probably won't do very well, but that's okay. They need to kind of get used to things. And so that first practice test is their way of getting used to it. And then by that time, we have just so much data, we can start to target very specific topics that they're struggling with. And then every student's different from that point. It just kind of depends on the student.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

You also film yourself solving the entire official practice test on your YouTube channel in real time. Why is that? Why is watching someone's process or that so valuable?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah. So I do two things, right? I do that. And then I also have videos that are just like a single question and me kind of going through the ideal way to solve it. And those I take my time and I really explain things. And that's useful if you want to get a thorough explanation. But I think that sometimes it's really helpful to see the full test and to see me not just solve the questions, but make decisions about what strategy to use and to sometimes be wrong about those decisions, right? Like I'm really good at this. I've been doing this for 20 years, but like I don't always get a perfect score. I sometimes just get stuff wrong. I run out of time. I miss an important fact. I misread something. You know, there's so many reasons why a perfect score can be elusive, even for someone who's very experienced. And I think for the students who are really struggling and really frustrated with the SAT, it's helpful for them to see someone who is very experienced also struggling. Because then they can be like, hey, if this guy isn't able to get this question, then it's not so bad that I'm struggling too, right? Like he knows what he's doing, he's he's having trouble. It's okay for me to struggle as well. I just think sometimes people come into the SAT expecting it to be like, if you just memorize all these facts, you get a perfect score. But we just kind of know that that's not true. I'm sure you've worked with students too, where there's deeper skills that they're missing that are not like a memorization skill. And having them see me solve the questions in real time and struggle against the timer, I think they start to realize that it's more than just knowing the facts. There's other decisions that need to be made, and they can get better at those decisions. But seeing it as a whole, I think is really useful for those kids.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

What's the biggest mistake most students make when prepping for the SAT?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Probably quantity over quality. There's well, I think what, 10 practice tests now, nine, something like that. And some kids will just do them one after the other. Do the test, get the score, look at the ones that got wrong, next test, next score, next set of questions they got wrong. Or they'll just say, all right, I'm gonna do all the questions in the question bag. I'm gonna do this book, I'm gonna watch all these videos. And they're doing a lot, but they're not really learning anything from that because they're not stopping to realize, like, oh, it's not just that I got this question wrong. It's that I've gotten seven other questions wrong. They're very similar to this one, and there's a pattern in the way that I go through this. And I this pattern is a problem. I need to fix this at the source rather than just on a question by question basis. So if they're doing a ton of questions and there's no real rhyme or reason to it, they're not going to see those patterns in what they're doing wrong, and they won't be able to kind of make the bigger changes to their habits that allow them to avoid those kinds of mistakes in the future. So for me, something as simple as like watching a two-hour video of someone else taking a practice test. Yeah, that's time consuming. But it's you're learning things in a deeper way than if you just took that practice test yourself and looked at the ones you got wrong and moved on. You know, yes, do that, but try to try to learn as much as you can from every practice test, from every question, because there's bigger picture ideas that I think a lot of students have trouble kind of just wrapping their head around when they're just all about like study maxing, doing as much stuff, studying for as many hours as possible, you know. So slow down, smell the roses, yeah. Look at the nuances of the question, I guess is my advice.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

This episode is brought to you by Supported Tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focused on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supportedtutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. What is the what is the perfect timeline for a student that wants to get ready for the AP exam? Uh for the A SAT exam. I'm thinking in the context of mine because we usually say it's time.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

And you're in AP season, which is coming up fast. Um, so I could I could say maybe what's not a good idea, right? Is try not to take an SAT when other things are going on in your life, right? So the AP exams this time of year, April, May. It's crazy. You know, you're doing so many things. So I'm sure you've, you know, you use your work.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Well, we actively, we actively discourage the SAT in May. I'm like, I think it's insane that College Board has that right before their AP exams. And I don't think if you're taking an AP exam, it's healthy to get to try to prepare for both at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Right. Because it's already these kids are taking, you know, six APs sometimes. I have students that are doing that. And I think that's crazy too. That that you're allowed to take that many seems crazy to me, but that's a lot. You know, to add an SAT on top of that is yes, it's gonna make it difficult. And so, right, focus on your APs. But I think the May and June exam are there just for like kind of legacy purposes. I think the advice applies even outside of APs, is you don't want to be taking this test when you have other things. If you play a sport, you don't want to be studying for the SAT during the busy season of that sport, or if you're in the play, that's gonna just take away from the time that you need to put into this. You know, you should treat SAT prep or ACT, whatever, as an extracurricular activity. So make sure you have space in your schedule for that. For most people, that would be, I would say, the earliest they would want to start prepping for an SAT is the summer before junior year. There's a lot of advice out there saying people should kind of start doing it in sophomore year. I've heard even freshman year. I just don't agree with any of that. I think that that's crazy. Junior year is when you've had enough math, enough English classes to have a solid foundation in most things. So it's a good level of maturity and usually it's a good time to take it. Uh so summer before junior year gives you an August SAT. If you're not ready at that point, that's fine. You're gonna take a PSAT in the fall. You can use that as a benchmark to see where your starting scores are. And some people, again, because of their schedule, could take their first SAT in November or December. Of junior year. Many people though have no put there's nothing wrong with waiting to get those PSAT scores back in November and then taking your first SAT in March. A lot of tools offer the test for free in March or April. Um, and so you've just got a lot of options there. And then if it doesn't, you know, most people take it multiple times. So assuming you're not done, you still have more time. You still have the probably not the May and June test, but then the August leading into senior year, the fall of senior year has some tests. So you've still got plenty of options for taking it, you know, two or three times total. And every time you take it, you should probably be setting aside two to three months to dedicate to it, to prep in advance, you know, weekly prep, whatever it may be, because it takes time to learn the facts, but it also takes time to learn the strategies. And since the strategies usually involve breaking some habits that you might have, breaking habits takes time. It's not something you can just like do overnight, but it takes effort to change the way your brain works. And so, you know, you need several weeks, 10, 12 weeks to really make some big changes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Yeah, I've had a couple students take their first SATs or second SAT and they get in the mid-1300s. That's pretty good. Well, not not our parents are expecting like 15s, you know, like that's always the case. Yeah. Yeah. We could talk about that. I'm like, 13's like a phenomenal first time for a score. Like that's oh, for sure. And so, excuse me, I'd have had to talk parents out. They're like, they want to immediately test again in May. And I'm like, no, like we're not, I'm, I'm not gonna support that. I'm not even gonna provide you tutoring for that. I said, no, if you want you, I will we'll do it earliest June, but I'm recommending August. So we like your kids' AP exams are gonna take the priority right now, and you have to be ready. You have to be, you have to have nothing else on your plate, you know, maybe college admission stuff, but like you, if you want to get that score, it's it's not like it's easy.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Right. Exactly. And some people are just taking it, uh taking an approach to SAT prep where it's like, well, you know, if I if I take, you know, five, six shots at this basket, the odds of hitting it are gonna go up, right? At some point, you're gonna hit it. And I don't, I don't, I don't know that that's the right approach, but for some people it might be. And so they might be going at it that way. But I think a lot of them are not. They're they're aiming like, oh, we need that 1550 score. We need it now. And so, right, they're thinking, let's just take that May exam. Let's hurry this along. But I'm sure you've experienced this as well. Everyone who says they're able to make time is almost always just wrong about judging that, especially with APs. They just, they're just not good at it. And all things equal, they're gonna prioritize that AP, which they should. Um, and SAT prep kind of falls by the wayside. So, you know, I've I some people I I have a couple of students right now taking the May exam in the June, and they're not really heavily into APs. They had other things in other time of the year that made it so that they couldn't really prepare for a March SAT. So for those kids, that's totally fine. But for a lot of those top-scoring kids, yeah, like you're just you're making your life harder by taking it now for not much a chance of success is the reality. So you're right. Like, I, you know, focus on those APs, get the grades up.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

When is it worth it to invest in an SAT program? Like on like there's a whole range of options out there from, you know, free to very little to a lot. When is it worth it? When's it not to invest in the SAT program?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, I think, you know, it it's it, I think as a family, you want to look at it as investing the money, obviously, and whatever it costs, but also do you can you simultaneously make that investment in time? And that's why when we're talking about APs, you know, I know from experience that most people cannot make the investment of time right now. So if you're paying thousands of dollars for an SAT course and you're not doing the homework, you're not taking the practice tests, you're barely able to focus in the class because you've just got so much else going on, that was a bad investment of money and time. And so that's why summer can be really good because you've you don't have as much stuff going on, hopefully. So you're able to kind of focus on it. But I do think that if you're looking to improve your scores significantly, 200 points or more, you you're gonna need to make an investment in some way. So the benefit of paying for a course or a tutor is they can take a lot of the guesswork out of it. They can tell you things about the way you think that you wouldn't think yourself. But it's totally legit, and and people do it all the time, to prepare on your own using resources like YouTube or whatever. And people do really well. I get comments on my channel all the time of students who go up, you know, 200, 300 points just from watching my videos and doing the practice tests. So it's doable. But know yourself, know your child, and know if they're capable of that self-motivation because they need to basically set a schedule if they're gonna try to do it on their own. They need to be doing, you know, a couple hours a week of SAT prep. And it can't be, well, I can't do it this week because I've got a project. I can't do it this week because I got a test to study for. It needs to happen, like I said earlier, as an extracurricular that you have essentially regular meetings. And if you're the only member of that club, that's fine, but you got to hold yourself to a schedule nonetheless.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah. Um, and then preparing twane, ACT versus SAT, how do you coach them into that to a determination?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Well, since I only do SAT, I will say if you want to work with me, you gotta do the SAT. And that's sometimes that's all it takes.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Cause No, I I meant more of like if they come to you and be like, oh, we're thinking, Mike, we're thinking about doing the ACT, SAT, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Right. I understand. I understand. Yeah. I I I the the prominent the current the answer that you're gonna get most places is, well, you should take a practice SAT, you should take a practice ACT, you should get the two scores and compare them. That's fine. I think that that's mostly a waste of time. I think that for the most part, people are gonna score the same on those two tests, especially without any prep of any kind. And there isn't gonna be for most students any sort of advantage of one test or the other. They they have differences, but they essentially cover the same basic stuff and require the same level of effort to improve the score to a similar degree. So my advice honestly is pick the test that you want to do. So if it is you want to work with a particular tutor and they say, I want you to do the SAT, do the SAT. If they say you should do the ACT, do that. If your friends are all taking the ACT and you're all going to do a course together, that's gonna help you get motivated, do that. If everyone at your school does the SAT, just do that. It doesn't really matter. Very few students are better to a to a significant degree at one test or the other. And that's at least my experience. And so to put a child through that exercise of taking hours of practice tests to basically get a result of you're the same at both, is kind of a waste, right? We all, you know, you have only so much time and willpower, mental energy are real things that you can drain. And certainly several hours of practice tests are going to drain that. So I say just hit the ground running, pick a test, and get to work doing the actual learning of the material on that test, and don't worry about whether you pick the right test. You can always switch later. And since the tests are more similar than different, there's gonna be overlap. Everything you learn for the SAT can help on the ACT and vice versa. So it's mostly a decision people stress over uh that I don't think you know is as big of a deal as as people say. So I just say pick a test. But if you, you know, I don't know if you've had experience with that. Uh a lot of people disagree with me on this. So I don't know if what your thoughts are.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

But you know, I really because we offer some stuff with college admissions, we really start with like, what is the goal? Like, where what are the what are the goals where we're trying to go? Because if I hear top 25, even top 50 now, like I'm gonna push them more towards the SAT and just get good at that. Yep. But if it's like, oh, you know, which ironically we don't work with many kids that a lot of kids don't come there, they're like, I'm just still gonna go to state school. Like, you know, like it's a lot of kids that we work with have those ambitions. So I'm like, yeah, SAT is good. Now, um, I had a girl get multiple fours and fives on her APs and she got like a 35 on her ACT and she got a ton of money for, but she wants to go to Ohio State and she got a ton of money at Michigan State. You know, I I think there's um I'm actually trying to get a book here going for to help families new to the US system, immigrant families. Like, there's just so we're so hyper-focused on the eight Ivy Leagues and the top 25. And there's literally hundreds of schools that will not only welcome your kids, they'll be great there, and they'll give you tons of money, but we're so hyper-focused on these very select. Like she was a perfect, she was a perfect example of like she's a child of immigrants. You know, parents they applied, they got into an Ivy League school, they got into every school they applied to, but ultimately they didn't even go where they gave the most money. They wanted to go local. But like, what is the outcome? She wants to be a doctor. She can be a doctor almost anywhere going undergrad. Like, that's there's like a lot of disconnect. There's a lot of misinformation on the college admissions thing, which I think is it has tainted the waters for SAT, has tainted the waters for AP, put a lot of unnecessary pressure on kids. That's why we're like seeing these astronomical scores and just like there's so much pressure to get, you know, like this said, like I have never three kids get the 1300s their first time around and they're all disappointed.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that gets to your question before, too, of like, when is it worth it to spend money on prep? Well, the the couple thousand on prep to get not even necessarily like a 1550, 35 ACT, but just even 1350 or whatever can get you scholarship money at a lot of schools. So to get that kind of aid and to lower the cost by several thousand a year out of college, I think is is so worth it. So if, you know, you're a student, just speaking SAT, who's got like that 1200 level of starting, that's pretty good, but it's not gonna get anyone excited about you. But if you can raise that to a 1350, 1400, even not even getting to 1500, but knocking on that door, I think that that opens a lot of doors and gives you, you know, are you gonna get into the top five, top 20 schools? No, probably not. But it's also a crapshoot anyway. But you will get into some really great colleges, and many of them might give you some money. And so you can go to college without spending a fortune. That's that's truly the best way to get an education. As someone who paid off student loans 10 years after graduating, what is the plan to pay for college?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

And they have like very little answer. And I'm like, okay, so that's it's loans. Yeah. Um so like, but they don't they don't think of the massive amount of money that it's gonna be on interest payments in terms of it's awful.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

And and you're starting out your adulthood in the red by a significant amount, you know, like a down payment on a house amount of money, right? So um that's my big regret. I loved Hopkins. I, you know, I'm glad I went there and all that, but I don't think I planned out the payments and I didn't, you know, at 18, you don't really understand compound interests to any level. You know, you you understand it like logically, but it's not until you're paying those bills later, like, oh, this is this is not what I expected.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

It's just like, I don't know how it must be special interest on student loans. Because like I made payments in like those income-driven repayment plans, and my undergrad balance never went down. Like it was so I mean, I had to get my loan for good. Like, it just would not, it's kind of like a trap. I mean, unless you're either spending thousands, you're spending higher than mortgage payments, or you're literally not making any progress, you're not outrunning the interest. Right. So it's uh yeah, it's it's it is depressing. And then you and I didn't even go to an expensive school. Now the school I went to is a minimum $100,000, which is insane. Yeah, $18,000 undergrad debt. Like, and it's now a hundred thousand just starting.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

I think, you know, at least for me, because I went to, you know, I graduated high school in 2006 and then graduated college in the 2010. So what happened in the middle of that is the big recession, right? Yeah. So I think when I went into college, the idea was, yeah, take out the loan. Who cares? You're gonna have to be a college graduate that you're gonna make six figures, they're just gonna hand it to you when you come out, right? And and I didn't know any better. At least no one knew any better, I guess, in a way that would have changed the outcome. But yeah, you just kind of say yes to this. And then, you know, circumstances being what they were, you know, people were coming out of college without really getting jobs easily. So you took on this debt, but the way to pay it off isn't available. And that probably was always, whether the recession happened or not, going to be the case. But I do think, you know, my advice to families bringing it back to the SAT is, you know, you should be doing some college research, things about how this process works and what it's gonna cost and what, you know, bumping that SAT score can save you. Certain bigger schools just kind of tell you right up front, like if you get this score and this is your GPA, this is what it's gonna cost. And so having that knowledge is very powerful. And, you know, you might not be going to the college that you've heard of, but doesn't mean it's a bad school. And if you can bump that SAT score up and think of your time doing so as an investment that's gonna save you money later, I think that's a very good approach. And it's certainly motivating, that's for sure. Right. Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

So all right. Well, let's move on to lightning round to close this out.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Random some rapid fire questions, no need for explanation, just first thing that comes to mind. Okay. Okay. I'll try my best. That's fine. All right. One resource besides your own that every SAT student should know about.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Uh definitely the official college board stuff like Blue Book and another great channel is the tutorlini math channel on SAT stuff. Very good for some comprehensive math. Worst SAT advice you hear families getting? Take the tests a lot of times. I think just remember stress is real and sometimes they burn out. And don't don't let your kid burn out. It's bad. One thing parents overthink about standardized testing. This is what we talked about before, SAT versus ACT. Doesn't really matter. Just take a test and study.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

What's a realistic score improvement a student can expect with focus prep?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

200 points certainly is doable within like a 12-month span. It might be harder to hit that might be a top amount, but certainly taking it again, you can still add more points to that. But 200 is a good, like you succeeded kind of a number.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Where is standardized testing heading?

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Where will SAT even be a thing in the next 10 years? Absolutely. I think it'll be more of a thing than it is now because no one knows what to make of grades. And and so we this is a way to kind of understand all the things that are happening in education kind of in an easy way.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Mike, thank you so much for coming on, spending some time with us. I know it's is the middle of test prep season as well for you. For families who want to learn more about you, about what you offer, where should they go to find you?

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Uh, they can definitely find me on YouTube. Um, the Sattel Tutoring YouTube channel is gonna be the best place probably to find all my resources. And that'll also link to my website, SattellTutoring.com, where you've got information and all sorts of resources as well. If you're trying to prep on your own for the SAT, there's a lot of free stuff out there. Start with me, and you'll do pretty well. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

We'll put all those links in the YouTube description of the show notes. Yeah, Mike, what's one one thing you want families to take away from this conversation before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Um I would just say that it's it can feel overwhelming and like you have to make the exact right decisions. But I think that that is just mostly the internet doing its thing and hyping up fear and hyping up anxiety because that's what generates eye eyeballs and attention. But that most of this process with the SAT, the ACT, college applications, you can you'll be fine. You don't need to, not everything has one single right decision. You can kind of figure it out as you go in certain ways, but you know, certainly uh plan ahead a little bit. As soon as your sophomore is finishing up sophomore year, start to have some conversations about this and figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

All right, Mike, thank you. Thank you for your time, appreciate it. And uh we'll catch you all next time on a supported learning podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. This was great. Thanks for joining us on the supported learning podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.