SPEAKER_00 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. SAT prep is teaching kids the wrong thing. That's not an opinion, that's the position of someone who has spent 25 years in this industry and have co-founded its trade association. Mike Bergen has seen test prep from every angle: Kaplan, Huntington, and his own practice, the National Test Prep Association and his own podcast. Today we're breaking down what actually works on the SAT and ACT and what's a waste of your time for your kid. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian. Families often ask me how to navigate the maze of college prep without wasting thousands of dollars or years of time. And the answer usually involves finding the people who have figured out the rules of the game that schools aren't telling you. And that's why I'm thrilled to have Mike Bergen here today. Mike is the president of Chariot Learning, the founder of Git Testbrite, the co-founder of the National Test Prep Association, the industry's trade body, and the co-host of Test and the Rest podcast. With over 25 years in test prep, including leadership roles at Kaplan and Huntington Learning Center, he has seen the industry from every angle. We're going to dive into the SAT and ACT, the test optional confusion, why most prep is targeting the wrong skills, and how parents and students should actually approach high-stake testing. Mike, welcome to the show. Joe, thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I am I'm happy to have you as well. And uh apparently I need to join this association. That's what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

The National Test Prep Association. You're exactly the kind of education professional that we're looking for. Well, I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I will uh I'll give you my money here shortly. I uh um I've given them the highlight reel, but Mike, I want to hear from you the 60-second kind of snapshot who you are and what specific problem in education and learning you solve for families.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

So over 30 years at every level of test prep and at the intersection of business education and college admissions, I've seen it all. And so my mission, my personal mission is always to help students and learners meet or exceed their educational goals. And that's really a wide net that has, you know, whether you're talking about helping a student prepare for a high-stakes college admissions exam, whether you're training tutors to deliver that instruction, uh, interviewing experts in education and admissions, or delivering professional level curriculum and training to educators, whatever it is, it's a conversation that I love to be a part of.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Mike, you're a quarter century in here and you've worked at And I'm more.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

I'm more over three decades. I'm getting older as we speak.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

It's uh, you know, you've you've been with Kaplan and Huntington. Those are two of the biggest names in the industry before founding your own practice. What did each of those experiences teach you? And what did you decide to do differently?

SPEAKER_02 3:34

So finding Kaplan was a shock to me because this was the early 90s. And like so many over-educated, undermoted individuals, I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do with my life. My psychology degree didn't get me very far. I was a drug counselor for the New York City Board of Ed and experienced some burnout there. And I was looking for something. And a friend of mine was in Boston and he was teaching for Kaplan. He said, Mike, you've got to come and try this out. You'd be really good at it. And I, like an idiot, didn't realize that Kaplan was a national company. And so like I moved to Boston and I started teaching. And in, you know, after a few months, I moved back to New York City where I'm from. But I started as a teacher. And then I learned the business side of it, the business side of education. And I was a manager and then I was a director for eight counties in New York State. And I just learned so much about private education. You know, my exposure was public education, or, you know, I went to a Jesuit high school, never really understood the business of education or how transformative one-to-one instruction or the right kind of class could be if it was focused on the right things. And I'm not saying that Kaplan was focused on the right things, but they, I mean, they did a lot of great things. And then so I learned quite a lot about operations, marketing, sales, teaching, training at Kaplan, but also I was somewhat opinionated. I think that anybody who knows me wouldn't be surprised by that. I was opinionated about what made good prep. And Huntington Learning Center at the time, this was in 2000, was known for a really strong K through 12 math and reading program. But their test prep program really wasn't congruent with the organization. So they brought me in to create their SAT and then their ACT and their SSAT and IC programs. And over nearly a decade at the corporate office, I learned a ton about researching tests and understanding them, understanding them from a program and product development standpoint and how to push out institutional curriculum, student materials, teacher's guides, director's guides and operations manuals, training programs. It was really quite an education. And the combination of all that left me in a place where I decided that I really, as much as I learned, I didn't like either of those programs. I didn't like retail prep. I kind of have a bias against it. And so I was curious as to whether a new community for me, Rochester, New York, which I had moved to in 2008, in 2009, I was like, I wonder if there's a market here for the kind of education that I've learned really makes a difference, which is you need a great tutor and you need a motivated student, and you have to work on the right things. And if you do that, then amazing outcomes can occur. And I was really fortunate that I hung my shingle out at a time when Rochester was definitely looking for this. And so I started creating a new curriculum. Within a year, I was hiring teachers. And basically, you know, that's from 2009 today. My practice is still small. It's deliberately small, but we work with students not just in every time zone in the United States, but we work with students in other countries because we have a reputation. I'm humble bragging that somebody put together a list of the top 15 small and medium-sized enterprises for SAT and ACT prep in the United States. And somehow my small practice landed on that list. But we've worked with a lot of students over uh over a long period of time.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

And if that wasn't enough, you co-founded the National Test Prep Association. And you, I guess, answer the question: why does the industry need a trade body? What were you seeing that the needed an institutional fix?

SPEAKER_02 8:06

It's a great question. So let's go back to 2019. So I'd been in the industry for a long time. And, you know, for the longest time, we all thought that Kaplan and Prison Review were the test prep industry. They certainly were the earners. They were the companies that everybody thought of for test prep. And yet they didn't do anything for test prep as a whole. There were lots of people in smaller companies or individual practices. And there was just nothing in the industry. Like they were not leaders in professionally. They were just organizations selling educational material and programs. Huntington Learning Center, Sylvan. I mean, I mean, I can name any company than just say that they were not leading anyone externally. So 2019, I had started to join, you know, a group of professionals from different states coalesced, educators who were independent with small practices or individual. We kind of found each other first on LinkedIn, and then I created a test uh Facebook group called the Test Prep Tribe to support the Test and the Rest podcast. And so we kind of found a lot of people and brought them into our commute, our online community, and we started sharing notes about what we were seeing. And one of the things we were seeing in 2019 was this rise of test optional admissions. And what you couldn't avoid it because even though test optional admissions had been an established practice among some schools, the Bates and the Bowdens and the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago, it started to pick up steam and the media was really for it. And so what we noticed was, you know, everybody's talking about how it's great to have college admissions without any kind of entrance exams. And then maybe they're also saying, and anybody in test prep is actually trying to cheat you. And we realized that nobody was defending us. Like, like we didn't have anybody to speak for us because Kaplan wasn't speaking, Princeton Review wasn't speaking, College Board and ACT weren't speaking. So nobody was speaking. So Amy Seely, who's my uh good friend and co-host on Test and Rust Podcast, we threw a conference in 2020 in Boca, and I kind of laid out as just a presentation, not to, I didn't think that anything would come of it, but I said, what do we need? What does the test prep industry need? The test prep industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, if you believe the research. And yet there is no career path, there's no trade publication, there's no industry association, there's no credential, there are no defenders, there's no organization whatsoever. So we were like, well, we could probably use something because the things that we want, meaning an organization that could speak directly to the test makers and support them, but also call them to question when things are not going right. Uh, an organization that could promote the benefits of properly designed standardized assessments, uh an organization that could speak to the value of what happens when an expert instructor meets a motivated student. That's what we wanted. Ultimately, that's what we created. We uh we started working on the National Test Prep Association right after that conference. So in February, we started meeting, but then of course, in March of 2020, uh the world changed, and the um SAT and ACT in the spring were canceled. And that changed everything for the test prep industry. But fortunately, we had started organizing, so we were in a position to respond by first, you know, keeping everybody focused on outcomes, making sure that we could speak, even if it was just in Facebook groups and um small venues, to start speaking to why we don't want to get rid of testing entirely, why testing still plays a valuable role, how all the research supported using the right kind of tests in college admissions decisions. And I mean, here we are in 2026, and pretty much the conversation is back there is yes, standardized testing, the right exams are a critical component of smart college admissions choices for most applicants.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

And is that the pattern that we keep coming back to about test prep? Is that is that what keeps you in this? Is that through the pendulum swings of education, standardized testing still matters?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Frankly, it standardized testing is just an opportunity for me to connect with what really keeps me in this profession, which is the ability to work with fantastic teens on fundamental reading, writing, math, learning, problem solving, executive skills. Just to help students at a really important inflection point in their lives get ready for whatever their dreams are going to take them. You know, so many students want to go to college. That doesn't mean they're ready for college. Right. And it's taken me a long time to recognize the value of the SAT and ACT as college readiness tests, which is to say, right, that there's nothing else that really tells you statistically whether you have good odds to pass an intro to college algebra class or English 101 in your freshman year. There's no other assessment that's connected to higher ed and still based in K through 12 standards in every state. So not to say, you know, I'm not here to be a spokesperson for College Board or SAT or ACT, but I'll point out that, you know. Most of college admissions is based on grades, as it should be, right? A student's grades reflect a lot about that student's strengths, the amount of rigor they take on, how consistent they are over four years. But there's not a single assessment. There's not a single quiz or test or midterm or final that a teacher in a classroom designs with the thought that they want to signal something to a college. They're not writing that they're writing the quiz, be like, oh, this is gonna, I gotta get this right. I have to norm it. I need to make it valid because I know that this grade is going to influence this student's college application. That's the farthest thing from their minds. Every teacher, and you know this, Joe, you you know education very, very well. You are embedded in educational communities, and you know that every teacher in the building is answering to a lot of different masters. They have to hold up standards, they have to hit the curriculum, they have to stay consistent with their team, they have to um, they have to juggle so many different responsibilities and they administer tests because testing is part of learning. But they're internal assessments. And so if you get a great grade on a test in, you know, algebra two, that signals that you met the objectives that the teacher had set out for what you needed to learn and reflect in algebra two. They they weren't also testing your geometry skills or your word problem skills or your problem solving because that wasn't their job. Their job is to focus on this very granular piece. Tests like the SAT and ACT, they widen the lens, they broaden the scope, they go back to the aggregate of everything you've learned that you need to bring to the next level. If the last math you did was calculus, that's not gonna help you when you, you know, if you have to start at an intro math class and you know, you're taking college algebra and you forgot most of that. So just I don't want to get sidetracked on that or go on too long, but the more I work with these exams, the more I recognize how finely tuned they are. And I don't think that there are any other exams in the United States that are anything like this. The only comparable assessments are like the Gacao in China or the exams that they administer in South Korea or the A-levels in the UK. Like these are really important assessments that help students in their trajectory to higher education.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

And you're a big advocate of root-based vocabulary, learning over flashcards and word lists. Why does that actually work? And how does that apply to the SAT specifically?

SPEAKER_02 17:49

So I'm really more an advocate for learning by reading. Unfortunately, here's the thing: you know this. The best way to have a college-level vocabulary is to be an active reader from childhood, to read grade-level appropriate texts or higher, to understand what you read, basically to read for fun. Reading for fun, not just restricting your reading to what you're forced to read, is the best way to develop whole language skills. Vocabulary-based training is for students that didn't get there. They didn't do it, right? So you don't have a college-level vocabulary in 11th grade. It's too late to develop vocabulary the right way. And so now you have to focus on the kinds of words that we know these exams assess. And the reason that these exams assess these words, especially the SAT, is because they are connected to what's expected in college. The kind of material that you're going to read in college isn't holding back, isn't dumbing it down, isn't watering it down. Scholars, academics, and experts in every field use appropriate vocabulary. And you got to keep up. So it's interesting how many, how many of the big words, the SAT words in the English language are tied to Greek and uh Roman roots. So you can actually learn a lot of roots and through those roots piece together words kind of like puzzle pieces. Um, and if you understand the underlying code, then you have a chance to understand words that you might not have heard before. But if you can see the prefix, you can see the suffix, you think you've seen that root in something else, if you learned it explicitly, it's really helpful. Plus, I just think vocabulary is a limiter in that, you know, the reading wars. I don't know if you if you ever speak to anybody about the reading wars, going back about how to how to teach reading at a fundamental level. But right now we talk about pendulums swinging, and the pendulum has swung to kind of you have to have background knowledge in order to understand what you're reading. It's not, you can't be divorced from the subject matter. And vocabulary is part of that background knowledge. If you know more words, then you can know more things. You can unlock more concepts and understand them. So my roots to words, my free word of the day is just it's not, it's just because I want people to understand what is going on in the world. If you don't understand words, how do you understand ideas?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Yeah, I mean, the um we're gonna get into like literacy and reasoning. Um that's I why I love the IB curriculum is because it's a liter is basically literacy based because you have to read and you have to write. And the only reason, the only way you get better at that is actually reading and writing. You know, exactly. All of your assessments are essays, you're just gonna have to be really, really good at both of those skills. And oftentimes that is the biggest depth. Our kids aren't reading it anymore. I mean, it's crazy that we've emphasized math so much now in this in this country and really haven't emphasized literacy. But then, like, you know, UCLA is like, hey, most of the kids we admitted can't even get past middle school math. So, like, this huge push for elite math is leaving us here. But I would not say we are moving towards a post-literate society, I think, every day. I mean, it it feels that way.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

You know, it's not that students aren't consuming information, right? It's arguably students today are consuming more information than generations prior, but it's all in terms of short form, highly kinetic, and visual content. So they're absorbing different kinds of information. There are some benefits there, absolutely. I would never say that students today are. Are any less smart than students in other generations? And I work with brilliant kids all the time. And I think that a lot of students have a brilliance that just isn't aligned with reading, writing, and math, because that's not where their passions are. But you lack that basic everybody is reading the same challenging material or everybody is understanding math. I'm going to give you a hot take, Joe. I know that you like them. So I'm going to give you one early when, because you brought up math, right? I see a large focus in the US on accelerating students into math and hitting, you know, if you are on the standard track, you're doing algebra two in 11th grade in New York State and in most states. Some states they go algebra one, algebra two, geometry. But, you know, a lot of students that we wind up working with, and I know that you see, are in pre-calculus or calc A B or Calc B C or some IB equivalent in 11th grade. And the thing is, is that math, like any other skill, right? You gotta like it to get it, to be good at it. And I think that a lot of our instruction in math must be too granular, too specific. And what students learn, what students lose, is basic problem solving. And that's why tests like the SAT and the ACT are such a rude awakening for students who have fantastic math grades because they are really good at uh regurgitating the algorithm. They're really good at short-term memorization of concepts, using their calculators, answering questions when they know how what the question is asking, and solving problems if the problems are clear. But when students are faced with a word problem or a question that you that the hardest part of that question is to figure out how to solve it and what math you need to bring in, most high schoolers are completely baffled. They're not prepared for it because they didn't get enough exposure to it unless they were in math counts or some kind of uh math lead competition. Those students, they practice problems all the time. And SAT and ACT math is basic to them because they're already exquisitely trained in problem solving.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, I go even deeper with that in terms of just mindsets like education. We have, I think there's broke mindsets in a lot of things of fixed, like I, you know, from an administrator and now as a parent, you know, my oldest struggled in third grade math. And um, you know, and I uh and she struggled to a point where we're like we we were like unsure of how to proceed. Now they kind of learned some common core math con. I'm like, I I can't even teach you how to, I don't even know how to do this math. Like, this is the math makes no sense how you're learning it, right? It's like insane. Like, no, you just do it like this, and this is how you solve the credit. But so, you know, to a point where I saw my daughter starting to lose the love of learning and love of school. And you know, we were able to correct it, and thank God she like rebounded in fourth grade. Um, but for millions of kids, they're losing the love of learning, maybe just from a bad experience in a classroom, a bad experience with a teacher. Um, and this is not a knock on teaching, but there are there are instances where, because like I hear it as a high school administrator, I'm just bad at math. Right. But you you're in an institution where you can learn how to be better. But teachers have that fixed mindset, and then therefore the students have that fixed mindset. So then we lay our labeling, I'm very Tony Robbins with this, like the labeling prevents us from being good, like where, and I use this example a lot, like I had to build steps off my deck, like a two-story steps, and I'm like, God, I wish I paid attention to geometry. Like, I have like rise over run, like it's very basics, but just like you know what I'm saying, like, and it's so practical, but it's those concepts where it's just like and honestly, I wanted to be an architect when I was in middle school, and it was someone that told me, Oh, there's a lot of math, it's really hard.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

That I was just like, I didn't even pursue, I'd even pursue opted out because you didn't feel that you were good at math, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

And so, and and good and bad experiences with math teachers prevented me from looking into it, and that and so it's like, but at the same time, um, you know, being able to read nonfiction and obviously gravitating towards the humanities led to a whole different pathway where it's like we have kids that struggle, they're good on their math SAT, but they're like the one terrible.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

But but you desire to read nonfiction, right? And that drew you in. I gotta say, I mean, I agree with you completely about that self-limiting label. And we certainly hear it all the time when parents tell us, well, my kid is not a good, my kid is a bad test taker. Parents iterate. Right. I mean, I mean, the student is identified externally. You're just not a good test taker because you did poorly on that math assessment or you did poorly on that that uh uh paper, right? But maybe we can recognize that these are all skills that can be learned. And if you want to learn them and you try to learn them and you find the right support, you can learn them and you can be better. Nobody's born good or bad at taking a test. You just, you know, you develop these uh these strengths and these advantages over time, and a lot of them have to do with what you tell yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

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 focus on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supportedtutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. Well, I go even one layer deeper too, because like the the parents, like for our program for the AP, I know we were talking before the podcast, just like, well, my kid's a good student. Well, how do you know? Well, he has an A in the class. It's like, oh, okay, well, that means nothing to me. Like, I'm like, I have no idea what I think.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Back to what I'm saying, right? Like, so the grade is based class.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Yeah. Right. It's like the AP exam does that. I mean, like, if everyone, if everyone got like every if everyone had an A, got a five, there'd be no need for me. Like, it's like and then all my kids doing terrible in the class. Well, how do you know? Oh, you got a B. I'm like, well, maybe they're actually grading it the correct way. Maybe it's rude.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Like those used to be good class. Right. Now 70 plus percent of students applying to college have A averages. It just doesn't mean anything anymore. Although I will say, shout out to AP teachers. I find that teachers who teach AP classes in high schools are usually so such high-level educators and really focused in a way on their subjects that other teachers aren't able to be, that they're just really tuned in.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's getting better, but and probably tough graders relative to the other teachers. Yeah. Sometimes it's a mix. I'll tell you though, I I get kids in this program. I'm like, I can't believe you go to that school. I can't believe that right. I mean, there's been an exodus in in teaching, but like I and just to finish up the conversational labels, like I used to teach at inner city DC, and we had honors programs and not, and like we, the teachers, well, you shouldn't be acting like that. You're an honors kid. It's like, how about we just call them all honors kids and maybe they'll all act better? I mean, if people responded to that, it'd be worth it, right? Right. Conditional labing room. So um, you you're unique because you offer both ACT and ACT. And so most families don't know even how to choose. I get families that are like, we're just gonna take all of them. We're gonna take, I'm like, we she got a 1480 on SAT, which was a terrible score, way under what she needed. So we're gonna try the ACT. I'm like, don't do that. That's probably really bad if you're trying to get into an Ivy League school, and like you probably should like very easily can gain on that 1480. But like, how what how do you help families choose? Like, what does your framework look like?

SPEAKER_02 30:43

I feel that it is a real advantage to be able to meet families not just by responding to whatever they're asking for, but to be able to give them what they really need, which is to say the parent you were talking about was looking for the right score to put on the application. And colleges are agnostic about SAT versus ACT. They don't care if they if it's the right percentile, if in your quid incordance table or your percentile table, one is higher than the other, that's what you lead with. And so I'm in New York State, and New York is a big SAT state. So most people are asking for SAT reflexively. The parents grew up with the SAT, and that's what they took. Uh, I've been training my market for nearly 20 years on the idea. And by training my market, I mean training counselors, training successive generations of families, um, speaking at schools about both of them equally, that the SAT and ACT both serve the same function. They're both college admissions exams. They are accepted without prejudice by every school and program. So you figure out do you have an advantage on one of them? It's fair to say that a lot of students do equally well on both, right? And we never commissioned to study, but I assume at least half of students are probably within a few percentile points on both tests. Sure. But they are different and they're more different now than they were before the SAT went digital, right? There was a period of time when the two overlapped so substantially. Now they still overlap a lot in content, but their expressions are very different. And if you just go based on the test scores themselves, there's a clear advantage on the SAT for students whose strength is math, right? If math is where you're a winner, well, your score on the SAT is 50% math. Whereas on the ACT, now that the science doesn't impact the composite and the science was a reading test anyway, your ACT composite is two-thirds reading in English. Only one-third math. So if math is your strength, chances are the SAT, which is actually kind of it's a test of more math conceptual understanding, that's probably going to make you look better. Um, if you're great at reading in terms of reading long passages, you can tackle long passages. Maybe you're not so strong with vocabulary, you're good with breadth of knowledge, then the ACT offers a fantastic opportunity for you. So there are the kinds of students that get the highest scores on each of these tests do kind of diverge. That isn't necessarily relevant to the student who's trying to get a 60th percentile or 70th percentile score, but for the student trying to creep into the 99th percentile, getting the test right actually does a lot of the work.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Can you speak to what your process looks like when you start working with a student? Like where do you start? What's the rhythm?

SPEAKER_02 33:51

So it's interesting because I do things differently than a lot of people just because I've built my practice around the fact that I want to speak to every parent up front. Before we put a student in, before I assign a student to a tutor, uh, help figure out how we're gonna start the process. I just want to know about the student. I don't require diagnostic exams. You know, often students will come to us having already taken a PSAT or an SAT or an ACT, but sometimes they don't have it, especially because so many families know now that getting the jump and prepping over the summer going into junior year is such a powerful timeline for students that already have algebra 2 under their belt. So often I'll get students, they're ready to get started in the summer. They haven't taken an SAT or PSAT yet, but that's fine. Because if a student's coming in, then chances are that student needs either English review or math review. And English review, I mean that it's it's incredibly rare that any teacher in high school covers rules of grammar. Incredibly rare. They're certainly not going over punctuation rules or subject predicate agreement or any of the major concepts that are tested on the SAT and ACT. So most students need to learn in kind of clear, concise way what all those rules are that they were just sounding out in their heads. Um and then a lot of students, if by the time they come to me, they're in pre-calc or calculus, I know for sure that they've forgotten the fundamental algebra, arithmetic, geometry that makes up so much of the SAT and ACT. And they could certainly benefit from learning a bit about the problem solving and the strategy behind alternate solutions for really tough test questions. So we're very flexible. You know, we have group sessions where if you're doing one of our group classes, then we have a set curriculum. But if you're working with one of our tutors, then really the tutor is figuring out block by block. We're going to start you with, say, SAT writing, and then I'm going to have you take a full practice test. And we lean really heavily on practice testing and test review. There's such a strong coaching and practicing component to test prep. It's much more like a sport or skill in its rhythms and its path to perfection than a class in school where you can study the day before the test and kind of put a lot of information into shortsturm, short-term storage and then just let it melt when you're done. You really have to develop these skills and you have to remember everything. So prioritizing, you know, not just our curriculum, but the official test material is so valuable. Getting students used to the timing, getting students used to the pressure, uh test day conditions, just getting used to it. So it's important for everyone, but especially for students that are that have their sights set on the 99th percentile scores. And way more students want 99th percentile scores than fit into the 99th percentile. Um, and the difference is can you handle the pressure and channel your best when it counts? So we focus a lot on that coaching.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

What's the biggest mistake families make when they're approaching ACT and SAT prep?

SPEAKER_02 37:34

Thinking that all prep is is the same, in that there's such a vast continuum of resources. There always have been, and there's even more now. You know, you've got your free resources, and there's a ton of free resources. You could watch YouTube videos, you could go to Khan Academy, you could, you know, go on to the SAT or ACT subreddits and just talk to a lot of students around the world that are prepping for the same test that you're prepping. And, you know, they share information and recommendations for retail books. And then you've got classes, wide array of classes. There's tons of boot camps. We run a boot camp ourselves. Um, there are schools, you know, there are a lot of states where the SAT and ACT are used as um state assessments. And so they actually teach SAT or ACT prep in school. And then you have tutoring. And the thing is, is that a lot of families just think that based on their budget, whatever they choose is the same as anything else. Like, well, we can't afford tutoring, but I'm sure that this $99 class is going to be just as good. Or, you know, if we have Khan Academy, what do we need a class for? And the thing is, is that I'm always afraid, like even our the boot camp that we offer in partnership with a lot of schools in our area, it's a six-hour class. And and I tell everybody when we start the class and we tell them, this is not enough prep. Don't think that you took this and it's gonna get you the score that you want. First of all, you're sitting there working, but you're not taking actual tests right now. Right. There's no way if you don't walk out of here and then tomorrow take a test, you're not gonna remember most of what we discussed. But we're covering a lot of material. It's really quick. It's a great start. I think what people, the biggest mistake people make about test prep is they don't compare the commitment to test prep to the commitment of anything else that they're prepping for. So for example, no parent would think that if you send students to a six-hour class one Saturday in high school, that that they didn't even get behind the wheel of a car, that they're gonna be ready to take the road test. They don't think that sending a student to a six-hour class is gonna take a bench warmer to being the star player of the basketball tournament next weekend. Like nobody thinks that. You're not going to learn to play that song that you always wanted to play on the guitar with a really quick program that you have paid attention to. So we're we're in a weird phase because there are lots of students who actually use these free resources and earn phenomenal scores. They make phenomenal progress, they earn phenomenal scores. We're in a world of haves and have nots in every field, meaning that there are high school students today who are as strong academically as any other generation before them. We have students today who are as strong athletically as any other generation, artistically, musically, you name it, there's a specialist who is really who leaned into it and is phenomenal. But your average kid, they're just not the generalists aren't there. And so if you've decided to really focus in one area, you might have taken your eye off all the other balls and you're struggling. And we see that in just reading, like back to what we were talking about before. Once you lose a grasp of the written word, and I don't mean like you can't sound out words that you see in front of you. I mean that I put a paragraph in front of you, and you literally can't tell me what did the author, in a simple sentence, what did the author write this paragraph to tell you? If you can't figure that out, if you don't know that, you're not ready for learning. Like you're not really learning. And that's the problem, is that unfortunately, academically, a lot of students didn't focus on those skills and they lose them. So with if students enter the test prep process without those schools, without those skills, in order to succeed, they need to build them up. They need the right educator and the right lead time, the right runway to take as long as they need to actually learn how to read at the level that they need to to earn the score that that school that they're looking for wants. Um, doing so will prepare them for if they actually get into that school, they'll be ready for that level work.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Where do you see test prep going, standardized test prep going in the next three to five years? Is SAT still going to matter?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

So we just emerged from a period where the role of standardized testing in the college admissions process was questioned heavily. Okay. Um people made very emotional decisions, or or they had emotional responses to seeing students struggle with testing and thought that that must mean that the tests were wrong. That if the tests were saying that students' uh reading skills are degrading, then the tests must be wrong because students are getting great grades. And colleges never fully abandon the idea that tests were valuable, but a lot of schools, you know, colleges are under their own pressure. Most institutions of higher education today are struggling financially, even the ones with massive endowments. So we went through this period where it was impolitic to suggest that standardized test scores actually who are valuable in not just making better decisions when you have limited seats to offer, but also helping students right size into the schools that would fit them, and even making sure that they were ready for college-level work. By dispensing with test scores, we just got through a wave of students, a full class of students. If they graduated, they graduated without without test scores. And what we're hearing over and over again is either college deans coming and saying, We've determined that test scores are a really valuable part of this. And in some instances are actually more useful to us than grades, which was never said before. Or famously, right? The academic scandal de jour is UC professor after UC professor coming out, or actually committee coming out and saying, we've determined that we let all of these students into engineering programs with SAT scores, they had great math grades, but they came in, they weren't able to handle basic math. Right. So I don't think that the role of test scores. I mean, it's silly to have even gone that far into the debate in that college entrance exams. There's only two valid, fair, reliable college entrance exams. And why we would question them, I mean, it's good to question everything. People are questioning the essay right now, supplemental essays. Some schools are canceling them, some schools are doubling down on them. Um, will interviews come back? How much does demonstrated interest matter? What about legacy? Like every factor should be questioned. But uh society went too far in rejecting the data and rejecting the common sense that, of course, some kind of assessment test makes sense to evaluate students' college readiness. It's not the be-all end-all, but it's definitely necessary once you recognize the role of high school grades and that high school grades are not meant to assess college readiness.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

So for a family of a freshman or a sophomore listening, what should they actually be doing right now that pays off when test prep comes?

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Oh, I mean, you teed me up. This is a slow pitch over the plate. I mean, you know what I'm gonna say, Joe. Read, right? Every I get this question all the time when I'm talking to uh families, and I'm so glad when parents of 10th graders or ninth graders or eighth graders are in the room because I can say, listen, all that matters is that your teen has a book in their hand that 15 minutes a day of something that is not assigned for school can be transformative. 15 minutes is a magic number. The research suggests that 15 is the minimum. Um, you don't really need to do that much more than that. Like reading for five hours a day isn't going to really improve your outcomes, but at least 15 minutes a day helps not just build your mastery of the English language and understanding, but it throws off a ton of emotional, psychological, even physical benefits. That's like people who read regularly are happier. They report to be happier. Like there's just things like that. But the important thing is, though, is don't gatekeep. Just tell your tell your teen, I need you to be reading something. It could be fiction, it could be nonfiction, it could be sci-fi, it could be fantasy, it could be sports, could be whatever. Just read something. It should be mostly text. Listening to listening to audiobooks is not reading. This is actually something you have to learn to process this information visually and just read for fun. The book that you're reading for school doesn't count. You read differently when you read for fun, and hopefully you read more avidly. So I would suggest that. I would also say if the your teen, your young teen has any affinity for math competitions, that is such a powerful way to learn the love of quantitative mastery. Uh, it's just students that do that, not only do they have great experiences with a group of friends competing with other students, but they they get trained in exactly the kind of skills that help not just on the SAT and ACT, but they help in life. If you're going to go into a STEM field, the kind of problem-solving skills that you develop in a math competition, any kind of math league, can be helpful.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

Okay. We're going to move into lightning rounds. So just rapid fire questions, first thing that comes to mind. Does that sound good? I'm ready. All right. Most overrated SAT ACT prep advice.

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Most overrated SAT ACT prep what? Advice. Advice. Um always pick C. Just the idea that a specific date or a specific, like always pick a certain um letter because that it tends to be the right answer. That's never true. There's no date that's easier or harder than another. There is no particular column of answer that's gonna help you.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

One thing parents overthink about testing. About tests or test prep?

SPEAKER_02 49:16

Um test prep. They overthink. Hmm. In my experience, most people underthink about test prep. They don't they I think that they overthink how much they can get done in a short period of time.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

How about something they underthink?

SPEAKER_02 49:40

They underthink how soon they should get started, in that a lot of families are still locked in the old paradigm that says that you take the SAT and ACT in the spring of junior year. And then if you need to, you prepare. So you take a cold in the spring, and then if you need to, you prepare and you take it in senior year. And you and I both know how unrealistic that is, especially because the kinds of students that are projected to get the highest scores are way too busy in spring of junior year if they are AP students, right, Joe? They have other fish to fry. Um any of my students that are taking two or more APs, you know, I I hope to find out sooner than March because March is the last SAT date for them. April is your last SAT, last ACT date uh of the school year if you're taking those APs, because you're not testing in May when you should be preparing for your APs. That's when you're that's when you're heavy prep. Like you should be prepping all year for your AP exams, of course. I'm not going to tell the expert, but um in May, you're really focused. And then in June, you are spent. If you took two or more AP exams, that's the last of what you probably have in the tank for the academic year. Junior year is a slog for everyone. And at the end, when you have spring break, you have prom, you have APs. Students are gassed in June. So too close to the term. I think that they don't realize how much sooner they can begin and how much happier their family will be if they do that.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Um best free or S A C press free SAT or ACT resource out there.

SPEAKER_02 51:34

So the thing is that there are so many amazing free SAT and ACT resources out there. Khan Academy is certainly fantastic. Um, and Blue Book is all free, but students shouldn't just use Blue Book without getting some kind of support. I think the SAT and ACT subreddits, I didn't, I wrote an article years ago about how students with the subreddit flare as part of their signature were like more likely to have perfect scores. Like this, this was the population, the self-organizing population that had the highest number of perfect scores per capita as any than any other. And that these that a lot of these kids, they feed each other's ambition, motivation. They provide emotional support. Um, it's a magical group that's just free to you log in on Reddit and you get involved. So that means, of course, that you are you're interested in prepping the right way because you're going to model other people that are doing that.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

And what's one vocabulary word every high school should know cold?

SPEAKER_02 52:40

So I do an audit of every SAT based on what students say coming out of it, what I hear from other educators who took the test. And so I released my top 15 SAT words of 2025. I actually have a list of 225 of them, but the one that appeared the most, I'll ask you this, Joe. Maybe you know the answer. Okay. What word, what vocabulary word appeared more than any other in 2025 on the SAT? I have no idea. It's ironic. Uh the word is ubiquitous. Ubiquitous. Ubiquitous was ubiquitous on the SAT and still is. So that's the one word you should know what ubiquitous and ubiquity mean.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Amazing. Okay. Interesting. Well, uh I uh I appreciate you coming on, Mike. It's been uh it's been a treat. I'm glad we got to meet and talk about all things SAT A C T. Um let me finish with uh this rapid fire question here. If you could whisper one piece of advice to the parent of a sophomore starting test prep this summer, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 53:56

They just finished 10th grade. Yeah. The advice would be let them sleep late. Don't worry about how much work they're doing. Prep over the summer is relaxing. It won't feel like an imposition to the student. Just let them do it and don't worry about how much they're doing. They're doing plenty.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

Right. Well, Mike, again, very incredibly valuable. Um I know parents are gonna want to go deeper with you and uh learn more. Where's the best place for them to find you, your practice, and the podcast? Thanks for asking.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

Look us up um chariotlearning.com, uh, testsentherest.com. That's the podcast. Uh roots to words.com, that's roots number two. Words.com is the free word of the day. And I mean, there's plenty of other things. You could get my college newsletter, College Eagle, uh, but those are good places to start. And I definitely am happy to advise anyone who's curious about their timelines what the next step for their students might be.

unknown 55:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

We'll put all that in the uh show notes and the descriptions below. And before we wrap, what's one thing you want parents or just people to remember from this conversation?

SPEAKER_02 55:14

Hmm. Well, I mean, besides the fact that you're a fantastic uh podcast host, I would say just to keep in mind that preparation matters. If something's important, you prepare for it and you should be applauded for doing so.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

All right. Mike, thank you. I appreciate you sharing your playbook with us today. Um, I hope we'll I'll see you again on a podcast uh soon.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

Yeah, I'm looking forward to having you on tests and the rest.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

Absolutely. Appreciate it. And for everyone listening, remember, you don't have to play the game, how it's set up. Uh, there are people out there that can help you and understand that there are ways to leverage certain skills to be able to crack the codes. And I hope we we hope you had this a very valuable uh experience with us. And we're gonna put everything we discuss below in the show notes in the YouTube description. And thank you again for tuning in to the Supported Learning Podcast, and we'll see you next time. 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.