SPEAKER_02 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.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Peace Corps volunteer Carnegie Mellon MBA, doctoral level training, and he chose to become an SAT tutor. Daniel Rive has built one of the most systematic approaches to the new digital SAT in the country, and he put a big chunk of it on YouTube for free. Today we're getting into how the tests actually change, what most families still get wrong, and what every parent of high schooler needs to know. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm Dr. Joe Sebestion. 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 the people who have figured out the rules of the game that schools aren't telling you. That's why I'm thrilled to have Daniel Rive here today. Daniel is the founder of an SAT Prep Tutor, Daniel, and one of the most respected voices in the digital SAT and ACT prep. He got a Carnegie Mellon MBA and an MS TPM doctoral level academic training and served as a Peace Corps volunteer, an unusual credential stack that brings about serious analytical rigor to test prep. He runs a while-on practice and a growing YouTube channel where he offers free masterclasses to making high scoring prep accessible. So we're going to dive into how the digital SAT has completely changed the game, what test optional really means and how AI is reshaping test prep and what every parent of a high schooler should actually be doing. Daniel, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Absolutely. I've given them the highlight reel, but I do want to hear from you in your own words, like who you are and what specific problem to educational learning you're solving.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Sure. I wish I could put it as eloquently as you did it, but my career has just been a bunch of adventures stacked on each other. Peace Corps was what I did right out of college. And I was in the classroom with high school sophomores in Togo, West Africa. And that's really where I fell in love with teaching and tutoring and working with that specific age group, 16 to 18 years old. It's a group that brings a lot of challenges, but also can be extremely rewarding. After my Peace Corps service, I came back to the States and did a program at Carnegie Mellon, which was fantastic. And then I just missed being in the classroom. I missed working with kids, and a friend suggested that SAT tutoring might be the way to go. And so that's how I found it a few years ago. And then at the beginning of 2024, I started my own SAT journey by myself on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. And the rest has just fallen into place over these last couple of years. I'm really, really grateful to have a community of over 275,000 followers across platforms. And I love getting to bring content to students for free. I think it is it has never been as good of a time to want to get a good SAT score and not be able to pay as it is right now. There's so many great resources out there. And I'm really glad that I get to bring my own perspective to those students and help them find what they need to succeed as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah, uh I appreciate that. You've got like a really unusual path, Peace Corps, Carnegie Mellon, and now test prep. Like, let's start there. Like, because it explains a lot about how you approach the work. So take me back to Peace Corps, then Carnegie Mellon MBA. Like that's a specific kind of path. What drove you to make each of those moves?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yeah, I was 21 when I signed up or applied to be a Peace Corps volunteer. And I knew so little about the world. And I wanted to have this grand adventure. I wanted to live in a new culture, meet new people. In my personal life, right before I applied, my dad passed away unexpectedly when I was in college. And I sort of was galvanized to go do something grand and exciting and kind of seize the day. And so Peace Corps was that option. I mean, I never would have gone across the world if I hadn't been connected to Peace Corps. And while I was there, I was enjoying it. I really liked the policy side of the work. And so that's what brought me to Carnegie Mellon when I finished my service. There was about a month in between college and Peace Corps, and then a month in between Peace Corps and grad school. So a huge whirlwind. And it was certainly culture shock on both ends. I remember in the first week of my graduate program, talking to a new classmate who was complaining about the dinner they were serving us at some reception. And in my head, I was like, they have running water here. Like, this is amazing. This is this is the best service I've had in a really long time. So it really shifts your perspective in a major way. But I knew I wanted to continue to affect change, be a change maker at some level. And I thought that my graduate degree would serve me well in doing that. And it has in the corporate world, but I found as I was getting deeper and deeper on my professional journey that I just wasn't fulfilled in the same way that I was in my classroom in Togo. I came in in Togo with this very bad white savior mindset of, oh, these kids are going to be so grateful to have me. I'm going to teach them so much. And I learned very quickly how wrong that was and how humbled I needed to become. My students were fantastic, but they had the same challenges that any students do. I mean, a lot of my students were just on their phones under their desk, like for most of our lessons. So it really required me to prove myself, to learn how to be a teacher, to engage them in culturally appropriate ways and teach them for most of my Tokolese students, it English was their third language, if not fourth or fifth. So trying to teach them in a language that I couldn't speak very well, which was French, to them who had grown up knowing two other languages other than English. So I loved the challenge of it. I felt so energized every time I got to be in front of that classroom. And I still keep in touch with a lot of those students who have gone on to finish high school, go to university, some even graduate school, which has been so rewarding. And that's really what led me back, the passion of working with students and making a difference in their lives in such a vulnerable time. I had great teachers and tutors growing up. I'm actually about to start tutoring one of my old teachers' kids. So it's really come full circle for me in a very cool way. And I love it. I could do it all day and not complain. I have fantastic students and I just don't get bored. They keep me on my toes all the time. They teach me often more than I'm teaching them. I'm always learning something new. And every student makes me a better tutor because every student is totally different. So I've really loved the journey. I have no idea what my life is going to look like five years or 10 years from now, but I've been really enjoying the ride.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

That's that's pretty cool. I mean, it's a really, really cool story. And then you basically got into SAT tutoring, right? And so what pulled you into that specifically, like that test prep specifically?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

I was doing when I came back from Peace Corps. I came back in 2018 and COVID started not long after. And I had a lot of free time and obviously wasn't going to see people or do activities. So I was tutoring on a platform for second language learners for English. Most of the students were in China and they were young elementary aged, and it was sort of English immersion programs with them over Zoom. And I liked it fine, but I wasn't finding myself intellectually stimulated by it. These kids were very, very young. So it was mostly reading picture books and doing little lessons. And it was fun and cool, but I didn't feel like I was being challenged. So I was complaining about it to a friend, actually, a very good friend of mine who is in the DC area with me. And he suggested looking at SAT tutoring because his brother was doing it. That was truly as much forethought as I put into it. And I thought, well, I did well on the SAT in school, and that would solve the problem of having a harder challenge while also still getting to work with students. And that was all it took. I mean, just one conversation. And that friend, every time we go out, I pay for his meal because I owe him big time. It has been such a cool journey to be in the SAT world.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, um, especially with all the changes that are that have come up. But I guess what did you see in like standardized tests and how they're being taught that made you actually want to kind of like dive into that entire world and solve that problem?

SPEAKER_00 8:50

It's a fascinating challenge because grade inflation is so large right now that a lot of the students who come to me have straight A's, 4.0's on the valedictorian track, and they can't read at a level that matches that. And they don't know math skills at a level that matches that either. So it's a really tough challenge to one level set with the students and the parents. If your kid is getting straight A's their whole lives, you are expecting them to do great on the SAT and then, you know, walk their way into an Ivy League school. That's completely normal. But there have been so many learning gaps, especially because of COVID over the last few years. And students are really struggling more and more to get through relatively short passages of text. So it's a matter of setting expectations with the students and the parents, who often are very involved in the process. And it's a matter of helping them build those fundamental skills and fill those gaps. I have a lot of students who have a lot of shame about what they don't know and a lot of guilt about not having worked very hard in class or they've used AI to write papers or whatever. And the SAT, for all of its flaws, really does force you to be a good critical thinker and to be adaptable on your toes. Every test is different. Every test is going to present a bunch of different problems. And so I've really enjoyed working with students to not only build those skills with them, but help them build their confidence too. The transition from high school to college is so hard. And the SAT is a really good step in that direction. The content you need to know is often annoying, but the problem-solving skills are really important. I especially like getting to work with students from lower income groups. For a long time, after COVID at least, schools were moving more and more away from the SAT and the ACT as college requirements. And their rationale generally was that they wanted to level the playing field. And that's fair because the test is a much better predictor of wealth than it is of intelligence. Students who are super rich get very high-priced tutors and great programs, and it makes it easier for them to score. But what colleges were finding was that their students were actually being less successful when there was test blind admissions. And it wasn't leveling the playing field. It was actually making the disparities worse because the SAT, for all of its flaws, is relatively the same test for everybody who takes it. So a student in, let's say, a Title I school district who doesn't come from a very wealthy family, is maybe a minority of some kind. If they do relatively well on the test compared to their peers, compared to other people in their school or in their city, that really can show college admissions officers that this person has the grit and the tenacity to be successful in college. And when schools have brought back those requirements and a lot of schools have moved in that direction, they're finding their applicant pool to be more diverse and their incoming classes to be more diverse too. So I've really enjoyed working with students from those groups who can't afford a $10,000 SAT program and helping them get resources for free that have really helped them succeed.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

The SAT went fully digital and adaptive. And so for parents who haven't paid attention, what does that actually change and what does that mean versus like the old SAT versus the new digital SAT?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah, this is not your grandmother's SAT anymore. It is a completely different test, even from when I took it in high school, some number of years ago. I won't say it's I I don't want to date myself, but I will say my calculator is older than all of my students now, to put that in perspective. But the test is so much different now than it was even two or three years ago on the paper version. Some of the most notable changes, one for math, there is calculator availability for every question, including a built-in graphing calculator on the SAT application. So before there were 20 questions that were no calculator that really required strong arithmetic skills. Can you do multiplication and long division? Those things are completely gone. On the verbal side, the test has changed very significantly because instead of a reading and then a grammar portion, now both of those are combined. And instead of 10 questions per long passage, every question now is tied to just one very short passage. So it's a huge relief to students who have a hard time with reading comprehension that they no longer have to sift through two pages of text. Instead, it's just four or five sentences. It can pose its own challenges too. It requires a lot of executive functioning to switch between passages on each question. But the test has certainly gotten a lot more streamlined. It takes a lot less time and you don't have to write your name on it anymore. When I was a student, they were adamant that you use a number two pencil for the Scantron. And now on the SAT website, they say, bring a pen or a pencil if you think you'll want to take scratch paper notes. So it really is a very different test. It has its own different level of pressures compared to what my generation faced. And I would say it's easier overall. It certainly requires less ability to do a lot of reading and a lot of writing, but it still challenges students quite a bit and still quite hard to get a perfect score or up in that range and does require a lot of work. Even if you've done very well in school, the test is very particular about what you need to do to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

So does computer adaptive mean the test literally gets harder or easier based on how you're doing? And what does that mean strategically? So how do you actually design prep for that? Like what's the methodology?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

That's a great question. So the test is adaptive, but only on a pretty large scale. At the end of the first reading and writing module, depending on your score, that's when you get either up or down selected into the next one. So if you do relatively well, let's say 21 out of 27 questions correct, they'll put you into the harder module. Or if you miss a little more than 10, usually, you'll get into the easier module. The easier module is, of course, much easier to complete, but worth fewer points. So students do a lot better score-wise when they get into the harder module. Although you can get into the harder module and get a lower overall score than a student who gets into the easier module but completely nails it. So there's a little bit of game theory involved in a student who's on the cusp, how they want to go. But yeah, a lot of tests that are available, including the Blue Book tests, which is the College Board application for the SAT, those tests are adapted as well. So students who take a practice test online will get up or down selected as well. It's not a perfect system. And every module, whether it's easy or hard, is still going to have some mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. Just if it's the hard module, there will only be maybe one or two easy questions compared to the easy module. It's not quite as intense as the GMAT, which is the business school admissions test, which was adaptive on a question level basis. So if you got the first question wrong, it would immediately get hard or easier for you, and vice versa. And that level of psychology is very different. This test, it's a little harder to know what exactly the cutoff point is. But a student who gets into the harder module generally in practice is usually going to replicate that on the real test. But it can be really easy to get in your head and not be sure which one it is, and the test won't tell you. So you just have to know the test well enough to know. And a lot of students don't know. A lot of students go into the test knowing they need to be good at math and reading, but they don't actually know how the test is set up. So I have a lot of students reach out to me on TikTok, for instance, who will message me after the test and say, I don't know what everyone's complaining about. The second module was the easiest thing in the world. I got a perfect score. And it's like, that's not necessarily a good thing. And it's a matter of educating those students. So there's a lot of game theory involved. Luckily, one thing that's changed since when I was a student is that there is no penalty for getting a question wrong. It used to be one point for correct, zero points if you left it blank, and then a subtraction of a fraction of a point if you put in the wrong answer. That's not true anymore. So there's no incentive to leave anything blank. You should always fill in every answer choice or every question. And if you happen to guess right, awesome. And if not, it doesn't hurt you at all.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So basically being easier is not necessarily a good thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Yeah. You want to come out of the test feeling challenged. That's a good sign. If it was so easy for you, that's usually bad. But it can be really hard to tell. I mean, the passages generally get harder over time. But a student who is relatively smart in school and isn't sure if they got into the harder or easy one, it's generally safe to assume they got into the harder one because you can tell when it's the easy one. It really simplifies quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

So for a student sitting down to start prep today, like and with the exam coming up at the end of August, they have no idea, high school has no idea where to start. What's step one? Where do they what should they do the first week?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

That's a great question. And I get that question a ton from students because there are so many resources out there and some are free, some are paid. They never really know which way to turn. Luckily, it's a relatively straightforward process. Just like if you wanted to build muscle in a gym, you go consistently, you over time progressively load the muscles more and more, and then you continue to push yourself and test yourself. And it's the same with the SAT. The best place to start is a practice. If you've already done a PSAT in school, that's good enough for a practice test. But just to get a baseline of where you are can be very helpful. It can also help you determine your goal score. So a student who gets uh, let's say 800 on a PSAT probably isn't going to end up getting into the 1500s range, but at least it gives them a sense of what they already know and what they need to work on. Once you have your diagnostic score, the best next step for most students is to go to Khan Academy, which is a free website that, in conjunction with the SAT, has published modules and practice questions allowing students to kind of get guided walkthroughs of the more fundamental concepts. Any student who gets lower than a 1300 on the SAT or PSAT can really benefit from these modules. I also benefit from them, even having the knowledge about the tests that I do, I think they're very well done. From there, College Board has about 3,500 questions, and there are more coming in August 2026 that students can work through split into easy, medium, and hard levels. So if a student makes a plan to try about 20 to 30 questions a day over a month, that can give them a lot of improvement. And it's a lot of work to do 20 to 30 questions a day, but it really pays off. And then each week, especially between now and a test or the test, I encourage students to take a full practice test. There are eight practice tests that are free on Blue Book, the College Board SAT app. And then there are a couple other free ones that are floating around. My website is about to get a practice test, which is very exciting. And just a matter of continuing to grow. The one place that I want to always encourage students to do less of is to do less spamming of questions. Students want to go through a hundred questions a day and just boom, boom, boom, I got it, I got it, I got it, and then they're good. That's not actually how it works. Students do a lot better when they slow down and they focus on the mistakes that they're making. I've seen a lot of students try eight hours of questions a day and not see any score improvement. And that's because they don't know how to get better at what they're doing. And that's a great time to bring in a tutor to find a program that fits in your budget, whether it's small or large, and have someone guide them on that process. Or if you can't, even use free tutoring online, like on places like TikTok and Instagram and ask a question in the comments. A lot of students really benefit from knowing how to keep mistakes, knowing how to learn. But this really is the golden age of free SAT resources. Any student in the world can access great stuff from tutors on all platforms. And there are really good free resources out there as well. So I have a lot of students come to me and say, I want to work with you, but I don't have enough money for an hourly session, but I really want to. And I get to show them the places where I've recorded content or libraries of content that other tutors have done. And then also they have access to me. So it's a good way to bridge that gap. And there's no need to get discouraged. You really can get a great score, even if you spend zero dollars on your preparation, as long as you're investing the right amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

So, how many? Yeah, well, let me ask this. So I get test anxiety, right? I usually say test anxiety is not necessarily a real thing, it comes from a Lack of preparation. I believe in anxiety exists, but test some test anxiety is I didn't do enough work, therefore I might be nervous. But you said it's largely a strategy problem, not a mindset problem. Like walk me through it.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Yeah, absolutely. I've seen with my students almost a horseshoe, like an inverted horseshoe of test anxiety. And when students know nothing, they're horrified. They're like, I don't even know what's going to be on the test. This is scary. And students who know a ton are also horrified because they don't know if it's going to be the one thing they don't know that gets tested, or what if all this work was for nothing? Or what if blah, blah, blah. And often those students who have really high expectations also put a lot of pressure on themselves and have a lot of pressure put on them. If I had one message for parents, it would be please stop stressing your kids out. They are already stressed enough. But the students who go in with the mindset of, you know what, I'm going to see stuff that I don't know. I'm going to give it my best try. I have strategies for what to do when I don't know what to do. Those are the students who really thrive. So in my preparation with students, we spend a lot of time doing activities that encourage a student to get comfortable in the uncomfortable setting of the test. And being in the testing room, I've done the digital test three times in person. It sucks. You're with a bunch of students you don't know. People are tapping their nails on the desk or chewing gum, the proctors on their phone are not paying attention, or there's a lawnmower going by, or it's a little too warm or cold. You have to know what it's going to feel like in order to do well. So I've adapted a lesson that my AP Calc teacher taught us way back in the day, which was before the AP exam. He gave us a test. He told us it was worth a ton of our grade. And then during the test, he would just come up to us with a megaphone and yell at us, or like take our tests and crumple them up and throw them away, or would play these really annoying songs on his computer. And at the end of the lesson, he was like, no matter what happens on AP test day, it will never be as bad as this. And that lesson has really stuck with me. So I have my students do a very similar thing. I obviously can't get in their face with a megaphone because my students are virtual, but I have them take the test with a ticking clock sound in the background, which is horrible. They hate it, but it really helps them build character when they get into the testing center. Or they really hate this one, but I encourage them to wake up early on a Saturday morning and take the test just like they will. Drive 20 minutes to the library and then sit with your computer, turn your phone off. That really allows you to simulate those conditions. And then the most important lesson I can give besides that is that it's just a number on a test. It is not the only thing that's going to determine your future. And there's really no penalty to taking the test multiple times. Almost every school allows you to submit just a super score. There are a few outliers, but even scores that schools that require all scores recognize that a student's not always going to get the perfect score right away. So a student who can go in with the mindset of, this is important. I've worked really hard. I'm going to give it my best try and we'll see what happens, are just so much more successful than students who are going in with the mindset of if I don't nail this, my parents are going to be mad at me and I'm never going to get to the Ivy Leagues and everything's ruined. That is never a helpful mentality. So I always encourage my students to just be kind to themselves and to recognize that they are going to make a mistake somewhere or they're not going to know what to do. And that happens to me too when I take the test. The first questions in durable are vocabulary questions, and there's no approved list of words that will show up. So you can learn roots and prefixes and suffixes, or there are a few lists out there. I have a list on my website of words that show up pretty frequently. But I tell myself when I go in, even me, when my score doesn't matter, I've already gone to college, but I tell myself, I'm gonna see a vocabulary word that I don't know. And then when I see a vocabulary word that I don't know, I tell myself, yeah, I was expecting to see that. That doesn't mean that I'm failing. I just will use the other words that I do know, or I'll take my best guess. And that can be a really helpful mentality too. A lot of students go in with this mindset of I have to do perfectly on every single question. And even students who get a 1600 aren't doing perfectly on every question. They're making good 50-50 guesses, or they're getting as far as they can and trying to guess the rest. That is always okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

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.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

So how I mean let me uh let me ask this. The hours a student typically like what's the sweet spot for hours a student should realistically putting that? Like typically how many? Like some companies say 20, some companies say 200. Like, where is that sweet spot that I can realistically see score improvement?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Sure. I tell my students as a baseline, one hour per day on average for three months is pretty good. The consistency is more important than the amount of time for me. And sometimes it'll take longer. A practice test, for instance, if you have one X time, you don't have any accommodations, is around two hours and 15 minutes, two and a half hours. So on a weekend where you take a practice test, you can take the next day off. That's okay. It's not about forcing yourself every day, but usually around an hour a day. And that's a good mix of tutoring with a professional tutor or watching videos or going through practice problem sets and reviewing your mistakes. As long as you're putting in that work, it's great. And then reading on the side is very helpful. Students these days, and I know I sound like a crotchy old man saying this, but students these days really are just not reading the way that students used to. So spending any time with a chapter book, whether it's classic American literature or just something you enjoy reading, is a great way to keep training your brain. And I see a lot of students who are so willing to do 100 questions a day, but very few students who want to take 15 minutes before bed to read a classic novel. And that really does help your brain. It helps your brain build patterns and vocabulary, patterns and reading comprehension too. So just getting them into that mindset is huge. I have a lot of students who mean very, very well and I love working with them. But a lot of students who say, I will do anything to get the score of my dreams. And I say, Will you read 15 minutes a day? And they say, okay, I was lying about everything. I'm not going to do that. But those things really help, even though they don't show huge improvement right away, building that muscle over time progressively really pays off.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

So marriage scholarships are directly tied to SAT scores. And you said this is one of the most underutilized financial aid categories. And I've been doing a lot of education on that, or educating on that too, to parents as well, when that stuff comes up. So what should families know?

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Absolutely. Doing well on the test is humongous for so many reasons. Parents who want their students to get started early can really benefit from the PSAT, which is also the National Merit Scholarship qualifying test. Getting a high enough score allows you to become a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship, which is a good chunk of change for students. I was a National Merit Scholar and having, I think, $2,500 was a great way to get started in my freshman year and really defray some of the costs. But parents, especially for low-income students or students in perhaps less affluent school districts, really benefit from the SAT in a major way because students at these school districts likely don't have the same extracurriculars that students at rich schools do. So there might not be a full debate team or field hockey team or great choir or orchestra. And when those things don't exist, it makes it a lot harder to round out your application well. So students who are in those low income areas, when they show high test scores, that allows themselves to be in conversation for good merit scholarships, especially if you're scoring higher than the median for your particular school. That's a great way to get a school below that range to want to offer you money. And students who get a lot of money offers from a school can use those offers to then get better offers from the schools that perhaps are their reach schools that they can't afford. And they can say, hey, this school offered me this much money because I did so well on XYZ. How close can you get to matching that? And a school that offers a student admission wants that student to come to the school. So anything that a student can do to really improve their standing is just a humongous benefit. And the test really can be that differentiator, especially too at test optional schools. It's true that there is no penalty for being test optional. And the schools will still look at your application objectively and holistically. However, if there's only one spot left for two students and one submitted a pretty good SAT score and one didn't submit anything, the school's going to go with the SAT submitter almost 100% of the time because they have that data point and they can say, we know how well the student did, and we can use that to predict how successful they'd be. Whereas the student who didn't submit the score, maybe they didn't submit it because they didn't do particularly well or they weren't motivated enough to take it. It just isn't as effective in a test optional school as it used to be.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

So the I mean a test optional thing, I think, is key. Because I think the end on the swinging back the other ways. And a lot of companies are charging thousands, and you put a lot of your best content on YouTube for free. What are those companies selling that families don't actually need?

SPEAKER_00 32:16

That is such a good question. Oftentimes it's the prestige of, oh, I've done a class with this famous company that knows stuff very well. And oftentimes that's true. The big name companies do have good connections with College Board. However, a lot of students who are enrolled in those programs don't benefit as much as you would hope with the amount of money. And that's for a few reasons. But the biggest reason is students are already stressed and doing a ton of school all the time. They don't really like to then sit on a two-hour webinar late at night. That doesn't really concern them. And any program that offers itself as a one size fits all really runs that risk. And I've done small group cohorts as well. A lot of students just you want to hit everybody, but you can't. Some students really need remedial help. Some students are so advanced that they only want the top stuff. And as soon as a student stops feeling like the program is useful for them, they're just going to tune out. And I don't think that comes from laziness. I think it comes from the students just wanting to maximize their time or being so stressed at school all the time. So the question that's less important to me is how impressive is this company? And what's more important to me is how motivated will my students stay in this process? And there are some companies that I work with or partner with, and some companies that I don't that I'm still willing to encourage students to join because they have great Discord communities and that's where students are. They're on Discord. That's where they're learning from their peers, or they have great, you know, five-minute-a-day drills that the students want to tune into. If you're going to spend that much money, you really just want to make sure that it's something that your student likes. And I tell this to my one-on-one students as well, because a lot of my tutoring time is spent with just one student. I love tutoring, but I'm not tutoring for my sake. I don't ever want a student to work with me and think, I'm not a huge fan of Daniel for whatever reason, whether it's, you know, he is spending too much time on problems that I think I already know, or his voice is annoying, like whatever complaint it is, I never want you to sit there and humor me. I'm fine. I just want you to succeed. So if we do a session together and you enjoyed it, but you might want someone who's a little stricter or someone who understands your schedule a little bit better. That is exactly what you should be advocating for. So I always encourage my students, be the driver of your own prep because the only person taking the test is going to be you. So you have to be comfortable with how you're learning and what you're learning.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

And, you know, AI has become the biggest thing with students using Chat GPT. Gemini released free SAT prep. There's AI-driven adaptive prep. How is AI actually changing test prep?

SPEAKER_00 35:17

It is completely revolutionizing the field in some good ways and some bad ways. And I'll start with the good ways because I do think that actually AI plays a pretty powerful role. Students who can't afford tutors, and tutoring is expensive, if you're getting a well-qualified tutor, you're probably spending a lot of money. Tutors can spend time with the student figuring out what their weak spots are and walking them through step by step how to solve the problem. And then hearing the student repeat how to solve it and making sure that there aren't any gaps in their learning. If you get a practice book, for instance, like a Princeton review practice book, which is perfectly good, and you solve a question wrong and you read the explanation and the explanation doesn't make any sense to you. Now your time has just been wasted because you don't know what to do with that. So AI can be very helpful, even at ChatGPT and very specific domains, math, usually a lot more than verbal, where you could go to ChatGPT, you can take a picture of the problem you struggled with, and you can say, can you just walk me through this step by step? Students who do that though just have to be very, very mindful that it doesn't always get the answer right. So if you're going to feed it to ChatGPT, make sure you're telling it what the correct answer is and then confirming it because there's a lot of hallucination. So that's the good end. And I won't lie, I've used it myself a couple of times on really advanced problems just to say, what would the next step be here? So I'm not poo-pooing it at all. I think it can be very useful. Where the problem comes is a lot of companies are using AI or standing up their own SAT services with AI, and it's not very good. And Gemini is a great example. You would think a company as well respected as Google would have a very sophisticated SAT, but the SAT that they put out with Gemini was pretty bad. The question types were wrong, the content that was being tested was not accurate. Yeah, and the grammar was not even correct. So I know they're fine-tuning it, they're working on it, but it was a real letdown at first. And then there are a lot of companies that pop up every day because any teenager or adult or anybody in the world can spend money on a subscription to an AI service and say, write me 1,000 SAT questions. But you have to know if the questions are actually good and worth your time in order to do that. So for any parent or student who is picking a company based on how many questions they have, the better question is how high quality are those questions? Because College Board has a website with 3,000 questions for free that were written by the same people who write the test, with explanations by the same people who are also writing the test. So if you haven't finished those, you don't have to spend money on a 15,000 question question bank for $30 if none of those questions are good or if they're all testing things that don't actually count. And that is a real stickler for me. My website has zero AI, and I'm very, very anti-AI and generating questions because a good question gets into the head of the person who's writing the questions. The last thing I'll say about it is I have noticed students have a blind allegiance to AI in a way that is very frightening to me. And that can be using it to write your papers. I didn't have AI when I was in high school, but I certainly understand the appeal of you have a six-page paper due tomorrow and you haven't started and you're tired. I get that. But I often work with students, even one-on-one sometimes, to get to the right answer. And the student will say, Well, while you were talking, I put it into Chat GPT and it told me the answer was B. I promise I am using the answer keys from the SAT. I would never lead a student astray on purpose. And oftentimes they'll default to listening to the AI over me, even when I show them the answer key that says that my way is correct. So I do encourage students to just be mindful, verify your sources, make sure that what you're using is actually. I've also noticed, and this is of course true because students don't need to be an expert on the SAT to do well, but I have a lot of students who will take the test or practice test and say, this question has never been used before. It's definitely AI, it's definitely a pre-test question that won't get counted. And I have to go to that student and show them, like, hey, this is where it is on the question bank. You have questions like this. So until you're really comfortable with the questions on the question bank, you don't need to spend money on a question service unless that's something that's going to motivate you. And unless you're sure that the questions are high quality and being tested by real human beings who are well familiar with the test.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

I do think there's going to probably be a little bit of a backlash against it too, as we get more and more into that. But you've also said that high school curriculum has drifted from what the SAT actually rewards. So can you walk me through that and like where's the gap?

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Absolutely. So for most of my students right now, who are either rising juniors or seniors, the coronavirus pandemic started for them around fourth or fifth grade. I was in the second year of my master's program when it happened. So it really does date me quite a bit. But oftentimes those middle school years are the years where students are supposed to be learning the fundamental building blocks of what ends up being the SAT. And that looks like subjects and verbs and independent clauses for grammar. That looks like figuring out a main idea and supporting details and reading. And for math, that looks like slope and y-intercept of a line, y equals mx plus b. These are the things that almost feel automatic to anyone who has graduated from school before the pandemic. But students these days are just, they're being assumed to know these things, but they don't. And no one has ever, for most students, gone back and tried to fill in those gaps. So I end up being, in a lot of ways, a remedial teacher. Hey, you should have gotten this in fifth grade. You didn't. Let me help you get there. And then of course, that also opens up all of the work they're doing now in algebra two or pre-calcor geometry because they didn't have those skills at the time. So that's a really big place where it's changed. Students are very afraid to admit that they have those gaps. But I always tell my students, and this is so important to me, if you don't know something, you have to tell me because you won't benefit from lying to me. And I always give them my own example. I have a guitar teacher. I take guitar because it's a fun hobby. And sometimes my guitar teacher who's on Zoom will play something on his guitar and he doesn't have the Zoom settings on so I can hear it. And he'll say, Does that make sense to you? And I'll always say yes, because I'm respectful to teachers. I don't ever want to tell them they're doing something wrong. But my students need to tell me when they're making a mistake. But the best part of that is then I get to do my job better. I get to teach them what they don't know. So it's a real win for me when they're willing to be vulnerable and honest. And I think that's something that's so important to any tutor is you have to build that level of trust with the student and with the family. But aside from those coronavirus learning deficits, certainly English curriculums have moved away from research and writing and reading dense novels toward more short bites, easier to digest information. And certainly just deprioritized overall media literacy, critical literacy, and just straight up reading literacy. So it is my job then as a tutor to help students fill in those gaps as well. The SAT doesn't require you to read long paragraphs or passages. Usually it's five or six sentences at most. But it's really important that students can read something dense and understand and figure out the main idea and ask supporting questions and make inferences on their own too. So a lot of my assignments for students take it a step above that, where I'll make them read longer passages than what are on the SAT. And that way when they get to the SAT, it doesn't feel so bad. It feels a lot more doable. So certainly in the tutoring industry, we've become less of supplemental test tutors and more of we're helping you build the foundations that you should have had. It's a hard problem, but students who can access tutoring really do benefit from that quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

All right, Danielle, we're gonna shift to lightning round to kind of round this out. So just first thing that comes to mind, you know, no explanation needed, but just right off the bat, okay?

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Okay, cool. I hope I don't get canceled. Canceled? Yeah, who who knows what I'm gonna say?

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Yeah. All right. So most overrated SAT prep advice you hear.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Oh, that's such a good question. Most overrated prep. I have so many things that I think are overrated. But the number one thing is when someone tells you that a hack works 100% of the time. Nothing ever works 100% of the time. You have to understand why something usually works, or else you're just gonna get it wrong on the test. And any tutor, especially on TikTok and Instagram, who says this trick works 100% of the time, they are buying, selling you something fake. Do not listen to them.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

What about the most underrated study habit?

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Set time on your calendar to study every day and honor that time. Because if you don't, you're just gonna put it off until the end of the night and then you're just gonna go to bed without studying.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

How about one thing parents overthink about the SAT?

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Parents are overthinking everything. The one thing that they constantly overthink about is how well their student is doing on a granular level. I get emails from parents sometimes that ask, why did my student miss question number seven on the practice test? I don't know. I'm figuring it out. I promise. Your student is not benefiting from you having that level of knowledge. You are probably stressing your kid out more, which is making them make more mistakes. If you trust your child, trust them and verify with me that they're doing well. I'll loop you in on the emails, but do not get in your kid's head about the SAT. They are already in their head enough.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

And then how about one thing parents underthink? They about the SA2.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

Yeah, they don't realize how taxing it is. And that doesn't require them to get involved in the process. But truly, after your kids done with the test, take them to Dairy Queen. Like genuinely, give them a break from it and don't grill them in the car on the way home about how it went. Because if even students who do well, the test doesn't feel like it went well. They probably feel bad. Go celebrate that they gave it their best try. And not only will that help them decompress from the test, but then kind of makes you seem like a really cool parent. So it's a win-win.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

And one book or resource every SAT prep student should know about it, besides your channel.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

I was gonna say my channel. So I'm I'm glad that you said I'm glad that you made that copy out. But I would say the College Board Question Bank, there are over 3,000 questions in there that don't even sometimes show up on the blue book practice tests. There's no reason to pay a ton of money until you've gone through those questions. And the questions often get copy-pasted onto the exam. I've taken the digital test three times, and every time I've taken it, I've recognized a question from the question bank. They don't even change the numbers sometimes. So it's almost like they're giving you a free practice test. And if you don't use it, you're basically just admitting that you don't want all the points. That's what I really, really recommend.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

And then uh an AI tool every student should bring or should be bringing to the table or should be using one they should avoid.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

They should definitely avoid grammar questions for any AI system, especially Chat GPT. And they want to use AI, the best way to use it is to ask AI to go step by step on a process and then just confirm that it's the right answer. All AI systems are good enough, but not great. So just be really careful and then check in the back of the book that it's the correct answer. Check with a friend. Your friend is a hundred percent smarter than any AI system. That will always be true.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

And uh if a parent could only do one thing after listen to this, what should it be?

SPEAKER_00 48:07

What if I said give their kid a hug? Truly. The SAT is hard. It has never been harder to be a kid than it is right now. Your child is in a constant surveillance state all the time. They could be being recorded at any moment. They know how stressful it is to get into college. It has never been harder to get into schools because it's never been easier to apply. So rich kids are applying to a hundred schools and obviously they can only go to one. Your kid is definitely stressing out. You do not need to get in your kids' head. Trust them that they're doing the work. I'm saying this in a way that's gonna cannibalize my own business, but stop sending your kids my videos. They don't want to see me, they want to relax and eat dinner in peace and truly just be kind to them. If you've raised your kids well, they are gonna care about doing well. And if you've raised them well to have intrinsic motivation, you being over their shoulder is not gonna help them at all.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Got it. Well, Daniel, this has been extremely different. No, that's okay. I um this has been extremely valuable. Definitely learned a lot. Uh for people who out there want to go deeper with you, learn more, where can they find out more about you and where should they check out first?

SPEAKER_00 49:19

Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to have any of you check out my website, sat preptutoraniel.com. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at SAT PrepTutor. And I post on my TikTok and Instagram every day new content to help students succeed on the test.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

All right, Daniel, thank you. I really appreciate your time. Um, before we wrap, like what's one thing you want people to remember from this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 49:44

If you take anything away from this conversation, I hope that you know that this is the golden age of studying for the test. There is no excuse in the world that's going to prevent you from getting a good score. I don't have any money. Okay, there's great free resources. I didn't learn this in school. Great. Khan Academy exists. It will help you fill in the gaps. I don't have time. That's okay. There are a lot of fast-paced resources that can really help you too. There is no excuse to not doing well. And you can be a person who scores way above what you even thought you could achieve if you really just believe in yourself and you put in the hard work day in and day out.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Amazing. Danielle, thank you so much again. Um we're gonna put all the links to your stuff below in the show notes and in the YouTube descriptions. And thank you again for joining the Supported Learning Podcast. Thanks so much for having me. All right, we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

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.