Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The NYC Academic Solutions Podcast focuses on helping parents navigate New York City's complex education landscape by providing them with valuable information and real, actionable strategies for their children's success.
Hosted by Alexander Friedman, owner of Brooklyn Math Tutors, each episode zeroes in on a specific topic relevant to NYC education and features experts who provide practical advice and insights, empowering students to excel both academically and beyond.
Interested in being a guest or have a question for the host? Get in touch via email. We're here to help.
Hello and welcome
to the NYC Academic Solutions Podcast,
where we empower parents with actionable
insights, practical advice and expert
knowledge to help their students
excel in education and beyond.
I'm your host, Alexander Friedman,
the owner of Brooklyn Math Tutors.
In this podcast,
we're committed to delivering valuable,
noncommercial content by
engaging conversation with various experts
who will share their knowledge
and experience to help NYC parents
navigate the unique and complex
world of education in the city.
Today
we're delving into the
topic of efficient study for the SAT
with the careless error algorithm.
We're thrilled to be joined by Josh Sohn,
a seasoned tutor and developer of this
innovative algorithm who has helped over
500 students improve their test scores.
That's a lot of students.
So without further ado, let's get started.
Welcome to the podcast. Josh. Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
So before we get into this algorithm,
can you tell us a little bit why
and when you started tutoring? Absolutely.
I graduated college a million years ago
and I have been tutoring ever since.
Is that precise enough for you? No,
not at all.
Not at all.
I I always like to hide my age.
I feel like it's helpful
from a business perspective.
No, I graduated college in 2000.
And I have been tutoring
pretty much ever since.
So coming up on 23 years doing this.
And while it is not always been
exclusively test prep, it has,
like a lot of tutors will tell you
become more about test prep
as I've worked and developed a persona
and a career in the industry.
As for why I became a tutor,
that's a whole other conversation.
But I will say just very briefly,
I knew I was interested in education
and I was very uneasy about the prospect
of managing a classroom of kids.
Yeah, managing a classroom of kids
seems like one of the toughest,
most unpleasant jobs
you could possibly have.
And I looked into New York City
teaching fellows that looked into Teach
for America, and I could tell
those were extraordinary organizations
and that I would probably learn a lot,
but it would be extremely difficult.
And I just temperamentally didn't
really see myself as thriving there.
So took a shot at tutoring,
and here we are, 23 years later.
Are you from New York?
I am. born and raised in Brooklyn,
New York.
Got you.
And did you
did you or did you not go to one of these
specialized high schools
that we may end up talking about?
That is...
that is a rumor that I can confirm. Yes.
I went to a school that we both attended
called Stuyvesant High School,
which for those who are uninitiated,
is interesting
and screwed up in a lot of ways.
But most relevant to this conversation
has a single criteria for admission,
which is one test on one day.
And that is it.
It is a public school,
so if you clear the bar on that one day
you're in and you get
I don't love this term, but you get a
private school caliber education for free.
If you don't clear the test,
there is no backdoor
there is no, “Can I write a check?”, “Can
I talk someone into letting my child
in?” That doesn't exist!
Which I think is ultimately
a really cool opportunity.
And as a result, a lot of the kids
who go to this high school
do not come from great wealth
because that is not generally an asset
to getting in here.
Of course, you can hire a wonderful tutor
who can help you prepare for the test
and that those resources can be deployed.
But I guess I would say
I think most of my friends
that I went to school with
and I think this is still true
today at that particular school are,
you know, first and second
generation Americans
who don’t even grow up in households
that speak English.
And certainly do not grow up in households
that have tons and tons of money.
So I think that was important,
informative for me in terms of what I
what I wanted to do in education, too.
And okay, you mentioned
Stuyvesant is one of these places
where you take one test
and that determines your future.
And I guess the other test like that
is the SAT and that's a test
that you initially developed
this careless error algorithm for?
Yes. To give you just a tiny bit
of background there, I started tutoring
for the SAT in the early 2000
before it got its...
There was a big redesign in 2005
and then another big redesign in 2016.
And now
as we record this, we are about six
to eight months away from yet
another big redesign.
But the 2005 one was really important
because I had collected a lot of data
in the years just prior to that,
and I had to figure out a way to...
Well, I had to start from scratch in 2005
when they redesigned it.
And I've kind of framed it that way
because the careless error algorithm
runs on data like lots of algorithms.
And by that
I mean I use historical student data
on practice test
to gauge how difficult questions are.
And based on those difficulties,
I'm able to say when Student X gets
a question wrong, whether that student
made a careless mistake
on that particular question
or whether that was a question
they were always unlikely to get,
which is what I call an expected miss.
And all that became very,
very important for me,
You know, crafting that
because it allowed me
to save a lot of time
and deliver a better product.
Can you tell me a bit
more about how much it saved you time?
Because I remember when I started
SAT tutoring,
there wasn't really an algorithm to it.
I kind of like sat with somebody
and we worked through
a bunch of questions,
but it wasn't particularly systematic.
And this sounds very systematic.
Yeah.
So I found tutoring really frustrating
in the early years, I have to say.
And, I was doing all sorts of stuff.
It wasn't just SAT prep, but as noted
that is the trend in our society.
That is the craze.
That is where the work started
to sort of generate more and more.
And I realized after, you know,
applying the approach you just outlined,
namely going through mistakes
one by one with students
that I was finding myself frustrated
because I wasn't getting through
very much. Right?
And SAT in its current
construction has about 150 questions.
If a student is to miss 20, 30, 40
plus questions,
there's just no chance of discussing those
in any kind of real way within an hour
or even a 90 minute session.
So what I would do
and what I would why I found it
so frustrating is
I would get through a couple,
I would feel like
we were just kind of getting it
to something useful and time would be up.
And there was that
not only was frustrating to me,
but I'm sure it meant that
I was delivering a less
than extraordinary product,
you know, teaching a kid
how to solve
three different questions in an hour,
no matter how deep you're going, is
just not a great use of anyone's time
and not scalable.
Those three questions are...
unless they somehow magically capture
every nuance of the test,
even if the kid does master
those three questions, it's
not going to take them very far
beyond that hour that you spend with them.
So the careless error algorithm,
and it took a while to develop
was sort of a way to say,
where are we smartest in terms
of spending our limited time together?
Right?
So if a kid misses 50 questions,
we're not going to just look at the first
ten questions of those.
We're going to look at a very precise
sort of auto generated list custom
to that kid that gives us the roadmap,
that allows us to, cover more ground
and also, you know, plant real learning
seeds, teach them stuff that I that
I feel like they can learn
and that I feel like I can teach.
So the effective result was, let's say
you have like 12 weeks or six weeks
of tutoring with somebody,
would you say that the result was that
in that time
you would be significantly more effective
as to how much their score would increase
because you're focusing on questions
that actually can consistently
improve on? Yes.
And it would increase by
and on the part of the kids
because we'd be looking at questions
they could actually fix
instead of listening to me
talk and explain the hardest
math questions on the test
and I probably should have started
with the most fundamental sort
of idiosyncrasy to the test, I think, is
all of the questions are weighted equally,
which
no matter how many times
you tell the student or parent
that, it runs so counter to how we move
about the world, that the easiest task
and the hardest task are weighted equally.
And as a result,
it doesn't really serve you to spend
meaningful
extra time on the hardest question
if you're not actually first nailing
the easiest
because they're all weighted equally.
It seems like the only people
this would not be useful
for the ones that get all the easy
and medium questions right
and the ones that are going from
like while I have like a 750 in the math
and I want to get an 800 and maybe then
then you just don't care about...
Yeah, it's funny you frame it that way
because I am interested
in those kids on the margin.
I mean you could argue it's,
it's of less value
to the kids in the other extreme as well
who are missing tons and tons of questions
and we populate a list that says
these 50 questions are all careless.
Fortunately, the algorithm
is a little smarter than that.
If you you miss a ton of questions,
it does sort of normalize itself
to the student.
Meaning, a student
who's targeting an 11 or 1200.
We are still going to find the ten to 15
to 20 most careless
mistakes and ranked accordingly for them.
And a kid who's targeting a 1500, 1550,
1600, those crazy difficult questions
that he or she has missed are still going
to show up as careless errors
because they're getting so many other
tricky questions. Right?
That's interesting.
That's more of like an interpersonal
sort of conversation to how do you tell
a kid that they've made a careless mistake
in a way that motivates them?
But that's
that's a whole other conversation.
That’s a whole other conversation.
So like, what changes
did you see in like your effectiveness
from before developing this to like,
you know, to when you rolled this out?
I mean, orders of magnitude.
I was able to get, 200 point gains
for students,
whereas previously it was,
you know, 50 to 80 points.
We were just covering so much more ground.
And, you know, and it’s
the algorithm is in the sense that as this
as I work with the student more and more
and we learn the kid more and more,
we get even more precise with what
he or she needs to work on.
Hopefully some of those careless errors
stop because I'm doing my job and we...
I teach useful,
you know, remediation skills
and we no longer confuse rise
over run with run over rise.
But if it doesn't,
that's also a useful intel for me.
If I'm addressing these quote unquote “low
hanging fruit” questions
and we're not seeing score gains,
that means
there's something wrong with my technique.
So it's been useful
in that respect as well.
Can you share a story of like someone
who's had
like really good results with this?
I mean, whatever,
whatever parts you can share, of course.
No, no identifying details. Yeah.
How do we protect the anonymity of someone
who who is already fully anonymous?
I don't know.
Maybe we could just call the student,
you know, Steve, for simplicity.
So, I think Steve's intake assessment
had him at about a 1050.
This is not that long ago.
This is two or three months ago,
which would put us in in early 2023.
And he only was answering
about half of the questions.
And that was a time thing in part,
and that was a test structure,
familiarity, challenge.
And it was an anxiety challenge
and it was to some extent
a content challenge,
but not not really in the sense that...
of course it depends a bit
on what you've been taught up
til you’re,
you know, 11th or 12th grade year.
For the most part,
all of the content that you need
has passed before you
by the time you sit down to take the SAT.
With a few small exceptions in the math,
perhaps, but not not really
for most students,
certainly most sort of high
achieving students have encountered enough
algebra and geometry.
They should be able to handle the
the core content.
Anyway, Steve started in that 1100 range
and the first practices he took,
he went down
and we - I say we, me, Steve, and Steve's
parents were all quite concerned.
Had I actually made him
a less skilled test taker in the
in the one session we'd had,
I refused to believe that
I was a negative influence on a student.
But we really leaned into the careless
error algorithm and
and not just that, I spent a lot of time
thinking about and working with him
in ways
to ensure that he stayed confident.
As we all know, testing
has has much to do with your mindset
as has to do with your actual skills,
particularly
when it comes to time testing,
which of course is what the SAT is.
And he end up getting a 1530 in the end,
he went up over 400 points.
Oh my God, that's insane.
And it was honestly,
it was gratifying primarily
because he had no, he had never succeeded
on that level before in anything.
He was not an athlete.
He was not a musician.
He was not whatever other pogo, you know,
whatever other skill you want to insert,
I or if he was, I knew nothing
of his sort of mastery of anything.
And, it was exciting also in the sense
that it was not linear by any means.
There'd be a big jump and then they would
sort of slide backwards.
And I mean, it was a general sort
of upward trajectory but clearly that's
not an available path for every student,
but he worked really, really hard.
He was turning out to practice
test a week, which is a huge drag,
but he was doing it and he found it much
ultimately more enjoyable than school,
which is kind of the opposite
for most students who find testing
more confusing, more challenging
in a lot of ways, and less satisfying.
But again, I think the engine
for a lot of that less about our rapport,
though, that was part of it.
I think it was really just his work ethic
and not wasting time
on the toughest questions
until it was really time
for him to work on those.
So it sounds like the way you structured
things,
he was getting very quick,
positive reinforcement.
Yes. In his test scores versus like,
“okay, I worked on all the stuff and
I went up by like, I got one more question
right after two weeks of studying that.”
Yeah, and I can even put a finer point
on that and say, in my experience
as someone who's done a lot test
prep tutoring over the years,
probably the single worst thing
that can happen in a tutoring session
is for a tutor
to spend an extended period of time
on a difficult question and have
the students still not understand.
And that happens quite a bit
And that I think, is born out of
in many cases a lack of sort of intuition
or interpersonal connection, right?
If you don't get that
your student is drifting or confused,
you can continue to take him or her
on a pointless journey.
But also,
I think if you don't have a good system,
there's a real chance
that even if you are really savvy,
you'll think he surely he's getting this
or she's getting this and they just aren’t
Which of course gets into
how much feedback you can generate
in his tutoring session,
which in my mind there is no...
the more the better.
The more you're asking your student
to explain things and the more
you're checking in to make sure him
or he or she is with you, the better.
So, but yeah, I mean, I just to sort of
sum all that up, at the root of this
whole sort of tech development, for me
has been more efficient
tutoring and setting these kids up
for more frequent successes.
Right?
They're going to understand
these careless errors
better than they are the harder questions
that they've missed.
Yeah, I think because it's
there's just no real bar to be a tutor.
Basically,
anyone can say, Hey, I'm a tutor.
Like, if you're moderately good
at math or science,
you can say I'm tutoring
and if you have friends that need a tutor
or you finally find a way to do it,
you can sit with somebody.
But one of the things I found with tutors
who are new or tutors who are very smart
and not as as you mention,
like interpersonally savvy is like
they'll have fun with difficult questions,
And they don't really see that
like the students aren’t having fun
and that
and it doesn't really help them that much
because the tutor who's great at their SAT
is probably not somebody who struggle
that, is probably not somebody
who really had a lot of challenges
at these levels
and so they don't really understand
like, well, why don't we do
the most fun, most challenging problems
that like are totally brain wracking?
Yeah, I would echo that.
And just more broadly, ego is a
tricky thing in a tutoring session, right?
There are a lot of tutors
who are very well intentioned,
who do not realize,
and I count myself as as one of these,
and I've worked really hard
to sort of mitigate this over the years,
not just enjoying the sound of one's
own voice, but just what you said,
the game, the puzzle, the
the unraveling of a thorny question
can be really satisfying for a tutor
and totally unproductive for the student.
Absolutely.
So for people who I guess
maybe can't afford an expensive tutor
that uses a specialized algorithm
or perhaps are not in New York
and you know,
they don't have access to you,
although you do tutor online, right? Yeah.
How might people sort of DIY the system
maybe not as effectively as you,
but how could you apply
sort of the fundamentals
of the careless error algorithm
to your own tutoring sessions?
Like how would you make your own tutoring
sessions more effective?
Yeah, So it's it is a little tricky
for a couple of reasons.
First of all,
the College Board does not produce the...
does not share the relevant data
that would make this really easy to do.
Right?
The College Board,
the maker of the SAT, could very easily
say we've given this question to thousands
and thousands of students
and this is exactly how many got it
right or wrong,
and this is what they picked.
And so your answer is wrong
for this reason
and this is what you should work on.
And we think
this might have been careless.
The College Board could do that
quite easily
It is also the case
that the College Board does not,
I think, do a particularly good job
of categorizing questions.
Anyone who's taken the SAT recently
and seen a score report will see skills
on that score report that include things
like heart of algebra or passport to math,
and they will think, “I don't really know
what exactly I have done wrong,
that have gotten a passport
to a math question Which unfortunately for
the, you know, individual out there
leads you
to a couple of different possibilities.
Either you, the student or you, the parent
goes through questions and says, I think
this is actually a triangle question
or I think this is a common question
which an individual can do
but is not particularly time effective.
So all of these are challenges
to efficient self study.
I think this the simplest thing
a student can do is remind him or herself
as often as possible
that all the questions are weighted
equally, which, as I said,
even though that may seem
like a fairly straightforward concept,
is something that most students
and parents lose sight of. Right?
Getting a difficult question right
will invariably feel better,
and it will be worth exactly the same
as getting an easy question right.
In the math,
in the math sections, figuring out
which questions are supposed to be easy
or hard is actually a little bit easier
than in the other two sections,
because for the most part,
the math sections are a range
from easy to hard.
So if you are someone
who's not getting the first third
of a math section right consistently,
you should not be focused on the final,
the middle third or the final third.
Your efforts should absolutely be targeted
to the first really,
you know, seven or eight out of 20
or 13 out of 38, because if you can't
get those right, it doesn't really matter
how you fare on the hard ones.
Like you're
you're losing the whatever points
you're getting, getting a hard question
are offset by questions, your points
you're losing by missing an easy one.
Reading and grammar are trickier
to evaluate, but I, I do think in a way,
thinking about analyzing as closely
as possible mistakes.
You know, for a motivated student
who does not have a tutor,
there are plenty of free resources
available, some from the College Board
and some from countless other resources.
Khan Academy, an affiliate of the College
Board, has wonderful
tools available and starting to say, “Hey,
it does seem like I'm missing
common questions.
It's time for me to really focus on that.”
Also figuring out what which topics
not from the College Board,
for all the reasons we just
talked about from other organizations,
figuring out which topics dominate
the sections can help you
figure out, “Well,
I don't really need to spend a lot of time
on something like trigonometry
for the one or two questions
that will show up.
I really do need to spend time on geometry
for the ten or 15 questions
I'll need there.” But again, to me,
the root of all of this
is reminding oneself that it does
not pay to go into the hard stuff
until you've nailed the easy stuff.
It's very interesting
because everybody knows theoretically
that the questions are weighed the same,
but you're so right that it doesn't feel
as satisfying to work on like question two
when you missed it, want to be like, “Oh,
look at this combinatorics problem,”
although I think those are gone now or
like, “Look at this like function problem.
This is so interesting and elegant
and challenging.” You sit there and so
I guess it seems simple, but in practice,
I don't think people do this.
They don't really like work
on the fundamentals enough.
And so of course, you know, yeah,
you may get some of the harder questions
wrong sometimes,
but you can do better by by really nailing
the first part of the sections.
Absolutely. Yeah.
What other resources
or what specific resources
would you recommend for people
who do self-study?
Sure.
Far and away
the resource I use the most is called IXL.
It's the letter
I, the letter X, and the letter L.
It's an online learning platform
that is not sort of pegged to the SAT
in any way,
but it's predominantly math and language
arts skills broken down by grade
and by topic.
And it's it's
absolutely essential to the work I do.
what I mean by that is I will through
all of the means we've discussed,
spend a lot of time
looking at my own internal data
to figure out what key skills
a student is struggling with.
And then in addition
to working through practice
tests, I will have them do independent
content review with this tool, IXL,
which I can monitor both and the time
they're spending,
the days they're working on it, the
the progress they're making through IXL's
Analytics tab, which I mentioned them
because I have lots of friends
who are in the content development world
and I I always end up scratching my head
when there's such amazing tools out there.
And this is a particularly amazing tool.
I would discourage anyone who's
thinking about developing this product
from developing this product
before having looked at this product.
So that's really, really useful for me.
Math Warehouse is another tool
I like to use.
I have discovered, something that I think
is probably obvious to most people
who are under the age of 25
that video based instruction
is generally more effective
than textbook based learning.
I guess effect it depends how you measure
efficacy, but, sending a student
26 problems and there are, you know,
methodical, written solutions tends
to be worth a lot less than sending them
one sort of well built video.
And at this point in my life,
if I am not recording those videos
so much as I'm finding them
and sharing them with students.
Again, I do feel like I have something
to contribute to the to the conversation
about how best to solve certain questions.
But there's, quite a bit out there
for free again, for motivated students
with or without tutors,
with or without resources
to go find these instructional videos
and use, IXL to sort of find and target
and remediate areas of content weakness.
That is so interesting
because I've, I've definitely used IXL
but I think you're the first person
that suggested
using IXL
when prepping for the for the SAT
and that is so it makes so much sense
because there's a limited number of SAT
questions out there.
And if you figure out like, “Okay, it's
this specific skill,
a lot of these skills aren't
SAT specific.” Like okay,
if you just have problems with, you know,
exponents, yeah,
you could try to find a bunch of exponent
SAT questions
or you can go to IXL and be like,
“Hey, give me 50 exponent problems
so I can do these in my sleep.” Yeah.
Also, I should say it has an assessment
where you can just sort of
see an array of miscellaneous questions
and it will diagnose you.
So I've wondered on a few occasions if,
if my days are numbered as a,
you know, diagnoser
when there's this incredible
tool out there
that does it dynamically for kids,
which is part of the reason why
I lean on the tool, because it
it saves all of us a lot of trouble.
And I can tack that on to my
my unique knowledge of test and say, “Hey,
this is the way
the SAT is going to frame this thing
right?” So it's not just out - “Describe
the rule for semicolons.” It's like here's
a certain kind of SAT semicolon question
you should answer.
How can parents support their kids
during like the test part process?
So lot of ways?
The first thing that comes to mind
is helping that child
carve out a quiet, relatively distraction
free, you know, place to work.
I have done a lot of tutoring
in households that are extremely chaotic.
I've gone to people's homes
and been horrified that a, you know,
a TV blares in the background
as we tried desperately to learn.
That does not seem like something
that would need to get
reminded to parents
that is, limiting distraction.
But I think in this area that we live
in, particularly
with the ubiquity of phones and social
media, distractions are everywhere.
I do believe that it was easier to study
ten or 15 years ago than it is today.
That there were fewer,
particularly pre-cellphones, that
there were fewer means of getting
pulled away from the thing you were doing.
Which is not to say
we did not struggle with concentration
when we were students
or I am still a student.
It's not to say
that I don't still struggle
with concentration, but,
I think it's undeniable that students,
they have it
a little bit tougher in that regard.
So simplifying the learning environment,
whether it's getting them out of
their room.
For a lot of kids, that's a particularly
distracting place to work.
In some cases, out of the apartment
if they can meet somewhere like a library
or somewhere
like mom or dad's office or somewhere
that is, or at the tutor's house,
but not in the dining room
with the cat on the lap
and the, the radio on or
and the iPad, you know.
So to me that's, that's the easy part.
Should be the easy part.
If we're talking about careless
errors, right?
That's
probably the careless error of study.
It's just distractions.
Yeah, I do think it's much harder
to focus on stuff now than it used to be.
Back in our day,
it was like the nineties, it was music.
People would listen to music
when they were there
studying and I would always be confused.
I'm like, “How do you pay attention
while you're like listening to whatever
lyrics?” And I didn't find that the people
who listened to music did better.
I often found that
those people are not as effective,
but they're like, “Well,
but I needed to study.”
I’m like, “I don't think so.”
So yeah, if parents can like,
help students create boundaries of time,
I see that that could be very useful
because something that's very hard to do,
like it's hard for me to do as an adult
and it's way, way harder to do it
as like a 15 year old.
Yeah, I mean, executive
functioning is a sort of buzzword in
education today,
although it's certainly not a new concept.
But I do think parents have what parents
may lack in terms of an ability
to support a typical high school student
on the content front,
they should be able to offer some
some help organizationally, most parents.
Hey, here, let's talk about
what's due this week.
I, the parent, I'm not going to insist
on sitting with you
while you do your homework.
That is, you know, likely to be
a enormous fail for everyone involved.
But I am going to help you figure out
what's most important,
and offer you some strategies
in terms of where if I the parent, were
you the teen, here's where I would begin,
sort of tackling this mountain of work
that you have in front of you.
Especially if there's something
like a practice
set that needs to get done,
you know, on top of a heavy course load,
which for a lot of kids
is a huge, huge challenge.
And I have to say,
I do think a lot of test prep tutoring
is maybe overly reliant on specifically
churning out practice tests.
But the opposite of that
is probably more damaging.
A student who has not done
sufficient simulations of the real thing
will not thrive on test day.
And that includes simulating it
properly, right?
Like not just doing a practice test
but doing it under real test conditions,
which as we said, just does not involve
a phone, does not involve
a TV, really does not involve music.
And probably
and ideally does not involve sitting
in your bedroom surrounded by your stuff.
That is not
how you're going to take the real thing.
Yeah, I mean you may as well like
I mean, there are services out there
that are like, what are they called?
Like test prep simulation?
I don't remember the specifics,
but like bespoke education does this.
You can go there and pay and take a test.
And at first
I thought it was kind of ridiculous.
Why would you pay to do this?
But now but that later I was like,
you know,
it does make sense
to see what it would be like,
not in exactly the same condition,
but a similar condition.
Right. It's not at home.
You know, if your phone
you have to start at a certain time,
but to finish
at a certain time, this time pressure,
I mean, there may not be like real stress
in the sense that the test doesn't matter,
but it's much closer than anything else.
You could you could come up with.
One easy thing that I recommend
all parents of students preparing for
an SAT or in any city or countless
other tests is and I'm happy to share
these links with you using sort
of prerecorded YouTube Proctor videos.
So that is not
the same as leaving your home
and going to a strange environment to take
a actual practice test - that is better.
But second to that is having, you know,
someone on a laptop in front of you
saying you have 65 minutes, go
and now you have 2 minutes.
Now you've a ten minute break.
which unfortunately a lot of kids
without that sort of
those sorts of guardrails
will use their phone to time themselves.
And that is, of course
asking to be distracted and that will cut
into the value of the practice test.
So I'm pretty, I'm
pretty finicky about I do not want
I will often offer to the parents.
Would you like to proctor this
for your son or daughter,
which they typically will decline,
but sometimes
they will choose to spend that time
monitoring their son or daughter.
But again, these YouTube videos
that are totally free are a really easy
way to kind of simulates having someone
at the front of the room
telling you how to behave.
And can this algorithm be applied
to other tests like the ACT
or the SHSAT, etc., which we talked about
in the beginning of this podcast?
Absolutely, Yeah.
I mean, the three biggest sort of arenas
that I lean on it for are the SAT,
the ACT, and the Specialized High School
Admission Test, which is the test
that I took to get into Stuy
and that a lot of New York City public
and private school
kids are interested in because well,
for all the reasons we touched on earlier.
But I will say that
my algorithm really runs on data.
So the only way I can deploy
this effectively is having taught a test
for an extended period of time.
So I've thought a lot about expanding
to things
like the MCAT or the GMAT,
which are exciting sort of frontiers
and arenas that I think are in
need of some test prep innovation.
But it's a little bit tricky
because to, as I said
at present, to sort of really sharpen
the tool,
I would need to run
a large number of students
through a set number of exams,
which takes time.
But I'm happy to say the SAT,
ACT, and SHSAT are three tests
that I've kind of gotten to that juncture
with and I can use them in really cool,
effective ways.
And I have two more questions
about like the nitty gritty details here.
How does this help with time management?
Because that's one of the problems
that people have,
everyone talks about time management
on the SAT.
There’s a lot to say about that,
but the the short answer, I'll
I'll give you is: The analysis I do splits
all mistakes into two categories.
There's a careless error
and then there's an expected miss
For the reasons we touched on earlier,
a careless error I really believe
and the numbers do bear this out.
Careless error is more fixable
more quickly than unexpectedness.
As we mentioned earlier, as well,
all these questions are weighted
equally, so understanding.
you know, you hate to say that
any question is beyond
the students capabilities, but relatively
speaking, certain questions are.
There is no denying
that certain questions on the test
are more gettable for some students
than other questions
are for those same students,
which is to say, devoting time
independently and within the scope
of an actual ongoing exam
to the most sort of achievable tasks
instantly saves time and instantly builds
confidence as as noted,
I don't think there's anything worse
a tutor can do than leave
a student feeling more confused than he
or she felt when they sat down.
And some of these really thorny questions
on whether it's the SAT
or the ACT or SHSAT
or any other exam are that hard.
And it's not really a matter of a tutor
being winning and dynamic
and explaining it in a great way.
Certain questions just don't lend
themselves to sort of pithy conversations.
So whether you're working with the tutor
or you're working independently,
really trying to keep an eye on the clock
as much as possible, and understanding
that your time, both in the preparation
and in the exam, is extremely precious
and anything you can do to streamline
that will get you a better score.
All right. Less technical question.
This one is something
that I've personally been curious about
because I've only tutored the math section
because that makes sense to me.
And, you know, there's
specific type of questions
and you can teach specific skills,
but do you have any techniques
on how to improve the, like, reading
comprehension sections of the SATs?
Because those seem
so amorphous to me, like
how do you teach someone to read better?
Yeah, so I'll talk about just briefly
about the SAT in its current form
as I said in in the spring of 2024,
the SAT is about to get another revamp.
So if somehow you're listening to this
in that period,
some of the things I'm about to say
may no longer apply.
But here, here's what I will say.
As of right now, as of 2023,
first section of the SAT,
the reading section contains
five reading passages and one of them
is described as a double passage.
And what I mean by that is it
is to 500 to 1000 word passages.
And there are questions
on the first passage,
and then there are questions
on the second passage,
then there are questions
relating the two passages.
I have found, and I think most tutors
would agree that the double passage,
despite being worth exactly the same as
the other four passages, is far tougher.
Understanding how the two passages
connect in particular is really,
really challenging.
So in terms of SAT reading strategies,
I often tell people to push that
to the final passage,
whether it's sequenced that way or not,
because I would rather them
run out of time
without having tackled the hardest thing
and having gotten to all of the more
gettable questions than I would, you know,
starting with something really unpleasant
and being both frustrated
and short on time as a result.
So re-sequencing is a shorter way
of saying that.
And again,
I can't stress enough reminding oneself
throughout
that it is better to give up on a question
a little bit too soon
than to fight with one a little too long.
That is such like counterintuitive advice.
That's not really
how you do things in life
and not how we think about what success
looks like.
But these tests
are very artificial constructs.
And so I guess you have to have artificial
and unintuitive approaches to them.
Absolutely. Yeah.
And it's funny you've framed it that way
because that is exactly what I say
to my students.
What I'm about to tell
you is not something I would urge you
to apply to your life outside this exam.
Please do not encounter
a tough challenge in life
and say, I'll just try the next thing.
With few exceptions,
that is not going to be a winning strategy
for being in the world, I don't think.
But on the SAT it's
just how you got to operate.
Again,
if the questions were weighted
differently,
it would be completely different
experience exam.
But as of now,
they're all weighted equally.
So you got to really sort of
let that lead the way in the preparation.
Yeah.
Just give up after
didn't work out immediately
is just not the motto like the hard
working high achieving students.
Yeah I mean.
That just the heavy inference questions
touching on the reading comprehension.
I think what makes that section
so thorny for so many students
largely are the questions that ask you
to sort of get in the mind of the author,
which is really tough to do, particularly
under pressure, particularly in a,
you know, limited amount of time
and saying periodically over the test,
I don't think I'm really getting
the mind of the author quickly.
So I'm picking being I'm moving on
can actually not just
help your score long term,
but also spare you the frustration
and the fatigue of fighting with something
that was not likely to be successful.
All right.
Last question.
In your experience,
what sets apart students
who achieve significant score
improvements from those who struggle?
First thing I say to anyone
who reaches out to me about tutoring
is the secret, the dirty secret,
if you will, of independent study
and or test prep.
Well, I should say the dirty secret of
tutoring is far more predictive of outcome
than the tutor skills,
or even the rapport of the student.
And the tutor is what happens
in between the tutoring sessions,
which is to say, a wonderful tutor
who creates of wonderful environment
for a student
who is liked and likes the student
and does not get that student to do
meaningful amount of work between session
one and session
two is wasting everyone's time.
And that is not to say the tutoring skills
themselves aren't important, nor
is it to say that there aren't
useful strategies
or techniques to mastering this test
in any number of other tests
so much as a really good tutor
will get a kid to do meaningful
amounts of work in between sessions.
And that is something that
a motivated student without a tutor
can generate on his or her own.
If you are willing to put in the time
and really think about
be honest with yourself diagnosis
and and take
a meaningful number of practice tests,
you can absolutely achieve
the same results that you would have
with a fantastic, expensive tutor.
But for a lot of kids, it's harder
because knowing where to look
and knowing
how to motivate oneself is a rare skill.
Yeah,
and something that's not often taught.
So if people do want a fantastic
and organized tutor
that does know how to do this,
where do they find you?
They can get me at my email,
which is johnsohn@gmail.com
and I'll share with you some additional
contact information for me.
But I guess I would just reiterate the
perception out there that the high scores
are the kids with the expensive tutors,
I think is a is a bit of a myth
that is perpetuated
by many of those expensive
tutors themselves
who very much want you to believe
that you cannot do it without them.
And I really believe you can.
It's harder in some ways,
but by no means is hiring a tutor
the only path to an excellent score
or an excellent outcome?
Yup. Agreed? 100%.
All right, folks,
thank you so much for tuning in today.
We appreciate your time and hope you found
our discussion insightful and valuable.
If you have any questions
and thoughts about today's topic,
please don't hesitate to reach out to us.
You'll find our email address
in the show notes.
We also welcome any suggestions
for future topics that our guests
to cover as our goal is to provide you
with the most useful
and relevant information possible.
If you enjoyed this episode and believe
this information could benefit others,
please consider sharing it
with friends, family or colleagues.
Your support helps us reach more people
and make a positive impact
on their educational journey.
Additionally, leaving a review
on your preferred podcast platform helps
others discover our podcast and allows us
to bring you valuable content.
Once again, thank you for joining us
and we look forward to connecting with you
in the next episode.
Take care and see you soon.