Lisa (4:15)

Yeah, it's very, I think he got.

Sean Quinn (4:16)

In with a 13.

Lisa (4:17)

Yeah, now you need like a 1460 is their average sat.

Sean Quinn (4:21)

Yeah, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. But you know, even eight years ago is like 1350 plus. Right. And it moved up like 100 year, 100 points. And so that was our first Italian student. We started getting a lot of Italian students And of the 20 plus countries that we work with students outside of the U.S. italy is number one. And I go back every year and I present at high schools there.

Lisa (4:44)

Tough, tough to go.

Sean Quinn (4:46)

It's a tough place to work. Yeah, the place to work, you know.

Lisa (4:50)

Like, hey, if we want to do.

Sean Quinn (4:51)

A little joint, go over there again.

Lisa (4:54)

Come over and if you twist our arm, we'll, we'll go and you know, help.

Sean Quinn (4:58)

Next time we'll go, yeah, go to Milan. Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie (5:02)

I see the collaboration now.

Lisa (5:04)

Yeah.

Abby (5:05)

Or Buenos Aires. Yeah, there too.

Sean Quinn (5:07)

Or Buenos Aires. Yeah. And I came back here about end of 2019. My wife is from Buenos Aires and I have a six year old daughter and we ended up being closer to her family and it's been great. Buenos Aires has the best time zone. I'm saying this in a biased way because it's one hour ahead of Eastern, closer to Europe. And we have students in California too.

Lisa (5:33)

Yeah, you're right in the middle.

Sean Quinn (5:34)

Right in the middle of everything.

Lisa (5:36)

I didn't realize you had that Argentine connection. Because I work with a lot of Argentinian students that are living in the U.S. yeah, I just have. I just happen to have a lot of students that were. They lived in Argentina or their parents are from Argentina and then they live in the. And they're work living here right now.

Sean Quinn (5:53)

So that's very cool. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we do. So we, we work with some local students. I do give presentations to some of the high schools here. And I took my first international act, I guess getting into the act topic when I moved here in 2019, and it was already a digital test internationally as of 2018.

Lisa (6:14)

Oh, interesting.

Sean Quinn (6:15)

So I was familiar with this kind of clunky UI back then, you know that they haven't really updated even for the new one.

Lisa (6:23)

They haven't updated it. Right.

Sean Quinn (6:25)

Not too much. It's very similar to the test I took in 2019.

Lisa (6:30)

Interesting. So let's talk a little bit about the new test because there's. Obviously the digital SAT was very different and with the being adaptable, etc. But it sounds like the act is just the same thing, but shorter. Fewer questions, more time per question and still a clunky interface. Or is there more to it?

Sean Quinn (6:49)

Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I, I think they went to the static linear path. Right. They kept it a linear test. You know, the SAT to shorten their test by about an hour and keep it internally consistent with the scale, the 1600 scale. They made it adaptive and so they had more question pathways and so you can maintain that integrity to the scale. With the act, they made it shorter. At the same time, they cut 44 questions. They cut about 50 minutes of time if you're also including the science section. But they kept it a linear static test. And that has implications as we'll talk about, on the predictability of the scoring system.

Lisa (7:41)

Yeah. How so? Because as you said, the SAT made it adaptive so that they can remove the easy questions the next time, if you got all of those right. But if it is a linear test and it's static, do you feel like the key changes are actually going to make it easier for the to do better on the act? It's going to be harder for colleges to say, well, now we really want the SAT because the ACT isn't as predictive, what do you, what do you think is going to be the reaction?

Sean Quinn (8:08)

Making it non adaptive means that there's ultimately less questions that a student could potentially see. And so that means there's less questions that are countable to a student's score. You know, the ACT also embedded experimental questions within the shorter test. So they used to have a fifth section that was 20 minutes at the end of your four sections that you take on a Saturday. And it was all the experimental questions. And the problem with that is that students knew it was experimental and they weren't going to proceed with the same rigor that they would on the rest of the test, naturally. And so it was hard for the ACT to test those experimental questions for future exams. And so what they've now done is they've embedded a significant number of those questions inside the ACT format. And so that further reduces the questions that count towards a student's score. And so what that means is like in English, for example, English is Now, it was 45 minutes, it's been reduced to 35 minutes. It had 75 questions. It now has 50 questions, but of those 50, 10 are experimental. So now you have 40 questions that count versus 75 questions that used to count. And it's still mapped on to the same 36 point scale for the English. And what that means practically is that you could miss one question and lose as many as two section points, or if you miss two questions on ACT English, you could lose as much as one composite point on your score.

Lisa (9:50)

Right. So it's actually going to be harder. Even though it's shorter. It's the reverse of what people might think is that it's going to be easier, it might be harder to do.

Sean Quinn (9:58)

Well, yeah, I mean, it's going to be less predictable. That volatility could go either way. It could go on the. You could have a lucky day and get, you know, a 35, 36 because. Right. So it's just more volatile. And that's due to shortening the questions, shortening the test and embedding experimental questions.

Lisa (10:19)

But do you think having those embedded questions, because when the students knew that they were experimental, it sort of took off some of the stress on some level because they knew that they were experimental, but now they don't know if they're experimental. Like they were not going to know which of those 10 questions are the experimental questions. Do you think it's going to put them into a tailspin? If they're more challenging, it'll be better.

Sean Quinn (10:40)

For the ACT in terms of testing out future questions because the students won't know, you know, and they'll treat them with the same. I think students shouldn't dwell on the fact that they're experimental questions because they'll never know where. Where they are.

Lisa (10:56)

That's true.

Sean Quinn (10:56)

But there's other strategic things that, that, that it has. Like in terms of the ACT reading section, for example, usually for like mid level scores, a strategy might be okay. Perform your best on your three favorite styles of reading passages. Right. And then just guess on the fourth one because we didn't have enough time to go through. But now on the ACT reading section, on the enhanced test, one of those four passages is entirely experimental. And so you could gamble and guess on the wrong one, the one that counts, and then experimental doesn't count and have as much as a 10 point swing.

Lisa (11:39)

I didn't know that that was what was happening. So that's really stressful. Yeah, it is, right? Yes. Stephanie looks stressed out. Yeah. It's also probably hard for you to teach because, you know, you don't necessarily know what you have to teach them to just be open to the experimental side. And what about the science? I mean, they decided to get rid of the science. They're making it optional. But colleges haven't come out yet to say if they're going to make it optional. A few have said, but most of them haven't even weighed in what they're going to do. I mean, we're recommending that our students continue to take the science. What are you doing with your clients?

Sean Quinn (12:12)

I think the move to make Science Optional was ACT's attempt to address the second biggest pain point with the act. The first one was the time per question. You know, it's always been thought of as like it's a race versus the sat. And so they shortened the test and gave more time per question. Right. And it's, you know, there's like 17% more time per question on English and there's 27 to 29% more time per question on the other section. So that in of itself is a good move. And then the second thing is they made science optional because the ACT science is not a pure science section. And I think many students hear science and they're scared off by just the name of science itself alone. But it's not a pure science section. That actually is more data analysis. It's more a test of how to read and interpret data and graphs quickly. But regardless, it turns students away, I'm sure. And so making science optional, I think was smart A smart move by the act in that sense. But right now in 2025, I think we still all have to view that science is essentially mandatory for students who want to keep their options open in the universities they're applying to. Because as you said, 99% of universities have not even announced where they stand on science. Right. There's only been 20 announcements that we know of. The majority of those had said that they will consider it as optional. A couple notable ones that haven't are Boston University has said, you know, they said that it's required. But you know, the second question would be, I guess like, what does that optional mean? Because in light of test optional and it's kind of changing meaning over the last few years since the pandemic, many universities use that term in a different way. And there's even like, you know, test recommended now and test expected that some universities are communicating. So even if the students, the universities are science optional, to what extent is that optional? Do they still prefer that you.

Lisa (14:27)

And nobody knows the answer to it? I don't think they know the answer to it at this point. And also to your point, data analysis, I mean that's everything is about data analysis. So you kind of have to have that. And doesn't the SAT include similar sorts of questions in their reading anyway?

Sean Quinn (14:42)

Yeah, so the digital SAT did, it does, does include some, some graphs in the reading section. Some, some science analysis questions as well. Yeah, exactly. And they made that change back in, in 2017 with the, the other test and then. So it is an important section. I, I think even though it, for most students taking standardized tests, the ACT science is the scary section at first, at first glance, yeah.

Abby (15:13)

It's probably the one where they have to learn the most test taking strategies. It's probably the least familiar, you know, exercise of the whole thing.

Sean Quinn (15:22)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's, it's the, it's, it's the least familiar. They just haven't seen anything like it. Right. In school. But we've found over the years that it really aligns with the ACT reading section. It's the same kind of skill set. Right. It's kind of identify the keywords in the question and in the answer choices and then go fetch and go make the connections. Right. And instead of in a passage in graphs and figures.

Abby (15:49)

Yeah. We say the same to our clients that you're reading and your science should be pretty close to each other because they would just assume that science and math would be, should be proportionate, but it's really exactly not that way.

Lisa (16:02)

Yeah.

Abby (16:03)

It's interesting. I think the, there's having that section be test optional adds so much uncertainty and stress to kids. I mean, I, I'm imagining that was not the intention. But not only do you not know what optional means, but then you don't even really know what the school like, let's say you're pre med. I mean, does that preclude you from. It's just adding another level of uncertainty for, I don't know, no good reason. But I get that they want to sell the test. We were kind of assuming that test scores might go. ACT scores might go up now that you have more time per question, but you're. I think you just implied a little earlier that that's not necessarily the case. There's just more kind of variability. But who, what have you been seeing in terms of average scores with the kids that you're helping to prepare?

Sean Quinn (16:51)

So there's the variability that is due to just less questions and the addition of experimental questions. But we've also noticed that the questions that they cut tend to be the easier questions based on the four practice tests that have been released. So, yes, we've added time per question, but we're left with the medium and the hard questions instead of the easier questions. So that's. That additional time advantage is a little bit offset by the increased difficult, increased average difficulty of the questions. So based on, you know, that average time alone, we haven't seen and we don't have enough data yet to see how that's going to impact the student, the scores. It might be that many students end up doing better because of that additional time, but my instinct is that they'll end up needing that additional time because the average difficulty has gone up. Right?

Lisa (17:47)

It's gone up. Yeah.

Sean Quinn (17:48)

That makes sense.

Abby (17:49)

Would you say it's more similar? I mean, I guess the way I've always thought about them is the SAT gives you more time per question, but they're more complex kind of logic based reasoning questions. The ACT is a faster, more straightforward test. So are you. It sounds like what you're saying is they are kind of like converging a little bit.

Sean Quinn (18:08)

The ACT questions really themselves haven't changed. Right. So like the act, each section was composed of easy, medium and hard questions to kind of simplify things. And the easy questions essentially have been taken away, but the medium and hard, even with their more straightforward language, remain. Right. So they still have the straightforward language of the act. They still are, you know, one or two sentences instead of some of the more complicated SAT math problems. Right. The content in that sense hasn't changed too much. There's little things like the ACT math section, instead of having five answer choices, now goes to four answer choices and stems are tested on the, on the English grammar section. But there's not too much in the content side and it's really indicative of the practice test they've chosen to give us because they're fully taken from past acts. Right. All of the four practice tests are repeated material from older ACTs. In that sense, I don't think it's converging with the SAT too much. It remains its own distinct test that has disadvantages and advantages for students.

Abby (19:25)

So along those lines, what do you like about it? What don't you like about it? If you can put yourself in the mindset of one of your students.

Sean Quinn (19:33)

Yeah, I like that. They're keeping a paper based version of the test and I would advise all students that are taking the ACT to stick with the paper based version for now. Now, why? Why the paper based version? Well, it's the one that's most familiar to any students that, that have been practicing already with the act. That's one advantage. But more importantly, you know, when the SAT changed to a digital format, they change the structure of the passages on reading and writing. It's one question and one short passage which makes sense on a screen. Right. When you have to scroll to go through a passage, you lose your place constantly on the current UI of the act. Of the digital act, you highlight within a passage and then you go to the next question and you lose your highlights. And so both the UI and the length of the passages are not a good fit for the digital experience. It makes the paper base for screen. On the paper base, you can mark up quickly your passage. You can extrapolate on the science graphs very quickly, especially on science and reading. Being able to annotate the ACT on the paper version is a huge advantage and I urge students to stick with that. And I like that the ACT has elected to continue that paper based version of the test for US students. Right. And international students haven't had a paper based student, unfortunately since 2018. And they're stuck with the digital version.

Lisa (21:12)

Yeah, unfortunately. One of the things that my clients were asking me and I didn't have an answer for it is like how do they take notes? You know, how do they underline? If it is digital, is there a way for them to do it if they don't want to do the paper based one or they don't have access.

Sean Quinn (21:25)

To it on the reading Passages they can highlight. Right.

Lisa (21:29)

Okay.

Sean Quinn (21:29)

The problem is once you go to the next question, you lose those highlights. Right. And so that's not super useful on the science. There's no meaningful way of annotating, you know, a graph. Right. They haven't figured out that out on the ui. So it's very similar to like when I took the digital SAT act back in 2019 in Argentina. They give you a scrap paper and I would draw out my versions of the science graphs on paper just to make those kind of.

Lisa (21:57)

So. But will they have a piece of paper that they can draw on?

Sean Quinn (22:01)

They will, yeah. You will have scratch paper. You can have scratch paper.

Lisa (22:04)

Okay. Because it's kind of like on the Kindle when you're trying to highlight it. It's not that easy. At least for me. It's not that easy when I'm trying to highlight a passage.

Sean Quinn (22:11)

Exactly.

Lisa (22:11)

I'm like, okay, I didn't quite get it. And then it keeps going up to there. So you waste time on the technical stuff that is looking so fast with pen and paper.

Sean Quinn (22:19)

Conversely, I like that they have the digital format for. There are some students, and I had a student like this this year that is not a good paper based test taker. You know, he's this generation, I mean, grows up on computers and they're very good digitally. And he is, he is a kind of student that was better on the digital version of the ACT and he did amazing on the, on the July test and the June test too. And so I like that they have that flexibility for both kinds of students. I like that they've promised to incorporate DESMOS into a future version of the digital act. That hasn't happened yet, but that is in process. Desmos, for those who might not be familiar with it, is the calculator that's embedded into the sat. It's an awesome tool. I'm not a huge graphing calculator fan, but. And a lot of times I prefer just to write out the math work. But DESMOS has changed that for me and there really are a lot of shortcuts for SAT users to use desmos and I anticipate that's going to be a big help for the act. But that hasn't been implemented yet. And I like that they're going to implement the bring your own device. Right. Which is now promised for the September test. I don't have full confidence that it's going to happen for September because it has been promised during the soft launch and then it didn't happen. And that was an issue not having your own device.

Stephanie (23:54)

This is so helpful. Like Lisa said, we have answers I feel like to give to my students now and it hurts my, I was an English teacher so like hurts my English teacher. Art that like annotating seems to be this lost art. But it was good to hear you also talk about or looking forward to some of these positive changes that will hopefully happen with this digital enhance act. But because there's still this uncertainty around it outside the, you know, paper based option, would you recommend students focus on the ACT instead or you know, too early to tell.

Lisa (24:28)

The sat.

Stephanie (24:29)

Yeah, SAT instead.

Sean Quinn (24:30)

Yeah. I think generally students coming in now, you know, it's a weird year for us because usually when students come in, I'll meet with the student and the parent, we'll talk about where they are, did they take a psat. And usually we would always have them do an SAT and an ACT diagnostic to see which is a better individual fit. And this year I've kind of paused that and I really am just giving SAT diagnostics. Unless we see that the score is quite low, it doesn't align with their grades. If they want to take the ACT diagnostic, we'll set that up, always using a legacy act, the old act, as the diagnostic test. Because even though it won't give me the most exact results or the most precise measurements, if ACT ends up being a better fit, I want to save those four practices that we have for later in the process. So. Yeah. Yes. Generally, you know, most students that come our way nowadays, the SAT is just the more predictable path to steady progress. For now, I, I just worry about the ACT volatility. And to be fair, I mean the, the few students that ended up kind of going against our advice maybe to take the, the soft launch digital enhanced ACT have done very well.

Lisa (25:51)

Right.

Sean Quinn (25:51)

And their scores have, have been great. And the other change I guess we haven't talked about yet is that science is not only optional, but it's also now not included as part of the composite score. Traditionally, the ACT composite score was calculated as the average of the four sections. Now it's just the average of English, math and reading and it doesn't include science. That I think, Abby, to your question earlier, that could actually cause student scores to increase. I mean, on the loan because science is this section that students fear or they misunderstand if they're not, you know, working on it. And so traditionally they, they have scored lower on that section. When you know, these changes were first announced a year ago, we went back and ran the numbers on all of our ACT students and see, like, okay, if we took out science, what would their composite scores have been? Like, how does this impact. And there was about a 1 point average gain across, across our students. And we're talking about, you know, a sample set of a couple thousand students over the last seven years. Yeah.

Lisa (27:04)

I was just going to ask though, if somebody had the science. If they didn't make it optional, though, they would, would, would they not include it in the composite if they didn't make it optional?

Sean Quinn (27:14)

So if it, even if they take the science. Right. It's. It's still not included as part of the average of the composite scores.

Lisa (27:21)

Yeah, I had a student this year who got like a 36 on the science and did like got in the 20s on the everything else. So.

Sean Quinn (27:31)

Wow.

Lisa (27:31)

Yeah. So that student, because he did really well on the. We were, I were so surprised. I'm like, oh my God, you did so well in the science. He said, I know, but it's not going into my composite. So my composite is so much lower.

Sean Quinn (27:44)

So yeah, I mean, and that's, that's another thing. We don't know like how the university admissions are going to be calculating that composite because maybe, maybe they have their systems that they, you know, if science is required on their end and they are including it as part of their composite, still may, maybe. Right. And so, yeah, it's really confusing. Test optional was already confusing enough, you know, and I think ACT maybe had the idea that it could go the optional way, that writing. ACT Writing went optional, which nobody even remembers ACT writing. But it's there, you know, and maybe they thought, okay, we could kind of get rid of science in this way of making it optional. And it becomes like, yes, day, which is the ACT writing. And, and I haven't had a student take that in years. And it's still there. I mean, you could still opt to take the writing.

Stephanie (28:37)

We look a lot at the common data set and we see the percentage of students who submit acts versus SATs. And the, you know, the ACTS always wins. Wait, I said the. I'm getting the SATs always win. I keep mixing them up, but yeah, I wonder if there's a future for both of these tests.

Sean Quinn (28:57)

Both the SAT and ACT have rebounded from the pandemic numbers. Right? I mean, from 2021, I think the SAT has recovered about 27%, you know, at growth or has. Has grown 27%. It's back up to about 2 million test taker, 1.9 million test takers last year in the U.S. alone. And the actual also has grown, but at a much smaller rate. Right. It grew only 7% since 2021. It's about 1.2 million test takers in the U.S. but the fact that it's growing and I mean it's, I see at least an immediate future for both tests. I don't think the ACT is, is going anywhere. And I think that it still remains a good viable fit for some students. I just think it, I, I was a huge fan of the old act. I love the ACT for a lot of test takers, you know, especially students with extra time accommodations. When we could, you know, alleviate a little bit the reading and science timing challenges, then the ACT was a great test for those, those students. And I'm just unsure of this new test. And maybe we'll see that the numbers make sense or maybe they make some adjustments to it and we find out a year from now and we think, okay, yeah, actually they, they got their ACT together and it all worked out and, but yeah, I do see a future for the next five years at least for, for both tests for the act. Stick along.

Lisa (30:34)

I don't know if this is true, but I heard that, and I don't ever want to spread rumors that aren't true, but I heard that the ACT was bought out by a private equity firm and that was part of why they were making the changes purely from a business decision because they were losing market share to the SAT and they were just trying to find a way to get to bring people back into the fold. Is there any truth to that?

Sean Quinn (30:57)

I think there could be. I mean, ACT did go private, right? And so about a year ago, or kind of coinciding with a lot of these changes. I think even prior to that, the ACT had gone digital internationally in 2018 and they were always planning to go digital in the US And I think SAT finally making that leap, said okay, we gotta try a different form of the test. But yeah, I think cutting the, trimming the length of the test, making science optional, I think those were moves, you know, to, meant to compete with the sat. And whether it's a for profit or a non profit company, I think they were going to do that anyway to try to compete with the sat. I think they rushed, I would say maybe the for profit angle of it is maybe they rushed to market a test that wasn't statistically as sound as it could have been.

Lisa (31:57)

Right. Well, it's interesting, I mean, with so many testings going on, I mean there's, it's always kind of important to give tips. And I know there's a lot of things that students always are asking us in terms of when they're preparing. Like, first of all, how do they know which test to take? You just said, I mean, we used to do the same thing. We would say go take a diagnostic, see which one you do better at, see which one you prefer, and then focus in on that test. But now it sounds like you're pushing people to really just focus on the SAT for now. Like, how can they prepare best? Like, and when should they start preparing? Like, what do you recommend to students? Kind of on the whole prep side of things.

Sean Quinn (32:31)

Yeah. So I think in an ideal world, you know, students would approach this or start thinking about this at in spring of sophomore year or the summer after sophomore year and take their first blue Book test and blue book number four. Right. Which is now the first SAT test now that they retired 1, 2 and 3. Because they, they too had kinks they had to work out, you know, and, and with the, with the launch of the digital SAT version. So that would be my recommendation, is to think about this like, you know, as sophomore year is winding down at the earliest generally. Right. And then summer after sophomore year, take a practice test, sat, take that under real time conditions. Turn off your phone, take it in a place that's not your bedroom, maybe even not your home, in a library, in a cafe. And this is something we'll talk about like in terms of homework and practice tests in general, once you've begun the process beyond the diagnostic, is to try to get outside of your comfort zone and practice. Because we have many students, of course, that are, you know, they're doing their homework on their bed and they're slouched and they're comfortable and they might do better on their homework for that, they might do worse, but they're not doing the same as if they were in an environment that they're uncomfortable. So like practice discomfort because it's going to be uncomfortable, there's going to be pressure. And you could start that with the diagnostic test. So I would say that's the first part. I always meet with students and parents in an intake call just to talk about these things at first, you know, did you take a PSAT in October? That's great to see those scores. It's not super relevant for now because it's been eight months of, you know, you've had a whole school year under your belt now. But let's take the SAT if it's very low or, you know, we, you know, the Student wants to take an ACT diagnostic, let's take an ACT diagnostic test. In that case, we would proctor it live over zoom at a time that's convenient for the student. So I think taking these diagnostic tests in as official, arbitrarily official kind of feeling circumstances are helpful to get a good score baseline as a start and then choosing a test. And then my preference is to do consistent, smaller amounts of prep but over more time rather than trying to squeeze it all in, you know, in a month or something like that.

Lisa (35:10)

And what would you recommend time wise? Because I usually tell students you're going to have to account for probably four hours a week. Do you, Is that realistic? Unrealistic. What do you think?

Sean Quinn (35:21)

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's identical to what we recommend. So we would recommend one hour of verbal lessons and one hour of math lessons and then one to one homework to lesson time always. Right. So two hours of lessons, two hours of homework. So it's a four hour commitment. They should block off. Yeah. During prep.

Abby (35:39)

Over what period of time? How many months?

Sean Quinn (35:41)

Generally speaking, it will vary widely by students. I would say on the fastest side, maybe two or three months. On the longer side, maybe eight to nine months.

Lisa (35:54)

Oh wow. That long?

Sean Quinn (35:55)

Depends. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so generally we see, on, at onsen we see a seven point per average increase, tutored hour increase. Right. So you know, over the course of a 30 hour program, we're seeing on average 210 points of movement. And that's, that's an average. Right. Well, we might have students that start at 1400 and they'll move a little bit less than that because they're on the higher end. We might have students that are starting at a thousand and they move more than that average point per because they're starting lower. But it really depends like that. In that first conversation we talked about, okay, what are your diagnostic scores? Right. If you have them and what are your goals even at this early stage? I mean, some students know, hey, I have this school in mind that, you know, I've been talking to my iec, I've been talking to my school. Like I have a list already. Okay, that's great to know. And that helps me know. All right, we need to try to target 180 points of movement or we need to try. We have our work cut out for us because we're trying to target above 250, which that gets to be. The hardest part I think is after, after you've moved already like 200 plus points. So it depends like what their goal is ultimately and where they're, where they're starting. But yeah, I would say in, in the range of three to eight months on average.

Lisa (37:18)

Would you say the same for the gre? My daughter's studying for her GRE right now. She said four months in.

Sean Quinn (37:24)

Yeah, it could be the same for gre. I mean, I think GRE and GMAT were the, like the. With aside from mcat, because we do all of the grad tests as well. Like MCAT is like, just takes so many hours of tutoring.

Lisa (37:37)

All the, all the medical school stuff. We do medical school. It's, it's all the hardest.

Sean Quinn (37:40)

Oh, you guys do medical school?

Lisa (37:41)

Yes, it's the hardest for the medical school students, honestly. It really is.

Sean Quinn (37:45)

But like taking away like the mcat, I think grad test student could be less tutoring hours. It's a lot more independent work. Instead of maybe one to one homework to lesson time, it's like two or three times of outside work to.

Lisa (37:58)

Yeah, yeah. And every time I talk to she's like, we gotta study. I've gotta study. I'm like, she's very committed to it.

Sean Quinn (38:02)

So that's great. That's great.

Lisa (38:05)

So we'll see.

Abby (38:06)

She'll do great.

Stephanie (38:08)

Yes, you will.

Lisa (38:09)

Yeah, we'll put it out in the universe, right?

Abby (38:11)

Yeah, let's actually, literally putting it out in the universe, let's all do that. Let's all think taking a step back and looking a little bit at the big picture. So a bunch of schools have gone back to requiring tests. Some were expected, some. I mean, when University of Miami went back, I was actually surprised. Except maybe it had to do with them being in Florida. I don't know. But in any event, sort of, as I was implying before, I find this whole test optional thing to be very nervous making and anxiety making because it just leads to so much uncertainty. But. And then sometimes a school will be test optional, but then you'll look on the common data set and you'll see 80% of the accepted freshmen took the test. So to me, I'm like, it's not so much test optional, it's a little bit of a fibber right there. What's your opinion about the future of test optional? It seems like some schools have committed, but I don't know. What do you see happening in the next few years?

Sean Quinn (39:06)

You know, with the pandemic, over 2,000 US universities went test optional. And I think, you know, in the last year and a half, we've seen a lot of high profile, you know, competitive Universities go back to test mandatory. But you know, even in that window where they were test optional, like exactly what you're saying, Abby, there was this kind of doubt or uncertainty, like what does that mean for this university, for this student? And depending on your high school and your demographics and your peers, like, are your peers submitting scores? Well, then should I be submitting scores if my peers are at this school? There was always this kind of uncertainty about, about it. And I, but I think there's always going to be a future for test optional. I think the majority of us universities will stay test optional. I think it remains a great option for underrepresented populations, for underrepresented high schools, for international students coming from underrepresented international curriculums that schools are not familiar with. So I, I think, you know, taking all of that into account, like it's going to be around. But there are many students that test optional is not so optional. Right. And they do expect scores from certain types of students coming from certain kinds of high schools that they know of. And that applies to international high schools too, that they're familiar with, that they're on their radar. And if everyone from that school has traditionally been submitting scores, then maybe there is more pressure for you to submit a score. And so I think it's a good thing that many of these high profile universities are going back to test mandatory because I think it was a little, maybe deceptive or unintentionally disingenuous. Yeah, disingenuous. To remain test optional. And I would expect that many of these highly ranked or these competitive universities that continue to go back to test mandatory, but that there will always be a majority of universities that are test optional, if only also to get more applications and to see, you know, I mean, most universities are going to be suffering from this, this, this cliff. Right. Or this demographic cliff that's coming. And so they need students applying, they need new students. And so I don't, I don't, I think most of them will remain optional. Yeah, helpful.

Lisa (41:40)

Actually, just another question. I just made me think about something because you work with a lot of international students and so there's the demographic cliff, but then there's perhaps an international cliff as well. Are you seeing the same interest in US Schools among your international clients?

Sean Quinn (41:56)

I've been seeing diminishing interest among international clients because over the last five years, and this is prior to this administration, but it's been, you know, it's been amplified, I guess in the last six months. Unfortunately, it's been due to you know, the rising cost of US universities at the same time, the rising profile of international universities. Right. Like Bocconi and IE in Madrid and Asada in Barcelona and the Dutch universities. And, and, and they're kind of rising profile and prestige and, and the cost, like at a fraction of the cost of, of US universities. So what I've been seeing in the last five years is that international students are more and more only applying to the most highly selective US universities and saying, like, well, if I don't get into those highly selective universities, I'm not going to pay 100 grand a year. I'd rather go to, you know, pay 20 grand a year at Bocconi.

Lisa (42:54)

No, makes sense. Yeah.

Sean Quinn (42:56)

So that, that, that has been happening.

Lisa (42:58)

We're seeing more things similar. I would say that that's similar. Yeah. Even among some American students that they just want to go to the top schools or else they'll go in state or to a public school.

Sean Quinn (43:09)

Yeah. And what I've seen too with American students is there, it's opening up that I think is pretty cool. They're, they're opening up to international universities in a way that I've never seen before. Like I had a couple students in Seattle last year that their number one student school is IE in Madrid, the business school. Right. And so I thought that was really cool. And then we just saw a report that it will be in our newsletter about UK applications are super up, you know, from US students. So I, I think that's a, that's a good thing overall. Like US students being able to.

Lisa (43:43)

No, I agree. Yeah. In fact, I'm trying to get onto a London tour next week to go on visit schools in London because there is an interest, there's more people, you know, interested in going, which is why I went to Bocconi, because I had students that were interested in it and I wanted to be aware of it and know what it was required for it. So I think it's important.

Stephanie (44:02)

Yeah, I think a word that keeps coming up in this discussion, uncertainty. Uncertainty. And the past few years that uncertainty has led to what? I think we've seen a rise in anxiety with our students, unfortunately, especially around test taking. So do you have any tips for testing anxiety for students? And also we have so many students, despite having so many other gifts, they're just test taking is not their strength. So what strategies do you recommend for those types of students as well?

Sean Quinn (44:37)

I mean, our identity is based around this. Right. Our name is Onsen Education. And you know, when I was thinking of like a Name. We started off very generically, quinn tutoring in 2017 because they had nothing else, right. But then I was like, okay, what. How are we different? How can I think about these tests differently that I think will be effective for students? And what I looked at that I thought was being left out in my experience as a tutor at other companies and even privately was test anxiety and test nerves or stress or whatever we want to call that, because some people get, I guess, scared off the term by test anxiety, but a nervousness, right? That, you know, and the other side of knowing the content and the strategies, like being able to implement those content and strategies under the inevitable pressure of the official test day experience, when you're with your peers and you have everything that your peers and your teachers and your family and your parents and all of these things, unfortunately, have been building and building over the years, right? As everybody has more and more exposure to what everybody else is doing around them. And so what I wanted to be really proactive about working on the holistic. A holistic way of dealing with test preparation. And so onsen, I was in Japan at the time, and I love Japan. It's my favorite. Besides Argentina, my favorite place. And so onsen, for those of you that might not be familiar, is the natural hot springs of Japan. And so we implement. We started implementing what we call test day coaching, which are practical applications of mindfulness to the tutoring process to help students feel more comfortable and in control on test day. And so we talk about visualizations, breathing techniques, different kind of tools that they can use when nervousness or test anxiety or whatever form it takes does creep in on. On test day. And so, in addition to, like a verbal tutor and a math tutor, all of our students are matched with a test day coach that they meet with, and that's free and unlimited. And it's separate from their tutoring because it needs to be a separate person. And some, some, you know, generally they'll meet with students half an hour in the first couple weeks to help them make the most of their tutoring lessons, establish objectives like review at the end of each session, how do they feel about it? What. What went well? What could be better? And then they also meet with each student as official test day approaches to talk about sleep schedule, diet, you know, to maximize energy. I mean, I know, yeah, testing questions are amazing. Yeah, we have two amazing. Yeah, testing. I think so. I think it's really that, you know, side of it, working on the mindset. You know, going into test days is really important, and it can Turn a student that thought they were not a test taker, not a good test taker into one. And. And so that. To answer your other part of your question, Stephanie, you know, when. When a student or a parent says, my, my kid is not a test taker, I really want to, like, kind of push back on that narrative a little bit, because there are some students, of course, that just, you know, they're standardized testing for a variety of reasons, will never line up with their grades in school and their demonstrated performance in school. Right. But for most students that I've seen that have told me they're not a test taker, they're not. When we push back on that, we see, like, well, what do you mean by that? Like, did you have a bad experience? Did you go in unprepared, maybe? And that often is the case. Or they're students that procrastinate, and, you know, they've got into a habit. They've built some bad habits over time that has set them up for a tough time at having success on. On standardized tests. But if we kind of really dig into that and see, like, what is this? Why are you specifically saying that we can work to help them in that way? And for most students, we have been able to. To empower them. And, you know, test taking is a skill you can learn and prepare for and put hard work in and get better at, like, any other skill. And we really help to try to dig in. I think that's really, really important for each individual student to see what's going on.

Lisa (49:14)

Okay.

Abby (49:15)

That is my big takeaway from this, because I. When someone has test anxiety, I certainly empathize. I mean, and I feel for them, and I try to comfort them, you know, and say, oh, it's one day of your life that it doesn't reflect all the hard work you've put into school.

Sean Quinn (49:30)

School.

Abby (49:30)

And I. But honestly, it never occurred to me to tell them that maybe they need to shift their mindset and give it a shot. I mean, I do anyway, because we have to. We have to say, look, you have to prepare for this test because you're applying to college, so we don't have a choice. I like the way you frame that. I'm gonna listen to the recording and feel that I want to steal that with my test. Anxious kids. I think that makes so much sense. Okay. In terms of mistakes that students make when approaching the test. So you've said, you know, they'll. They'll do their homework, they'll prepare in their hoodie, in bed, be Too comfortable.

Sean Quinn (50:07)

Yeah.

Abby (50:08)

They then you gave all this good advice about taking the test day very seriously and modifying their behavior to set themselves up for success. So that's pretty awesome. So any. And then maybe assuming they're a bad test taker is a mistake. But are there any other mistakes that you see kids making that our families should watch out for?

Sean Quinn (50:30)

There are several and I'll try to go through them briefly because I think one is trying to do everything too fast. A lot of parents come in, they're like, oh, we have the summer two weeks open and we want to just fit in everything in two weeks and get sat done August 23rd and then it'll be done and then they're finished.

Lisa (50:53)

And also write their essays during that time as well. Right? During that time as well.

Sean Quinn (50:58)

For that two week time, I've had very limited success or I've seen students have very limited success with that model, which is the intensive. I think it's always a little bit at a time because there's a limit to how much we can learn in a given day or a given week. And it's adds pressure to an already pressure infused system. Right. And, and puts way more pressure on that student than needs to be. So I would spread it out, spread it out. The other thing is, you know, not doing the outside work and expecting everything to happen in the tutoring sessions. You know, like, I'm so busy, we're all busy. Right. And so I need to have everything happen with my tutor live because of all of these other extracurricular activities and the homework that I have to do. And, and it's just really, it's not worth the investment if you're not going to do the one to one homework to lesson time because you need to do the outside work, not including as part of the weekly homework time, a review of your notes that you've been working on. I think a lot of students will do one or the other. They'll just read their notes and think that's doing homework or they'll do some practice sessions. But I think the best way to maximize your homework time is to read your notes before doing a practice section. Like go, go through your notes, highlight anything that maybe, oh, it's been like a month or two since we looked at that. I don't remember what it is. So I'll highlight that now while I'm reading it. So I know to go over that with my tutor and then dive in to the homework section while it's still fresh. Your notes and, and that's I think the best way to do homework and at a later stage, learning to categorize your own Mrs. I think is huge too. And that would be the third part of doing your homework and looking back and why did I make this mistake? You know, and there's a, there's a couple ways that I recommend doing it. Maybe the simplest way is to time yourself on that question again, you know, and give yourself a minute to do that question. If you can do it in a minute, well then it was a careless mistake. Let's say category one. You know, that means you misread something, but you really knew how to do it. And so it's a careless mistake. And then category two would be, okay, I can't solve it in that one minute. I'll go back to my notes. I remember what this is for my notes. Okay, it was a memorization issue. Category 2. Category 3 would be like, I go back to my notes, I'm going through all my notes and I still can't figure out what this is. So that's a new concept or new strategy. That's category three. And the goal is to show up with your tutoring session and say like, okay, I did this homework. I made, you know, five careless mistakes, three that I memorized, and then there's like six that I really need to go over with you. I don't, I don't do. And really have ownership over your mistakes and learn how to learn why. Learning why you're making the mistakes you make is so empowering. So those are some big ones. I would say starting too late is a, is a common one. I mean I just. Seniors that reach out to us now, you know, and they've never taken an SAT or an ACT diagnostic and they have, you know, very high goals, you know, 1450 plus. Well, that's hard to make happen in the window before early decision.

Lisa (54:21)

Those are, those are such great ideas, great tips. We always like to end with like truths and myths. But I feel like you've given a few of the, the myths and the truth. You have any more that you'd want to add about test taking?

Sean Quinn (54:34)

I guess one, one more mistake maybe would be, I think or, or you know, I, I would. Something to avoid is to consider what materials you're preparing with. You know, I think it's really important to take a diagnostic test and then your check in points. A practice test with official materials, you know, so official blue book test, you know, official acts past, past papers, past exams rather than relying on third party materials. Third party materials are great for homework. Homework and repetitions. You know, there are a lot of really good material. We, we use third party materials too for homework, but not when scores are attached. Right. So diagnostics practice tests. Please use official official material so you can get accurate reads.

Lisa (55:22)

And where can people get those official exams if they don't get it from a tutor?

Sean Quinn (55:27)

So the, the Bluebook application has all the SAT. It has seven official SAT practice tests. It also has official PSATs which are great to use as well. There's also on the College Board website, there's a question bank of over 2000 official SAT questions. And you can sort for non active questions. That's what, that's another thing your students should definitely do if they're using that College Board question bank sort so that you're not having, you're not seeing the practice test questions included because that bank does include all practice test questions and you don't, you don't want to see them before you take the official practice test.

Lisa (56:08)

Oh, I see, so you want to do the non active ones. Yeah, I've had students, I had a student who went up like almost 200 points by just re reviewing the practice bank questions. I mean, he worked with a tutor but then he just kept going over those practice bank questions and made a huge.

Sean Quinn (56:24)

There's a ton. Yeah, it's great. On the SAT side, that's a, that's another big advantage of the digital sat right now, the act side. Officially we only have the four in the new book, the 2025 red book that came out. So get that on Amazon if you're preparing for the act. Those are the four official ones. And then there are, you know, past acts you can find online as PDFs as well. And those are useful again for homework but not for practice test purposes. Other myths, let's see, some families or students will come in and take an official SAT or ACT cold as a diagnostic meaning actually go, you know, register for testing, take that and just say like, oh, that's. I just wanted to try it out cold. And I think that's like putting your student, you know, or putting yourself through just unnecessary pressure and getting a score that is not going to be, it's going to be so far from your potential. If you've never seen this test and why, why do that? And I think a lot of students still, still do that. Preparing for both tests. I think that is, you should prepare for both tests. I think that's a myth. I think you should explore in the diagnostic stage and decide and commit to one test Sometimes that decision is the wrong one. And in a couple months you might see, oh, I plateaued on this and I have to switch to the other one. And that's okay. And sometimes that's part of, part of the process realizing you have to switch tests. But I, I don't recommend actively, you know, preparing for both of them at the same time. I guess the last myth might be certain test dates are easier than others.

Lisa (58:04)

We hear that all the time. Scores all the it.

Sean Quinn (58:07)

All the time.

Lisa (58:08)

All the time. Oh, yeah. I'm not going to get as good a score. And everyone takes it in, you know.

Sean Quinn (58:13)

This month, everyone takes it in December. Yeah, no, no, that's not, I mean, that's just not accurate. It's not going to happen.

Lisa (58:21)

Right. And also the, I mean, people always ask about whether or not the October SAT will go towards early decision. We always say yes, but that's also kind of a myth that it's not gonna. That they won't be able to use that one for the.

Sean Quinn (58:37)

That they won't be able to use it. Yeah.

Lisa (58:38)

Yeah.

Sean Quinn (58:38)

Exactly.

Lisa (58:40)

Yeah. All right, awesome. Any truths, Any last minute truths?

Sean Quinn (58:45)

Colleges only care about your highest score. I think that's generally true. I mean, you know, in terms of. There's some students are like, oh, I'm gonna. You have to show all my scores to the schools. And really, that I think that's only true of now, like one university, Georgetown is the only one that still. So no, I mean, if you have a bad test day, it happens. It's not the end of the world. And most universities will never see that score. And that's okay.

Lisa (59:15)

All right, well, thank you. Thank you, Cvmers for tuning in. Thank you, Sean, for such great tips. We will have information for onsen education on our website to catch more episodes of College Bell Mentor. Make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. To learn more, visit collegeboundmentor.com until next time. You got this.