In this episode, Annie Tadros, founder and director of MyCollegePrepOnline, shares her candid perspective on the digital SAT and Enhanced ACT, explaining why she remains concerned about transparency despite consistent score accuracy. Drawing on more than two decades in test prep, Annie breaks down how released exams, real practice conditions, and careful diagnostics reveal what students truly know—and why SAT and ACT ultimately measure the same academic skills.

She details her fully individualized, one-on-one approach, starting with baseline scores and tailoring materials to each student’s strengths, weaknesses, and goals. Annie also explains how controlled, proctored practice reduces test anxiety, why frequent testing can backfire, and how personalized pacing helps students build confidence and achieve meaningful score improvements.

In this episode, Abhimanyu Sharma, founder of Pantheon Prep serving 200 students annually who started the company in 12th grade after submitting college apps, reveals his skeptical view of digital SAT's adaptive format—questioning why easier sections exist when "if they don't do well, they don't do well" and noting only two difficulty levels mean serious test-takers above 1100 never see the easier version anyway.

He discusses his "no BS" philosophy of challenging students through "the gauntlet" with pressure and rigor, sharing a dramatic success story of taking one student from 1300 to 1570 in two months with two hours daily of tutoring, only hiring coaches scoring 1570+. Abhimanyu reveals he's already planning his nine-year-old sister's college strategy focused on making her "as intelligent and as academic as possible," and identifies college admissions' biggest pain point: validating whether students actually did their claimed extracurriculars, citing "borderline fraud" of fake nonprofit presidents.

In this episode, Harley Kinberg, New York City-based tutor working with 20-30 students annually over 15+ years, reveals her initial nervousness about SAT going digital—worrying "how am I going to recreate that realism?"—and explains why she analyzes not just wrong answers but correct ones taking over two minutes, since "we need a new strategy for that question" to address timing issues.

She discusses her philosophy that standardized tests aren't intelligence problems but "performance problems" that are trainable, and shares her approach of offering free 30-minute meet-and-greets where she asks zero academic questions, just builds connection—comparing finding the right tutor to finding the right therapist. Harley explains why she won't fight students who prefer one test despite scoring better on another, believing "they will fight against the process" otherwise, and stays intentionally small rather than scaling because she's a "control freak" who prefers intimate relationships.

In this episode, Rhea Wanchoo, co-founder of M&W Education and UC Berkeley neuroscience student serving 20-30 test prep students annually, reveals her psychology-backed approach including the "serial position effect"—teaching students to read first and last sentences of passages to leverage how we remember beginnings and endings better than middles—and "sentence diagramming" exercises where students identify parts of speech despite many not even knowing what prepositions are.

She discusses her "sunflower method" for essay brainstorming where prompts are the center and ideas branch out as petals students can "pluck off," and explains yield protection—why she was waitlisted at Virginia Tech but accepted to Harvard and Berkeley, as less selective schools sometimes reject overqualified applicants they assume won't enroll. Rhea shares her "whiteout test" for scholarship essays: if you can substitute any college name, it's not specific enough.

In this episode, Dov Engelberg, founder of Mulholland Prep with over 25 years of experience serving 300-400 students annually in Los Angeles, reveals why he jokingly felt "entirely betrayed" when SAT went digital but questions the "enhanced ACT" marketing—asking "when's the last time something was enhanced by getting smaller?"—while explaining he doesn't use old paper tests for digital SAT prep unlike some tutors.

He discusses his philosophy of never advertising for students or tutors, growing organically through word-of-mouth by "being the best tutoring service you can be," and refusing to hire separate math and reading tutors because it indirectly tells students "this person can't do the other thing we expect you to do." Dov shares his sobering reality check for Ivy-obsessed parents: Stanford's sub-4% acceptance rate is of applicants already self-selected, not random students, and explains why he steers families toward free resources when they can't afford tutoring.

In this episode, Daniel Benton, Johns Hopkins student and founder of Benton Tutoring who achieved a perfect 1600 SAT score, reveals how he took one test weekly for two months then doubled to twice weekly before his exam—calling much of it "overkill" but necessary for the consistency stamina requires at that level, even running out of College Board's practice tests and resorting to "black market" questions.

He discusses why he got nationally certified by the National Tutoring Association at age 15 for confidence and learning how to teach diverse learners, and shares his diagnostic philosophy: wrong answers aren't Boolean—some students get questions "way more wrong" than others, distinguishing between misadding versus fundamental misconceptions. Daniel explains his fatalistic anxiety cure: telling stressed students "what is done is done, you have made your bed," while balancing Hopkins rigor with tutoring by rigidly blocking schedules.

In this episode, Dante Dyches-Chandler, CEO and founder of Reach Test Prep, reveals how taking the ACT six times in high school—more than anyone he's met—drove him to build a gamified mobile app that measures test-taking endurance invisibly through games like "time trials" and "break the bank," adjusting difficulty in real-time without traditional diagnostic tests.

He discusses why AI-generated questions aren't up to par despite building an AI-powered platform, explaining they use human writers while AI analyzes student behavior patterns. Dante shares surprising data learnings: engagement time predicts success better than right/wrong answers, and remote rural schools demonstrate highest need while large city schools show less incentive—proving not every school actually wants standardized test prep despite the assumption.

In this episode, Michael from Astute Academics, tutoring 100+ students annually including nonprofit outreach, reveals his brutally honest approach to college admissions—telling parents upfront he can't guarantee Ivy League admission and advising one family to choose St. Joe's over George Washington to save money and ensure their son thrived in the top 25% rather than struggling at bottom third.

He discusses why he refuses to use AI for tutoring despite personal use, explaining how it decreases critical thinking and gives false confidence to lower-performing students. Michael shares his homework negotiation framework in the post-smartphone era, where seven-hour screen time creates illusions of workload, and why he believes anyone can achieve a perfect score with enough grit—citing a student who jumped from 580 to 1150, demonstrating more value than someone improving from 1200 to 1250.

In this episode, Austin Parsons, a professional tutor with a master's degree in chemistry who "fell into tutoring and fell in love with it," shares his philosophy that the worst kind of stress comes from regret—so he front-loads preparation to help students achieve success early rather than face "I only have one more shot" panic. Tutoring 25-30 students weekly, Austin explains why he limits homework to just one hour per week during school year, believing "the best homework plan is the one that a student will actually do," and uses MentorMind to create bite-sized 30-minute test sections instead of overwhelming full-length exams.

He reveals his deeply personal approach of sharing his phone number with all students, telling them "text me if you have a question Wednesday, don't wait till next week," and discusses how he worked with an anxious student by starting with proctoring practice tests over Zoom at home, then gradually moving to coffee shops and libraries.

In this episode, Doug Poggioli, a master's degree mathematician who taught at prestigious schools in Miami and London for decades before launching Learn Locus in 2019, shares his controversial perspective on the digital SAT's short passages—believing they sacrifice the ability to assess character intent and deeper comprehension skills that longer passages reveal. Operating exclusively online since 2019, Doug explains his fundamental principle: tutoring is different from teaching because students arriving at 6:30 PM need their homework done, not 30-minute abstract theory discussions.

He reveals his "six things about rational functions" approach—getting students competent in techniques first while understanding seeps in along the way—and discusses why he tells parents upfront that strong students who rush through tests should slow down, even if it means answering fewer questions.