Protect Their College Options: What Rising Juniors Must Do Around Testing This Summer

In today’s episode, I’m sharing a recent webinar I had with testing expert Akil Bello on how rising juniors can approach standardized testing strategically. We walk through the steps families can take this summer to avoid stress later and keep more college options open. Whether you’re considering test-optional or full prep, this session will help you make a smart, informed decision. Tune in!

Akil's bio: 

Akil Bello is an educator, speaker, entrepreneur, and testing expert. Akil has worked at every level of the supplemental education industry, advising universities, launching multiple companies, developing dozens of admissions and test preparation programs, training hundreds of instructors, and helping thousands of students achieve success.

Akil Bello is an admissions testing expert with no psychometric training, a nationally recognized college admissions policy wonk with no advanced degree, and an entrepreneur of the week and 40 under 40 award winner who never attended business school. 

Akil started his career as a proctor but eventually left to launch Bell Curves, a test preparation company where he worked extensively to improve outcomes for low-income and under-represented students. After successfully selling Bell Curves, Akil worked at a leading test preparation company from 2014 to 2018, serving as the Director of Equity and Access, where his focus was on helping public schools, non-profit organizations, and community based organizations understand standardized tests and develop affordable solutions for their students. Since leaving test preparation, Akil has consulted on educational policy and access with universities, political candidates, and even participated in two documentary films, one of which is available on Amazon Prime for a mere $4.99. 

Akil recently served as Senior Director of Advocacy and Advancement at FairTest, where he works to build resources and tools to ensure that large scale assessment and evaluation tools are used responsibly and transparently. Currently, he is the Director of College Access and FAFSA Advising at SUNY. 

Akil attended the most illustrious HBCU, Atlanta A&T University, and currently resides in New York City with his beautiful wife, two amazing sons, and his internet daughter Enid-Michelle.

 Follow Akil at https://www.linkedin.com/in/akil-bello/

Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Transcript

Sheila Akbar: 0:00

What's one myth about test optional admissions you wish more people understood?

Akil Bello: 0:04

That it doesn't mean testing doesn't matter. It means they've put the decision on the student to decide whether testing shows their strengths.

Sheila Akbar: 0:29

Hi folks, welcome back to the podcast. It is officially summer. We are here at the beginning of July, and in today's episode, I want to share a talk that I gave with my good friend Akil Bello, who is sort of the jack of all trades when it comes to testing. He's been a tutor, he's worked at testing companies. He's had his own testing company, and he's done a lot of really important advocacy work, both with fair test in, you know, various other capacities. So I really was so happy that he was able to join me to talk about standardized testing for rising juniors, and as we both discuss in this interview, how families can do the least, without stressing their kid out too much, but still putting, you know, planting those important seeds, getting the information that you need that will make the testing journey a lot easier, that will actually inform your college admissions journey quite a bit. And you know, one of the possibilities is that you don't need to test, but you need to get some information both about the students abilities on the test, and comfort level with the tests and the colleges that you're thinking about what their policies are and what the data of admitted students there is as well, so that you can make a smart plan that works for your family, works for your student, and the things that might come up during The very busy and pressure filled junior year. So I hope you find this really helpful. I will come back afterwards to say this at the end, but we're gonna go on our normal summer hiatus after this episode. This feels like a really great one to leave you with, and we will be back in August with some great new things to share. All right, take a listen. We're here to talk about what sophomores must do around testing this summer, Akil and I were just chatting, and basically I want you all to leave here with knowing what is the least you can do around test prep, because we know your kids probably don't want to do anything. So we want to keep this simple and keep this as like low effort as possible, but we want you to be prepared. And I'm joined today by a good friend, Akil Bello, I am not going to try to introduce you, Akil, because you have held so many positions and had your hands in so many different things. Would you do us the favor of introducing yourself?

Akil Bello: 2:56

Sure. Hi everybody. Akil Bello. Let me give the simple introduction. I ran a test prep company for 11 years. I worked in test preparation. I've taught every test that you've probably ever heard of that doesn't require real knowledge, so no MCAT, but all the other things I worked in and around college admissions and policy for the last five or so years, I just left a full time role at fair test, which is the National Center for fairness, being testing, the organization that's best known for maintaining the test optional college list, and I've managed that database, so I've done a lot with preparing people for the test, arguing and working around policies around Testing and proper test use. That's the short answer.

Sheila Akbar: 3:43

That's a it's a great encapsulation. I will say everyone should follow Akil on LinkedIn. You're just you've got your finger on the pulse, and everything that you surface, especially your readings of articles about issues that are happening in education or, you know, related to testing or college admission, I think are so insightful and so helpful. So I thank you for all the work that you do, all the arguing that you do. I really see it as advocacy for for families and students, and I think you're doing a great job, and we're so lucky to have you with us today. So thank you. My pleasure. Yeah, so I'm going to, as I said, give us a little grounding. You know, as I mentioned, we're talking about what sophomores must do around testing this summer. And by sophomores, I do mean rising juniors, right? They just finished their sophomore year. I'm sure they're all on some level of like, burnt out and don't want to think about school anymore. But there are a few things that I think are important for you guys to be able to get done this summer, so that you're prepared for their college processes as that starts looming. Hopefully it's not looming too large just yet. So what I see from families is this sort of spectrum. This is what I'm hearing especially this year. We've got people who. You know, maybe it's not exactly a head in the sand, but they are really trying not to think about this, either because parents don't want to deal with the stress, or maybe the cost of test prep, the uncertainty around, you know, the testing landscape right now, or because they know if they bring it up to their kid, their kid is going to bite their head off because their kid is just done with school, wants a break. It's summertime. Please don't talk to me about anything related to school. On the other end of the spectrum, I have families who want to do the most. They've been asking me about test prep since their test prep for the SAT or the ACT since their kid was in eighth grade. What can we do to get ready? When should we take our first practice test? Can we just get it out of the way in ninth grade, or they are already looking at, you know, five, six hours of prep a day with homework and practice tests every week, and they're going full steam ahead without really any kind of perspective or strategic plan. But what I want us to do today is get centered and try to be strategic here. Right? We don't have to do everything, but we shouldn't do nothing, right? There's a little bit of data and a little bit of planning that I would love for you to gather so that you at least can put a plan in place. It doesn't mean you have to prep, it doesn't mean you have to test it. Doesn't mean you have to submit the score, right? But we have a plan so we know what we're doing and when we're doing it, and we know that that plan aligns with the kind of college goals that you and your child might have, right? Probably just starting to to discuss those college goals, so it can be a little tenuous, I understand, and then the other piece of grounding I want to give us, before I start asking Akil all the hard questions, is giving you a little bit of background on SAT versus ACT. So we've had many changes, more changes, I would say, to the SAT than to the ACT, over the last, let's say, 20 years. But just within the last year or two, we've had some really significant changes. So these tests may not be in the form that you took when you were applying to college, if you went to college in the United States, or even if you have an older child who recently went through this process, these tests likely look different from when they were preparing for them. So it's helpful, I think, just to understand what we're looking at here. So we have the SAT and we have the ACT and really, every four year, college in the United States will accept either of them without bias. Now there's still some regional preferences we see, not from the college, but from the test takers themselves, right? So, and this is just, you know, market share and relationships that these two companies have had with, you know, school districts and states and other sort of institutions that, you know, give them a foothold in one area or the other. For example, the ACT started in Iowa in the Midwest. So when I grew up in Michigan, the ACT was the test we took, not the SAT, but if you grew up on one of the coasts, you probably heard more about the SAT. Now, that doesn't mean colleges in those areas prefer one or the other, but I know you're hearing, oh, you really have to take the SAT if you're from this state or something like that, but it's just not the case. And because you have a choice of these two different formats, which I'll go through in a second, it really is in your child's best interest to figure out which tests they like better, which tests they can do better on, which one it's going to be easier for them to improve their score on. And you know, big picture, which one of these is going to give them a score that's actually going to help with their college application? Because there's really no point in doing this if it's not helping with your college application, right? So very briefly, the SAT is now a digital test. It's taken on a computer. It's about two and a half hours long. It is adaptive. So there are four sections, two verbal sections that are really evidence based reading and writing. It's very long, long section title, so I shorten it to verbal and two math sections, and basically how your child does on the first of those sections will determine how hard or easy the second of those sections are, and that's how they sort of home in on the score range for your child. Reading Comprehension is not a long passage with 10 questions the way you know, you're probably used to now. They're these short texts. They're about three or four sentences long. Some are quite dense and hard to understand, but they'll have one question per text, and the SAT has maintained its sort of tricky vibes. There are traps in the answer choices. There are clever wordings. You know, most of the math problems do have kind of an extensive setup. So a lot of people think of the SAT more like a brain teasery kind of test. You do get more time per question, likely because of that sort of trickiness that's built in, and the test is scored out of 1600 now, on the ACT side, we just have this change. They're actually mid change right now. They introduced a. Digital ACT in April. And right now we have two very different formats. You could take the paper or the digital. But come September, which is probably the first time you know any of you in the audience, your kids would be looking at it, they will have an option to take paper or digital. It's a single format, two hours and 40 minutes. If they take the science section. It is not adaptive, so every student is going to see the same questions. They've got English, reading math and an optional science section. And slowly, colleges are starting to release their policies about whether they're going to require the science section or not if they take the ACT my recommendation is, as you start you're going to take a practice test. Take it with science. You never know how your students gonna do, right? So get some data before you decide not to do that thing. The questions on the ACT tend to be very straightforward. You get a little less time per question, and it is scored out of 36 what I want you to know is that there are differences, and because of the timing, the way the questions are written. The you know, how many answer choices you have if you've got a long passage, which is what the ACT has, or a short text for reading, your child may just do better on one or prefer one or the other, right? So we really want to figure that out, and we'll talk about how to do that a little bit later. I'm going to go to Akil because one of the choices we have is SAT or ACT, but actually a choice, maybe even before that choice is to test or not to test, right? We've had the test optional policies in in place since the 80s. They've gotten a lot more popular, and then, certainly with COVID, virtually every school went test optional, and in the five years since COVID, we've had some schools go back to requiring tests. Many stay test optional, and some even going test free. So my question to you is, do these tests still matter, and if they do, for whom?

Akil Bello: 12:01

So that's an interesting question. So I guess the matter is sort of irrelevant to me. I think the only question parents should ask is, can I make this useful? Like that's the only thing that the test is. Only value is, does it help you accomplish something you want to accomplish, right? It doesn't say how well you did in school. It doesn't say any of the crap that they lied to us about when we were kids, intelligence, college, ready? Fit all that nonsense. It's all BS. The only thing is, Can I squeeze out of taking this test some advantage? Will somebody give me money for a score? Will a school say yes rather than No? If I can squeeze some advantage out of the test, then you should probably do it now. The complication is, sophomores have no clue where they're going to apply, so So at this early juncture, the safest route is to find out, am I good at this test and have a hope of squeezing value out of it. And I think where the value comes in, the number is hard to pin down, but if you forced me to give a number, I'd say 1200 there are lots of scholarships. There are lots of things where 12 and up, you start getting value out of it. So if my student is historically for whatever reason, they took a SAT every year, eighth ninth grade, they're going to 10th grade. They took one in 10th grade too. Every year it's been an 800 it's a monstrous lift to get to the 12 to squeeze value out of the tests. That's a situation where I'm thinking, maybe not. But for most kids

Sheila Akbar: 13:47

To interrupt you for a second here, when you say 1200, you mean a 1200 on the SAT, which is sort of a 25 on the ACT?

Akil Bello: 13:55

Correct. So I mean a 1200 which probably is about the 60th percentile nationally, something like that, maybe 70th percentile nationally, right? The average score for the SAT is about a 1050 the average score for the ACT is about a 20, right? So if you're above average starting point, there's a good chance with some prep, you'll be able to squeeze value out of it. So that, to me, is the question. So there's, there's, it matters if you could squeeze value out of it.

Sheila Akbar: 14:23

Yeah, that's a really helpful heuristic here. And I'll add to maybe there's a scholarship, maybe it helps you get in. There are many schools that will use an SAT or an ACT score. I know this happens a lot with the ACT as kind of a placement rubric, right? If you get above a 19 on the ACT, then you know you don't have to take the remedial remedial math when you get to college or whatever, right? So these are, these are all things that you could consider. And again, going back to where you started, sophomores have no idea, usually, where they want to go to college, so you don't know yet what policy. You should check, or what you know the possibilities really are, it is a little bit of a chicken or an egg. Should we build our college list first, or should we do some testing first?

Akil Bello: 15:08

I mean, I think just because of timing, you can actually do both right. Like I would have I would with my 10th grader, like, throw out some schools, and I just want the first three schools that come to mind, because then, like, it doesn't matter whether you actually apply to them, and at least gives you a place to start. Right? Florida and Georgia are pretty easy. If you're in those states, the publics require testing, so do it right? Because you know if I'm gonna, like, because if you live in a state, you should apply to the public's in your state that's going to be the cheapest college for you, probably across the board, almost all the time, right? So, so things like that can help answer some of those questions. A generic answer is everybody should start prepping and then decide what next. And yeah, and what start prepping means, could be as simple as just the practice test,

Sheila Akbar: 16:01

Right. Right. Okay, so we're gonna come back to this, because I do have a slide on this, but I think I agree with you. But before we get there, when should we start prepping? When? When is the right time? I mean, I think it's after sophomore year, which is why I titled this, what sophomores, meaning, our rising juniors, must do this summer. But what do you what do you think? What do you think is a smart time to really start thinking about all of this?

Akil Bello: 16:23

Yeah, I think the summer after sophomore year is a good time because you've likely done, especially if you're in private school, most of the math that's on the test you've been exposed to it in some way, shape or form. Summer's a great time to spend four hours on a practice test, because you don't have school competing with it, right? So it's a great time to get a baseline score and decide on plans. If your kid scores a 700 on the SAT right now, you still have time to go, Oh, my God, we need to prep forever because we're trying to go to x College, which requires it. Or you have time to go. I'm not going to invest that much time and money in the SAT. We're just going test optional. So I think it gives you a lot of opportunity to plan ahead.

Sheila Akbar: 17:12

Yeah, that's exactly my thinking about this, too. I'll also add there are a lot of students. I mean, I think this is true for probably virtually every student junior year is the hardest, right? You're taking a ton of advanced classes, maybe you have some leadership in your extracurriculars, whatever it is, kids are just stretched thinner than ever in their junior year. So we do have a lot of students who do this planning in June or very early July. They figure out what they want to do for the testing, and then they start using the summer to prep

Akil Bello: 17:42

Better example. I got the best example ever. Okay, I know one student who started the plan was to take the December sat, and then they got into the school play, and so the hours they plan to dedicated preparing for the December sat didn't happen. So it became March. There's two plays during the year. They were part of both. So the March test didn't happen. Then it got kicked to June, right? So the March test they took, it with a little bit of prep. June test they took with a little bit of prep, because it's the year end, right? So it happens. And just to give you a full context, that child was mine. So it's really easy to run out of time doing this now, part of the reason I let it happen was because that's why I got it. I was like, that's why I got in his head to start for December, so that when things go wrong, we still are fine, right? And that's one of the reasons you start early.

Sheila Akbar: 18:46

Right. Yeah, because when we start getting into spring of junior year, summer after junior year, things get really crazy with college essays and all the other things that you need to get done. And having the score if you're going to use one can be really helpful in finalizing your college list. So you really kind of need to know both things at the same time. Yeah, okay, let's go back to what does start prepping mean you were saying it could just mean take practice tests. Do you want to say more about that?

Akil Bello: 19:15

So I think the earlier after 10th grade, there is a score to discuss. The better it is. It's really hard to talk about college if I don't know a if the student's going to test or be if they're working with a 1200 they're trying to improve. Or 1400 they're trying to improve, or an 800 they're trying to improve, right? Those are entirely different college college conversations, and it may not even be a different college list, but it's absolutely a different conversation. So the earlier you start with this is where my score is, right now, then the easier it is for Sheila me your high school. Counselor. Anybody to say, great. This is where that score puts you in this pool. We may not want to send the score there. We want to send the score there. If you're looking at the at West Point, you have to work your butt off, because they require a test, and this is the number they need, right? So the more you have that context, the easier it is to have these conversations. So for me, that initial thing, the most important thing, is a realistic test score, whether it's practice more often, like I want practice, I don't think anybody should pay 50 bucks to just find out, right? There are plenty good practice tests available. You do a quick practice test, you get a score. You can have a lot of conversations about, what next once you have that first score?

Sheila Akbar: 20:41

Yeah. I agree completely. Yeah. And there are official practice tests made by both test makers that you can you can use, you can get right off their website, and it does a lot, right? In addition to giving you the information for having the discussions about all this other stuff, it also gives the student a real experience, right? I get a lot of students who are like, determined that they're only going to look at the SAT and never the ACT but when I get them to do the practice test, they're like, Oh, actually, I kind of liked that test, you know, or it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The science section was so much easier than it, you know, seemed it was looming large in my mind. So it gives them some experience of that. It also helps us pinpoint exactly what we need to do, right? If they're running out of time, if they're facing a lot of test anxiety, if they've forgotten all of ninth grade geometry, we have a list of, okay, this is what we need to do to get ready, not just a goal score, we can actually make the plan of how to get there. So what I want to show you now, it's just these are the three things that I think are the least you should do this summer around testing, right? Take an SAT and an act diagnostic. I mean, most people in the test prep industry will call it a diagnostic, but it's really just a practice test that we can use to diagnose, you know, the challenges that may be standing in their way of a higher score. And from that, you know, a good test prep person could also tell you, I think with three or four months of practice, they could be at this score, right? Or this score is probably not going to move very much. Or you need 910, months of something, and then you can decide, do we really want to do it? And steps one and two here, this is the chicken and egg that I was talking about. You could really do these at the same time, maybe it's parents are doing the research, not the kids, but the kid definitely has to the practice test. But then you really want to look at the policies and the data for the schools that you're considering, even if it's not like a really thoroughly thought out college list, you know, like Akil said, Give me the first three ones that you're thinking about. Let's just start somewhere and see what the policies are. And I do want to note the policy wording can be a little confusing, and it does create kind of a little bit of a lack of trust, right? Some of them will say test optional. Some of them will say test required or test free, which are both very clear. We know what those mean. It's the ones that say test recommended or test preferred, or if you're applying to this particular major in this particular unit of the college, then you need this. It's required. But if you're applying to some other major, it's not required. It can get a little hairy, right? So look at the college admissions website, the actual colleges website, not some third party aggregator, because sometimes those don't get updated quite as often. And I'll show you an example of that in just a second. And then you can also look at data of the students who enrolled, if they submitted a test score. You can see the distribution of those scores so you can understand, of course, not with complete clarity, but you can understand the types of scores that get in right to these colleges. And now, of course, you don't know if the family was a big donor, or if you know they were an athlete, or whatever. You don't know the rest of the context of the application. And certainly, a college application is evaluated on much more than just testing alone. The essays, the extracurriculars, the grades matter more than anything, but it does give you a sense of, hey, this would be a reasonable score to submit, right? And I would think it would help me, or this score is not even on the distribution chart, I probably shouldn't submit it. And then the third step is to develop your testing plan, right? So you get data from the student, you get data from the college. And then you look at them together, and you try to figure out, okay, if these are the kind of colleges we want to go for, what are we going to have to do around testing? Or if we don't want to do this around testing, how should I change my college list so that it is more reasonable, right? Do I have to switch to all test optional or, you know, whatever it is. And then I really encourage you to have a backup plan, especially if you are looking at some of these colleges. Now, I don't like to use, like, hierarchical terminology, but you all know what I'm talking about when I say, you know, top colleges. And I'm using my air quotes here, you know, the really highly selective, actually, Akil coined a term that now everybody uses is highly reject. Selective colleges, because when you think about it, like 97% of applicants don't get in. And that's, you know, very sobering. But if you're looking at some of those schools, are you looking at, you know, kind of the next tier of selective colleges, which are still extremely selective, but they're not, you know, Harvard and Stanford, some of them are reconsidering whether they want to change their temporary test optional plan that's been in place since COVID to a permanent test required, or test free or test optional plan, right? And so we, I expected, actually, I don't know about you, Akil, I expected more changes this year, but we really only had two schools come back, but Ohio State and University of Miami coming back and requiring the test, I thought there would be, I thought there would be more, but they didn't really announce that until the spring, and it was going in place for that year's juniors. So if you know, there were students, I actually had one of these students who was really considering University of Miami, and she is just not a tester. We tried it. It was not going to go well, we stopped. And then she had to take Miami off of her list, and it was a little bit heartbreaking. So you do want a backup plan based on this. But like I said, you don't have to start the prep. You don't have to start testing, if it makes sense for your student. Of course, go ahead and do it, but this is the information that I really want you to put together by the end of the summer. And I want to show you some of this data because, as Akil was saying, actually maybe I'll not show you this data yet, but Akil, I would love for you to say a little bit more about this. Everybody should probably start with a practice test and do some prep and see where it's going. But does that mean everybody should test?

Akil Bello: 26:46

So there are three things that I think everybody should do, some kind of find out what you think you will get at the end of the day. That's what I want to practice test for. If you most students, no matter what kind of prep they do in a reasonable amount of time, is not going to jump 202,000 points, right? No one's going to jump a ton of points. A normal improvement. 200 300 400 starts to become crazy. We'll put it on the websites. Every test prep company will brag about it. This is not normal. So if we think of normal improvement over three months or so as 150 200 points, then I need to know if my student is starting with a 700 in which case I need to do extraordinary work to get them to a reasonable helpful score, or if they started at 1200 where I can do ordinary work to get them to a helpful score. So the first thing we need to know is where we're starting, so we have some sense of where they might end up, because then I can start to plan the college list, and that might change my visits. It just gives me so much more many options. So there's three things you want to do, right? Like, ultimately, for me, the testing comes down to three questions, should I prep? And I think everybody's answer to that should be Yes, right? Should you take the test? The answer is probably most kids should probably take the test, unless you have a lot of data that says you're not going to get what you want, right? And that's going to take a lot of information to tell me that I have no shot at what I want, all right? And then the last question only has to be answered in the fall of senior year. Should I send the scores? So it makes sense to have a score and not send it right if that's strategically the best move. But if you don't have a score, you can't make that decision. So it's in the best interest of everyone to get a practice score early and take the test and then wait until the list is final to decide what to do with those scores.

Sheila Akbar: 28:45

Yeah, I'll maybe complicate it a little bit. I think there are some students who shouldn't test there. There are some students where this will just be such a distraction and stress inducing situation that their grades might tank, or they have to completely withdraw from, you know, a sport that they really love that brings a lot of meaning into their life, or, you know, some other sort of extracurricular. If we can see that the opportunity cost of where you're starting to where you need to go is going to damage the student's mental health or the rest of their application profile, and by which I really mean the grades, because those matter much more than test scores, then I'm going to say, don't even bother. Let's not even do this, right? But I can't say that without the practice

Akil Bello: 29:26

score. I'm fully on board with people. If I had my druthers, no one would test. Yeah, the test gives so little meaningful information, right? That I just think we spend weight like we have a whole hour here just on freaking testing. No one should have to sit through that. It's just not that meaningful. So finding out as soon as possible lets us sort of answer questions as much as you can. One question that's in the chat that I think is interesting to address right now is disadvantage. So one of the rumors that folks circulated. Is, you know, it's been circulated as a rumor a lot around whether test optional is real, this and that, because a lot of people want to believe college admissions is formulaic, and it's not. So even a place that is test optional may find value in the test from those who send it right. That doesn't mean those who don't send it are disadvantaged, just like students aren't disadvantaged for not sending AP scores right, or not having IB test right, colleges will generally look at the information that's sent. Now I'll also put a caveat on anything there's an asterisk next to anything I ever say that has the word colleges, because the difference between Hunter and Harvard's behavior is vast, right? Hunter is CUNY city, University of New York. It's an amazing institution, but their behavior is very different than Harvard. Harvard is doing all they can to attract people from all over the world and have low admit rates and all these other things. Harvard like, if you live in New York, we want you here, and eventually we're going to run out of space and say no, right? So, like, their behavior around admissions is really different. So anything that's college, you have to take with a grain of salt. That's one of the reasons that the CDS, which you're going to show them, is amazing. It's also the reason that on fair test lists, I started adding the percentage of students who are admitted without scores, so that you can gain some context for how much does this school care about scores, right I'm looking at one right now that has 1% of students admitted without scores, they're not test optional, right? I don't care what. I'm sorry this isn't actually admitted. What, what, what IPEDS publishes, is enrolled without scores. So I don't even know how different the numbers are for admitted versus enrolled, but 1% enrolled without scores tells me a lot, right? And I don't it just randomly was on my screen behind the video. So now I want to go look up the school and find out. Like that just doesn't seem like they should even be calling themselves. Test optional, yeah, but I have to double check that policy now.

Sheila Akbar: 32:16

Yeah. Well, while you're doing that, I'm gonna share my screen. So Akil and I have both mentioned the CDS, and what that is, is the common data set, which is a questionnaire, essentially that every school that takes federal funding must submit on a yearly basis. They usually submit it in the fall. So I pulled some information from the University of Michigan's most recent common data set. Now they call it the 2425 common data set, but it was reported in October of 2024 so it means it's about the freshmen who started that fall, fall of 2024 right? They applied the cycle before their official test. Policy is now recommended, right? It's technically optional, but recommended. But if you look at the percent enrolled who submitted scores, the number that Akil was just talking about, that doesn't add up to 100% right? We have, what about 20% 21% who are not submitting scores, and they got in and they decided to go to University of Michigan, right? So this kind of really specific information can be very, very helpful and very grounding, right? It's not exactly going to tell you what exactly to do, but it's something to compare your students data to to understand, should we submit? Should we not? And I'll show you, this is all from a single page. It's section c8 of the common data set, and then this stuff is from c9 clearly, we look at this, this report a lot, they are giving the 25th 50th and 75th percentile for SAT. And they break that down into the verbal and the math, and then the ACT right? And now I'm sure a lot of people are like, Oh, if you want to go to University of Michigan, you need a 1500 but you know, actually the middle 50% is between 1360 and 1530 right? And there were people who got in who had lower than a 1360 now we don't know what other extraordinary things were in their application, but as far as the test score goes, that didn't take them out of the running. And they they further break it down to give you the score range distribution, right? There was 1% of students enrolled who were somewhere down here, you could guess, probably something special was happening. And then, you know, with the a c t ranges, you see most of the students who submitted a c t scores were were in this higher range. And I've got a third slide here that breaks it down even further, between the verbal and the math on the SAT, and they just are giving us English and math on the ACT. I'm not exactly sure why they're not reporting reading and science here, but for whatever reason, they decided not to report that. Now, every college doesn't provide all of this information, but most of them do. Harvard doesn't give you a really great breakdown. They don't like sharing a lot of data, but lots of other colleges. Do. So I encourage you to just Google common data set and the name of the college, and you will find this report and a history of these reports that they that they do every year. And a lot of people will say, look at 2020, numbers, because that was before everything went test optional. And when everything went test optional, we actually saw test scores that were being submitted go up because only strong testers were submitting their scores, everybody else just held on to them, right if they even had a score. So the last thing I want to show you on the college data is actually a screenshot from the Yale testing policy page. And Yale was one of those schools that, two years ago, went back to requiring a test, and when they did that, they actually recorded a whole podcast explaining why, and they put on all these things, these press releases, and then they put this testing page together with a lot of context, right? They're giving us the middle 80% of ACT and SAT scores, not the middle 50% which is what was reported on the CDS. And they are looking at Fall 2020, data, right? So they are telling us, if you fall within this range, you should probably submit your score, right? And then they're giving us some, you know, reassurance that, you know, it's not a floor and it's not a requirement, it's not a ceiling. But this is a representative picture, right? And I do really wish more colleges gave this kind of contextual information. It doesn't seem like they're moving in that direction, though. I know Akil and I are making a lot of noise about it, but I want you to know that this is the kind of information that you can rely on and look at to see well, what do we really need for a particular school? Anything you would add here Akil?

Akil Bello: 36:40

Is Yale, the school that is flexible.

Sheila Akbar: 36:46

They do have a flexible policy. Yeah, do you want to explain what that

Akil Bello: 36:49

No, because it's stupid. Okay, so essentially, they're just two policies. There are three policies, required, optional and test free. There's one or two colleges that decided to craft out their own terms and just be weird and flexible. Is kind of one of them. It's sort of a zombie term. NYU was flexible pre COVID, where basically they said, Send us, kind of any test from anywhere in the world. That was that's really like, there's a broad list of, like, 30 tests you could send. Yale came back and review, and then NYU went test optional, so almost so I think for a couple of years, no school was test flexible, and Yale came back and said that they were test flexible. But their policy, I think, is it's just ACT, AP and I and IB, yeah, but as far as I can tell, it's almost impossible to meet their requirements with AP and IB, unless you've been planning since like, eighth grade, yeah. So like, since, like, it's not a real policy, right? It's like me saying I'm willing to date Martians. Absolutely will. I think they're beautiful people. If I ever meet one, I will certainly cater her.

Sheila Akbar: 38:06

Well, yeah. And I'll also point out that Oxford and Cambridge also require a great deal of testing, but it's testing that you have to prepare for before you even start thinking about the ACT and the SAT. So if you are considering a school like that, or you want to take advantage of a flexible policy, gosh, please look at those immediately and understand what you might have to undertake in order to meet their requirements for testing.

Akil Bello: 38:33

Just the timing of it is weird. I would also never, I am never talking about any college outside of the United States, I never pay attention to them. It's enough to keep track of the US. It's hard to acknowledge

Sheila Akbar: 38:47

I know I'll tell you, with everything that's happening here, we are getting a lot more interest in Canada and the UK and even Germany and Australia. People are looking at a lot of places. So I try to keep my eyes on what's happening in testing on all of those places. All right, I stopped my share again. Akil, what do you think is going to happen in the next five years with standardized testing change?

Akil Bello: 39:10

I think that's what's going to happen. The only constant college admissions, I think what parents should keep in mind is we America is a weird place. We pretend we have systems that we don't. We don't even have a universal K 12 system. Every school system does their own thing. Every college does their own thing. There are no universal requirements for going to college, like you could even go to college without having going to high school. So everything in the US is sort of vague. And then you get to the point of college admissions, and people seek standardization, as if every college is going to like nothing was the same grade 12. Nothing is the same in higher ed. But at the point to transfer from one to the other, everybody should be looking at the same. Requirements in the same way, right? That's just not how this works. Thing, and colleges are always changing and updating their policies and things of that nature. So what I expect to happen is some colleges will change their policies. Some will be optional. Some will remain optional. Some will make it permanent. I don't think we'll ever go back to less than 75% of colleges requiring or being test optional. I think the vast majority of colleges will remain test optional, because what they found out is nothing really changed. Students still graduated roughly the same rates. Students still applied at roughly the same rates, if not higher. So they're not going to go back. The big danger is, every time a brand name school sneezes, The New York Times takes out a full point, a full page ad right? Dartmouth went back to requiring the test. They ran seven different articles Michigan. Emory Duke, all of them extended their policies, and New York Times made not a single peep about it, right? So as a parent, you have to be careful to not get inundated in the noise that often comes from the people who make money around college admissions and the New York Times of those sort of places that love to obsess about Columbia and Harvard and the Ivy pluses of the world,

Sheila Akbar: 41:23

right, right? We call that the high school Whirlpool, but that's sort of on the national stage, and there's a local version of that too, of keeping up with your neighbors and so and so did this or so and so said, we all have to take the SAT, but that's why I like to kind of take this data driven approach of like, where's your kids starting? Where might they end up? Where do they want to go? And how do those two things align? Akil, I thought we could do a little lightning round. All right, give me your best kind of one sentence answers. What's your best advice for a student feeling overwhelmed by just the idea of standardized testing?

Akil Bello: 41:58

Cut it down to the least you can do.

Sheila Akbar: 42:01

That's great. That's great. All right, and then what's one myth about test optional admissions? You wish more people understood

Akil Bello: 42:09

That it doesn't mean testing doesn't matter. It means they've put the decision on the student to decide whether testing shows their strengths.

Sheila Akbar: 42:20

That is a really great reframing. That's really great. Okay, I'm so glad we're asking these lightning round questions. All right, my last one is, what do you think the most underrated skill is that helps with standardized testing?

Akil Bello: 42:32

Being a smart ass.

Sheila Akbar: 42:36

I think my teachers would probably say the same thing to me. Okay, great.

Akil Bello: 42:42

You know there's one here that I'll answer briefly. Oh, go ahead, please. Is it good idea to prep before a diagnostic test? I don't care. I don't vote on it. If the kids want to prep before the test. Great, lovely. If they don't, then I don't like parents. That's not a fight to fight. Yes, get them to take the test whatever they want to do beforehand. That's not where you expend your your parent cred of I told you, so now the diagnostic says, As long as they take it reasonably, you're good.

Sheila Akbar: 43:09

Yeah. And you know, the context of that question, I think, is the parent is maybe worried that the student wouldn't get a great score just taking it blind and that might harm their morale. I do a lot of work to make sure students know this is just, we're taking a temperature. It doesn't mean this is we're gonna where you're gonna end up. I mean, 99% of all cases, you are going to improve by, you know, 150 to 200 points, or two to five points on the ACT. So, you know, really contextualizing, what is this exercise and what are we trying to get out of it? I think is, is a more helpful thing than getting them to prep fighting that battle, as Akil said, you you don't have a lot of goodwill to spend. Okay, thank you for answering that other question in the chat. Okay, so I do believe everyone can improve. It just may take, you know, some people longer or different methods to actually improve. But as we discussed, not everybody should test the diagnostics, the college data, and then the analysis and strategy will help you decide. Now, every test prep organization will do this sort of analysis, even the practice testing for free. We do it at Signet, but the thing I want you to remember is they should not be giving you the hard sell. There are a lot of test prep companies out there who get you to do the test. Say we won't give you your scores until you talk to us, and then they tell you you need 40 hours of prep, or you need 200 hours of prep, or whatever it is. Right now, I want you to realize they've got you on the back foot, because maybe the score is not so great. Your kid was really stressed out, and you, of course, want to help them have the best chances and make this easier for them. But you know, trust people who will tell you actually you don't need to do this, or this is how I decide, do you need to do this, or you don't need to do this, not some magic information that they're pulling from. It should be transparent where their recommendation is coming from. And of course, that's where you're going to get from us at Signet, and you're going to get Straight talk from Akil too, if he wants to talk to. You. But I want to also let you know that, as I mentioned the beginning, we do a lot of things at Signet. We do executive function coaching, we do admissions, so we're always thinking about those things as we're working through the content of the test, the strategies for the test, the performance prep, which is like, how do you deal with the pressure, and how do you, you know, pay attention to detail when you're so tired, and how do you build your endurance? And all of these things. But we are really looking at executive function skills, because they can be extremely helpful. If we can strengthen them. They can be really helpful in the testing. And then, of course, they're going to be helpful in daily life as well. And then we keep the admissions context here. Like, I'm going to tell you if you're aiming for this school, and this is where you're starting. This is probably not worth your time, like, either change the school or it be prepared to work really hard in your testing. And you know, you can decide if you want to do that, if you want to do it, we'll do it with you, but we are always going to give you that perspective. And of course, all of our work is one on one. It's really built on strong mentoring relationships, and all of our wonderful tutors are just these amazing role models, and we find that students actually enjoy their sessions. It's not like they're dragging their feet because they're really enjoying what they're learning and the confidence that they're building in their own abilities. Okay, having said that, we will go to Q and A, I'm going to pull up my chat window so I can see your questions. Let's start with one of these later ones. If a child goes to community college and wants to transfer into a highly rejected do they need to do the SAT or the ACT typically, Amy, you're going to have to look at the policies of the transfer policies for the colleges that they are targeting. So you kind of have to go through this whole process again, but looking at the institutions that are the targets of your transfer. Typically, if you're transferring in for junior or even senior year, it's very rare for people to transfer just for senior year of college. They're not going to look at the SAT because they're going to look at the actual college record. But it differs by school, so you're going to have to look at those policies. And we kind of answered the prep before you take the diagnostic prep, the practice test. Getting the test done is the thing you want to focus on. If they're more willing to do it with prep, you can do that.

Akil Bello: 47:09

I would also add, if you're looking at highly reductive colleges, look at the CDS for number of transfers admitted. Princeton made a big stink about admitting transfers, like they were going to admit transfers. There was all there's all press releases. They admitted 11, right? So, you know, admitting transfers and a real number like and what your likelihood of getting in is is very different. Like, I think USC admits something like 6000 a year, and Princeton admits like 11. So just be careful to understand, if you're looking for some strategy like go to community college and then transfer to this other place, make sure you're considering both of those admissions policies down the road, so that you don't get caught up.

Sheila Akbar: 47:53

Yeah, that's a great piece of advice.

Akil Bello: 47:57

Be careful of the word transfer, also in the college world, transfer usually means completed an qssociates and then moving on to a four year transfer doesn't always, often mean I'm leaving one school for another having not yet completed a degree.

Sheila Akbar: 48:13

Right. And that community college, the associates to four year pathway is a very specific thing, and it's something you should do with a lot of planning. So if that is a pathway you're considering, then you should talk to somebody. Got lots of people who focus on that stuff. If there aren't any other questions, we can kind of go back to some of the questions that were answered in the chat and answer them with a little bit more detail with our last couple of minutes here. So Jacqueline asked a question, if there's any benefit to taking both, if there is the option and you answer this exactly right, there's like so few situations where we recommend it. Sometimes it's a matter of timing. Sometimes it's a matter of you get accommodations on one test for extra time, but not the other. There might be edge cases like that, but more is not better in the admissions process, and that goes for almost everything, extracurriculars, leadership positions, test scores, you know, AP classes, more is not always better. That's not how this game works. So you really need to think about, where are you setting your priorities, and where are you asking your student to invest their time? Could there be a better investment of their time that is either more meaningful, more fun, more relaxing, more rejuvenating, or might actually move the needle more than having two test scores, because you're not going to submit both test scores, right?

Akil Bello: 49:32

Or even if you do, colleges won't necessarily like they're not adding them up, they're not additive, right? They'll look at one or the other. So I would say the short answer is no, don't do both tests. The longer answer is, the only scenario in which I can see I would have a student do both tests is if a student prepped for, let's say the SAT they chose to go along sat, they did it twice, maybe three times, and they just weren't getting where they wanted to take. Last minute Hail Mary at the other to see if it could get them some edge that the first test didn't. I could see that happening. I have recommended the last minute Hail Mary do the other one, but generally speaking, I'm not doing them at the same time, and I'm not having the student prep for both concurrently or even consecutively, we generally will either make a hard switch to the other or we'll do a Hail Mary.

Sheila Akbar: 50:29

I've seen that situation before, too, but usually, if you do your diagnostic work upfront, you kind of know if that Hail Mary has a chance, right?

Akil Bello: 50:37

Right. Yeah. And usually it's chose, like you chose it because it was the better test. So the Hail Mary is likely moving backward, right? But sometimes the prep for one carries over and makes miracles happen on the other. And if you're thinking about as a Hail Mary, then fine, but I don't like people trying to prepare for both of them at the same time. Yeah, no. College wants both scores.

Sheila Akbar: 51:00

Right. There was a question earlier that you've already answered about the PSAT. I think that's a great practice test, and the fact that most students do it in school means we don't have to waste more time doing it. I will point out that the PSAT Most students do in school is in October of their junior year, which for me, feels a little late to start this planning process, right? So even if they're going to do the PSAT in October of junior year, have them do a practice test at the beginning of the summer of before junior year, if nothing else, they'll be more familiar with the PSAT when they do it. Go ahead. Akil.

Akil Bello: 51:36

I'll also actually backtrack on my answer. The PSAT is a terrible test, official, PSAT doesn't give information. It gives a score.

Sheila Akbar: 51:46

Right. You don't see question by question. How they did you don't know what you need to focus on, yep.

Akil Bello: 51:52

So, so you you take the fall PSAT, you wait until December to get your scores, and you have a score, but almost no information about how to improve and what to do next. So I don't love the official PSAT as a useful tool for identifying what I should do next to improve my SAT score.

Sheila Akbar: 52:15

Okay, wonderful. All right, thanks everybody. Bye. Bye. Well, that was such a fun conversation, and Akil and I could go back and forth for a long time, as I'm sure you could tell, we share a lot of perspectives, and really just want to help families navigate this process with clarity, because there's a lot of information out there that makes you feel like you have to do one thing or another, or it creates urgency where there really is none, and we hope we can cut through some of that noise for you. So if you have questions, if you have more questions about testing, please feel free to reach out. My team would be happy to talk you through things. If you need a recommendation for a great test prep agency in your local area, I'm friendly with lots of other companies, so you know, please consider me a resource. And again, have a great summer, and we will see you in August. Thanks, everybody. Bye.