S2E25: SAT/ACT Prep Discussion with David Blobaum, National Test Prep Association
In today's episode your host Thomas Caleel interviews David Blobaum from National Test Prep Association.
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What does test optional really mean? In today's episode, your host Thomas Caleel interviews David Blobaum from National Test Prep Association.
They discuss important issues around test prep, test-optional schools, and other helpful insights into standardized testing.
About David
David Blobaum is a nationally recognized expert in the entrance exam and college admissions industry and is the Director of Outreach for the National Test Prep Association, which works to support the appropriate use of testing in admissions.
He graduated from the University of Chicago with honors both from the college and in his major, and he received his Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology.
In college, he took seriously the University of Chicago’s aim of a “Renaissance” or well-rounded education and took courses in 17 different disciplines, ranging from Statistics and Economics to Philosophy and Art History. Since then, he has devoted himself to helping students reach their potential through education and, more broadly, to help empower them to succeed in life.
To do so, he co-founded the education company Summit Prep in 2013 with a classmate from college, Eva Addae. When David is not teaching the next generation of students, he enjoys reading and hiking. His favorite travel spot is Brazil -- his wife's home country.
Find him HERE
NTPA Social
Website: https://nationaltestprep.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NTPAssociation
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TruthAndTests
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-test-preparation-association/
David’s Social
Twitter: https://twitter.com/David_Blobaum
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-blobaum000/
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
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Thomas: Welcome to the admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel. And today we are very glad to welcome David Blobaum. David is a nationally recognized expert in the entrance exam and college admissions industry and is the Director of Outreach for the National Test Prep Association, which works to support the appropriate use of testing and admissions. He graduated from the University of Chicago with honors, both from the college and in his major, and he received his executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology. In college, he took seriously the University of Chicago's aim of a renaissance or well-rounded education and took courses in 17 Different disciplines, ranging from statistics and economics to philosophy and art history.
Since then, he has devoted himself to helping students reach their potential through education and more broadly, to help empower them to succeed in life. To do so he co-founded the education company Summit Prep in 2013. With a classmate from college, Eva a day, when David is not teaching the next generation of students, he enjoys reading and hiking. His favorite travel spot is Brazil, his wife's home country. David, welcome, as a Chicago native, always glad to see somebody who went to school in the place where fun goes to die.
David: Exactly. Well, it's good to be here, Thomas, and good to not be at the place where the fun goes to die, but it's become more fun lately.
Thomas: It is the worst, the worst description of the University of Chicago. I know it is a great place. And I love the whole approach to Renaissance thinking and learning that you did. So welcome, I think looking forward to having a great conversation with you about admissions and testing. I've been a dinosaur since I was running Wharton, MBA admissions, and financial aid. You know, testing was really paramount. And I think in the MBA game, it's it's still pretty much required, but very different in undergrad, and just curious what you've seen, you know, some of the changes over the past few years.
David: It's definitely been interesting. I was 100% Pro tests optional. Before colleges became test-optional. And I saw how it actually worked in practice. So I'm very much someone who just says, Hey, submit whatever you want to submit, and colleges can judge you based on that, that seems fair to me. The way that I saw colleges now use test-optional admissions for their own benefit, not for the student's benefit convinced me that I believe that it's more fair for all students to be submitting SATs and AC and SATs or ACT scores. And then to actually have the colleges do what they say that they will do, and actually evaluate all of what the student submits.
And I think that should be generally standardized across the board so that colleges can make good decisions. The way that I've seen colleges adapt is by allowing in recruited athletes without test scores, and allowing full-pay students in without test scores, or donors, kids without test scores. So what I bought would be a boon for equity of tests, optional admissions, turned out to be the exact opposite. And we're actually getting data now that actually proves that point.
Thomas: I just actually had a conversation. I don't know if you know, Andreas at Ivy League roadmap on Tiktok. But he feels very strongly the same way you do. And, you know, I think in their heart admissions officers really had the best of intentions, right? Because test-optional was something that as an admissions director, I didn't like testing for everybody. I thought that testing certainly was, you know, narrowing our funnel.
And so, yes, I think it's one of those double-edged swords, right? Because, yes, on the one side, you do have them using it to ease the path for certain students. But the other hand, I think from my perspective, very interested to hear your perspective, it does help widen the funnel, right? It does make that application process accessible to demographics that may have been excluded as a wrong word but were hesitant to participate previously, or am I missing reading that?
David: I agree with you on the best of intentions. And I think there's been a lot of things that clouded the purpose behind SATs and ACT scores. I mean, they were originally intended to allow the most disadvantaged students into the Ivy League schools, and they actually worked very well for that. But then, instead of the pathway to success being to go to an elite high school which is then a funnel to that elite college, It became a just absolute rat race for trying to demonstrate academic achievement.
And so there was definitely the abuse of the use of SATs and ACT scores were 10 points higher on the SAT might sway an admissions officer to let one student over another. Well, that's terrible, because there's no statistical difference at all between a 10-point difference. So there were then simultaneously lies from the test prep industry that they could improve student scores through tips and tricks in gaming the test? Well, that's not true, you cannot significantly increase students' scores through that you actually have to teach them grammar or math or reading if you're going to significantly increase their scores.
So there was the abuse, I think relying on these test scores on the college's part. And I think there was misinformation on a part of the test prep industry, that you could gain these tests. And so we lost sight of what the tests are actually supposed to do, which is to help us make better decisions for students in the student's best interests. And that means not having students enroll in a school where they're likely to fail. Because we know that if a student enrolls in a school that they're not as prepared for, they're more likely to drop out or be on academic probation. And of those students who drop out 49% of them are in default on their debt, that debt is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, so it's going to be a way around their neck for decades and decades. And not only that, we don't even a lot of the arm isn't even picked up in the data.
Because as pulled off in the years that matter most has a really good job of showing that when students get into schools that they're not necessarily prepared for. Even if they don't drop out, they choose easier majors so that they can stay in, well, then instead of becoming a doctor, they might go into sociology. I'm picking sociology because I was a sociology major.
Thomas: Okay, I was wondering why you were a sociology major.
David: Not trying to pick on anyone. So, they could have gone to maybe an easier school and been very successful in becoming a doctor, but they got into a school that was just too difficult for them. So we're never even going to see their diminished life success. So I think that the matching process is very, very important. And I think the data bears out that SATs and ACT scores are part of the matching process, because of the very context that students come from. And I can talk about that very context as well if you'd like.
Thomas: I would like to hear that. And I think because there's also the, you know, the counter-argument from a lot of admissions officers who will say, Listen, you know, the data over four years show much better potential for performance than a one-time test. What's your, what's your take on that?
David: Absolutely. Grades, hands down, have been showing grades are the most predictive measure of how a student will do in college. Every large-scale study, though, has shown that the inclusion of SATs and ACT scores increases that predictive capacity. And it's not going to do that it does that on average. Right. So that doesn't mean that there are students who just don't pick up their potential. I mean, I work with students every day, and some of them yeah, the SATs and ACT, do not pick up the student's potential because the student just falls apart on these high-stakes exams.
So that's why I think the holistic admissions is really important so that they can have other teachers and their grades show that, hey, these SATs ACT scores, it's actually statistically 20% of students, their SATs and ACT scores are not picking up their academic potential for college. So they need the rest of the package to actually show that they are prepared. But for the 80% of students, it's improving predictions.
Thomas: So what happens if I can just jump in quickly? What happens? Do you have a student you're working with? They're not hitting their potential on the SAT ACT? How do you counsel them? What do you advise them to do?
David Globo: So, as I have heard, you say, many times, and I agree with you, it depends.
Thomas: Hey, wait a minute. That's my line.
David: Exactly, exactly. Right. So if we can still get them a good score, even if it's not fully representative of their potential, we're going to submit it. And in general, that's if they're hitting the 25th percentile or above, for the schools enrolled Class. but, I mean, they're, again, it depends on athletes at Penn, even on a private school that they're going to and which college you're applying to. So you know, this really it's one of the top private schools in the country. We work with a lot of their students. And they've had colleges say, Hey, we love your students, if your student is below the median, don't submit. So of course, it's going to be dependent on the student's high school and the college they're applying to as well.
Thomas: Okay, fair enough. And that's, it's interesting. And one of the things that you had, you know, when you talk about these top schools you had sent, it was the issue, we talked about, it was the issue of grade inflation. Right. So how does grade inflation? Well, how do you look at that in the context of standardized test scores?
David: It's a great question. And it's something that parents really, really need to get their head around, because it is really hard to talk to parents who, throughout their kid's entire life for 11 years through junior year, in high school, have thought of their child correctly, as a high honor roll student, their student is on high honor roll, right. But what high honor roll means and what a straight A average means is very different than it used to mean, what it used to mean.
So, for instance, in 1966, this is according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, they've been doing this national study that usually covers about 30,000 people or students or more, it's a very accurate, very robust study. So in 1966, it was only 21% of students average, went on to four-year universities. Right, So when a was relatively rare, 80% of students were not getting a purchase last year and in 2020 80.6% of students going to four-year universities had averages. So one from 20, agrees 80%, not having an average to now 80% Having averages. So what does an A mean? It means average. And it's very important for parents to understand that because when their child then takes the SATs or ACT, on average, they're shocked by the results.
Thomas: Yes.
David: Because to them, their kid has an A average Well, what is an A average compared to four one of those families usually likes a 30 on the ACT, just putting them in the top 7%. And usually like a 13, seven D on the SAT again about like top 7%? Well, the top 7% is far from average.
Thomas: Yes.
David: So on average, these families are actually getting about their kids getting about a 20 on the ACT, and they're getting about a 1050 on the SAT. So they look at the SATs and the ACT and they say, Whoa, these tests are totally unfair. They're totally inaccurate. It's like no, the grades were totally inaccurate. I hate to say in the room, the whole, the whole reason why the SATs and ACT are useful is that there are over 20,000 different high schools in the United States, not to mention students who are applying from home school, who are homeschooled and international students.
Thomas: Exactly.
David: There are over 40 different GPA skills out there that these high schools are using somewhere on a 4.0 Someone 5.0, 10.0 in some schools. This is according to Rick Clark, the Executive Director of Admissions at Georgia Tech, who says that literally some of the high schools will send emojis or narratives, not grades.
Thomas: In the set of grades. Yeah, exactly.
David: Right. And so there are all these different schools using different GPA scales, all the students took different classes from different teachers who grade differently. And we're supposed to be able to compare the grades from all these different schools, it's not possible to know what a grade means, from one school to another school and very, very high context. So that's why it's useful to have this standardized, as they would say, in college admissions, this common yardstick to at least get some more information about what isn't mean at this one school versus another, and the SATs and ACT, they're far from perfect, but they're useful to up to a point of saying, you know, does the student know basic grammar, math, and reading and we can get a sense from that from these tests.
Thomas: At a level of which they can succeed at our school, and I can tell you from it from an admission standpoint, you know, the worst, the hardest decisions we ever had to make. And you know, at a graduate level, were these people who were so accomplished, and so interesting. And you look at their academic record, and they're testing and just really just breaks your heart and you're like, I can't like we owe this person the duty to not admit them, because they will not survive.
David: Right.
Thomas: This rigor and, that's a hard thing to do so, but on that so now I hate to open the can of worms here, but you know, there's a lot of writing a lot of research a lot of data on, you know, the fact that the standardized tests are biased against socio-economic strata, you know, racial identity, you know, all of these things, these legacy things. What's your thought on that? You know, if I'm an underrepresented student or low-income student I don't have access to the resources, although there are a lot of great free resources online. What's yours? What is your advice to that student?
David: So I think that the truth about standardized testing is more important for that student than any other student, which is then tests, are there disparities in results on these tests? On average? Yes. But these tests are not racist. They're not. All students can equally learn grammar, math, reading the data analysis to do better on these exams. And so the idea that's being pushed, especially by some circles, like a fair test, a lot of people don't know this. Fair test is primarily, and I like teachers' unions, but Veritas is primarily funded by the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country. And teacher's unions. They do amazing work, obviously, for students, where my mother was a teacher, part of a teacher's union, right? So I'm not coming down on teacher's unions.
However, there is a different interest where teachers can also unfairly be judged by the standardized results of their students. Right. And so there's been a push by teachers unions to eliminate standardized testing to eliminate any accountability and transparency, I would say the abuse of, you know, accountability and transparency. But that's then been that money has been funded, funneled into the fair test, which then just takes a hammer to standardized testing, and really wise about it, and promotes those lies, that underrepresented students can't do well on these exams.
And that is absolutely conclusively false. All the data will back that up. I mean, we're probably the study that's cited most by fair tasks, and by people who are against standardized testing and admissions, defining promise study, yes. In that defining promise study, the minority applicants who submitted test scores, actually, I didn't say minority applicants, it was my primarily minority-serving institutions, those students who submitted test scores to those institutions had a 54% higher rate of graduation. That is a stunningly higher rate of graduation.
And so the idea that we shouldn't be using test scores, when test scores are extremely high, is marginally helpful to helpful for all students, but unbelievably predictive and helpful for those institutions. Particularly, I think, those are the students if we actually want to help them, we're not just going to focus on access. I mean, I want access for all students. But more than I want access, I want success in outcome. And success. And outcome doesn't just come from giving all students access to walk in the door, it gives them the the opportunity to walk out the door, not dropping out, not shackled by debt. And so I wish we would turn we will be able to, you know, turn the conversation to what's truly in the student's best interest, which is that education and that success.
Thomas: I agree with you, I talk a lot about ROI. And I think you bring up the very good point, you know, the great point that I haven't even addressed about getting them through and getting them graduated right and supporting them through that process. So we've been talking for a while. And I want to so you know, if you have a student right parents out there they have they have high schoolers, when should they start preparing for the SAT or ACT? And what's the best path to do that?
David: In a typical year, and this is not a typical year, because the SAT is changing this year. Yes. So well, I guess first I'll tackle that, that the current SAT, and its paper form is going to be offered three more times this year, October, November, December, it's never going to be offered again after that. The next SAT that's going to be offered is in March. And that's the digital adaptive test. So students have to be really careful. If they're prepping for the current SAT, they only have until December. That's very dangerous to try and prep for the current SAT because anything can happen on test day, you can have a good day or a bad day, the the test makers are cycling through a lot of different topics.
So some days a test will fit your knowledge base better than other days. There are also errors in the curves in the scaling. So it's dangerous to say well, I'm going to hit my potential in practice in December and then I'm going to one and do his test in December, it's probably not going to happen, nearly have to take the test multiple times. So very dangerous to try and prep for the current SAT. But then it's also dangerous to prep for the new digital SAT in March because there are only four practice tests for it. And the verbal section is changing absolutely dramatically from these very long 750-word on average passages, 10 to 11 questions to very short passages, just 75 words on average with one question. So very different skill set and practice then.
So if you try and prep for the new test, you don't know, there are only four practice tests that you can practice from, that's not many. And we don't exactly know precisely what the content and the scaling will look like. Because those four practice tests, they're just that practice. And then you only have the March, May the June tests in your junior year, the May in June test overlap, AP exams, and finals.
Thomas: Exactly.
David: So you have like basically just the March test on the first time that's ever been given in the United States that's risky. The less risky option is if the ACT is the better test for you. Okay, so all students, I would say should take go online, take a digital SAT, go online, download an official ACT take both, but you would have to do significantly better on the digital SAT to justify preparing and going in that direction over the ACT this year. But generally, for any student in any year, our students usually start their prep in June after they finish their sophomore year.
Thomas: Right.
David: They then do intensive prep over the summer, and then they start taking the real Exams and their junior year, you can delete ACT scores that you don't like, or just choose not to report them. So you can just take the test as many times as you want students on fee waivers, which means 20% of students can take the test for free up to four times. So that's also good for them to know. And then the SAT, you can also just take the test as many times as you want. In the common app, which most schools use vast, vast majority, you can only submit your highest scores anyway, for the SATs. So take the test as many times as you want, schools are only going to see your highest ever verbal highest ever math.
Thomas: But I think too, you know, understanding that there is a trade-off and you are at some point going to kind of hit your you know, your level. And then you know, you need that focus and that attention on academics, extracurriculars, you know, etc. And I think you know, I know you're coming, you obviously have a natural bias in terms of you know, you are providing tutoring. I'm a big fan of tutoring. Because I think for me, it's an efficiency argument, right? The students are overworked, they don't get enough sleep, and they're running a million miles an hour.
And so they have an expert guide who can go in, look at their practice tests, look at their tests that they've taken say, Okay, here's a flaw we need to just focus on this. And I find to get a great return on investment. But then obviously, for people who can't afford tutoring, there are wonderful online free, there's so many free, wonderful resources available as well, Khan Academy and, so on.
David: You're absolutely right. Yeah, I think, of course, I mean, I am biased, I am a tutor and own a tutoring company. But looking I mean, it's actually an interesting place for just multiple reasons to look on the SATs and ACT Reddit boards. And those some of those kids are amazing. They self-prep from some of them around 1000, to some of them up to 1400-1500. So it is doable for all students to do that. And to learn that knowledge if they're committed to it. To your point, though, you do get diminishing returns over time, the higher and higher you go, the harder and harder it gets to increase. And then it's about trade-offs at a certain point of not just resources, but also time.
Thomas: Great. Well, listen, I really, really appreciate your time today, David, and I think you brought you to know, what I love is that you brought facts and statistics and backed your statements with research, which I very much appreciate. And I think some good things in there. And we're going to make sure in the show notes that you know everything is linked so people know how to reach you people know how to look at what you're doing. We've talked about a lot but is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think is really important for our listeners to know?
David: I think the only thing I would add is for parents to really keep an eye on the individual school score-use policies for the schools that their kids are applying to. So what do tests optional really mean for those schools one thing that parents can do to kind of pierce the veil there is to look at Google the school's name and common data set. So stay tuned. For a common data set, see, hey, how many enrolled students submitted SATs and ACT scores? Well, it's about 85%.
So good luck getting in. If you're not submitting SATs and ACT scores, for instance, no matter what they say about tests optional, then there are those schools that are still technically test-optional, like Ohio State, and the University of Texas at Austin, but they're actually now on their admissions website saying, we prefer that you submit SATs and ACT scores. So now there are multiple tiers of there's tests required, like MIT or Georgetown, most of the top schools though, there. And I actually just did research on the top 100 schools, really 89% of them are test preferred. And the ones that are not test preferred, are the California schools that can't use SATs and ACT scores.
Thomas: Exactly.
David: But use your AP exams, right? So just for parents to really, you know, try and actually see what colleges are doing, not just what they might say in their press releases.
Thomas: I think that that's a great place to end and very, sage advice. So thank you very much. Really appreciate your time and look forward to continuing this conversation.
David: Thanks, Thomas.
