New ACT & Testing Tips with Sean Quinn – College Bound Mentor Podcast #31

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This is Episode #31 and you’ll hear us talk the new ACT & testing tips with Sean Quinn. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #31: New ACT & Testing Tips with Sean Quinn

What’s new with the ACT? A lot. That means students have to change how they prep for the test AND how they approach things on test day. Sean Quinn has you covered. He’s the Founder & Tutor at Onsen Education, providing one-on-one preparation tailored to your needs. He and his team have helped students across the states and in over 20 other countries. Hear what’s different about the new ACT, how the average scores compare to previous years, whether you should focus on the SAT instead, how to prepare for the new ACT test, and how to get over testing anxiety. This episode covers everything from what’s new with the ACT test to the best testing tips. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • How did Sean end up in Buenos Aires, Argentina?
  • Which questions are experimental?
  • Should students still take the Science section?
  • What does Sean like & not like about the new ACT?
  • How much test prep should you do every week?

Connect with Sean at OnsenEducation.com, on LinkedIn, and check out his blog on Understanding the New ACT: Key Changes, Concerns, and Strategic Advice, and Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Sean Quinn 0:04
You try to get outside of your comfort zone and practice.

Lisa Bleich 0:19
Hey, CBMmers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co-hosts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie. And on today’s episode, we’re going to chat with Sean Quinn, founder of Onsen Education. Sean is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA writing program and a national merit scholar from the University of Southern California with over 15 years experience in education, he has tutored extensively and led teams across a wide range of subjects with a strong focus on standardized testing, including the S,AT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT. More recently, Sean and his team at omson education have also begun preparing students for the IE and Bocconi entrance exams. In addition to his work with 20 with students across New York and the US, Sean has supported students in over 20 countries with a strong international presence in Europe. He has presented on topics such as the SAT versus a CT testing for international universities and the realities behind test optional admissions, speaking at Columbia University Brooklyn based events, IEC and hectic conferences and international webinars for audiences in Spain, Italy, Brazil, Turkey and beyond. Wow, I’m exhausted just reading your reading, reading everything that you’ve done. I’m actually a little jealous that you’ve been to all of the you know, got to do all of those things. So So welcome, Sean. We’re really happy to have you. You know, I been reading your blog post for a while, and one of the ones that I really, we really appreciated was your the most recent one you did, which was uncovering or understanding the new ACT and the changes and giving some advice. And we actually so much that we included in our recent newsletter. So we, of course, give you credit, but it was just really clear and thorough, and we wanted to understand that you’d be a great guest to help our listeners understand how to navigate the new ACT and so one of the things though, before we get started, because you have such an interesting background. I was just at Bocconi in May, and I had a great, great visit there. So I’m just curious, how did you end up You said earlier that you’re living in Buenos Aires right now. So how did you end up there, and having that connection with European even though Buenos Aires is not in Europe, but having the connection.

Sean Quinn 2:23
Thank you, Lisa and the college bound mentor team Steph Stephanie and Abby for having me on the podcast. Yes, I am. I’m based in Buenos Aires drinking cherbomatte, the tea instead of coffee. And actually, I got my start in test prep in Buenos Aires 1617, years ago now, in 2008 when I first came down here that, you know, I graduated from USC, I was doing some outside sales, telecom, soul crushing job and and wanted an escape. And I came down here and taught Business English to business professionals working at US companies like Equifax and Fox Latin America. And the Institute I was working for asked me to start teaching the SAT and the GRE, because they had some Argentine students that were applying abroad, you know. So I was, I guess, like 23 at that point, and started, and started teaching the SCT and GRE for Argentine students. And then I moved back in 2012 to the US, and I lived in New York for seven years, where I started onson in 2017 and primarily I was working with students in New York. But then I got, at the end of 2017 I got my first Italian student through an IEC that was I met, that she was American, based in Milan, and so she sent me a student, you know, from Italy. And this was the first time I was exposed to Bocconi, because the student was told me, I’m using the SAT to apply to Harvard and to Bocconi. And I was like, Bocconi. Yeah, what is that? It was my first exposure to learning that students really were using the SAT not for us, admissions only, and so I worked with that student. Back then it was less competitive than it is now to get into boconia, yeah, it’s very

Lisa Bleich 4:15
13, yeah. Now you need like a 1460. Is their average essay. T

Sean Quinn 4:21
Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. But, you know, even eight years ago, it was like 1350, plus, right? And it moved up like 100 year, 100 points. And so that was our first Italian student. We started getting a lot of Italian students. And of the 20 plus countries that we work with, students outside of the US, Italy is number one, and I go back every year, and I present at high schools there. And tough. It’s a tough place to work. Yeah,

Abby Power 4:49
you know, like, hey, if we want to do a little joke over there

Lisa Bleich 4:54
again, if you twist her arm, we’ll go.

Abby Power 4:57
And you know, next time we’ll go. Okay, go to belong. Yeah, exactly. I see

Stefanie Forman 5:03
the collaboration now, yeah.

Abby Power 5:05
Or Buenos Aires, yeah, there too.

Sean Quinn 5:07
Or Buenos Aires, yeah. And I came back here about end of 2019 my wife is from Buenos Aires, and, you know, I have a six year old daughter, and we ended up being closer to her family. It’s been great. I Buenos Aires is has the best time zone. I’m saying this in a biased way, because it’s one hour ahead of Eastern closer to Europe. And, you know, we have students in California too. So, yeah, you’re right in the middle, right in the middle of

Lisa Bleich 5:35
everything I did. I didn’t realize you had that Argentine connection, because I work with a lot of Argentinian students that are living in us? Yeah, I just have, I just happen to have a lot of students that were they lived in Argentina, or their parents are from Argentina, and then they live in the and their work living here right now. So

Sean Quinn 5:53
that’s very cool. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we do. So we, we work with some local students. I do give presentations to some of the high schools here, and I took my first international AC T, I guess getting into the AC T topic when I moved here in 2019 and it was already a digital test internationally as of a 2018 Oh, interesting. So I was familiar with this kind of clunky UI back then. You know that they haven’t really updated.

Lisa Bleich 6:22
Even for the new one, they haven’t updated it, right? Not too

Sean Quinn 6:26
much. It’s very similar to the test I took in 2019,

Lisa Bleich 6:30
interesting. So let’s talk a little bit about the new test. Because, you know, there’s obviously the digital s, a T was very different, and with the with it being adaptable, etc, but it sounds like the AC t is just the same thing, but shorter, fewer questions, more time per question, and still a clunky interface. Or is there more to it? Yeah,

Sean Quinn 6:49
yeah. I think, I mean, I think they went to the static, linear path, right? They kept it a linear test. You know, the SAT to shorten their test by about an hour and keep it internally consistent with the scale, the 1600 scale, they made it adaptive, and so they had more question pathways, and so you can maintain that integrity to the scale with the AC T. They made it shorter at the same time, they cut 44 questions. They cut about 50 minutes of time, if you’re also including the science section. But you know, they kept it a linear, static test, and that has implications, as we’ll talk about, on the predictability of the scoring system.

Lisa Bleich 7:40
Yeah. How so? Because, as you said, the essay team made it adaptive so that they can remove the easy questions the next time, if you got all of those right. But if it is a linear test and it’s static, do you feel like the key changes are actually going to make it easier for the AC to do better on the AC T, it’s going to be harder for colleges to say, well, now we really want the SAT because the AC T isn’t as predictive. What do you what do you think is going to be the reaction?

Sean Quinn 8:08
Making it non adaptive means that there’s ultimately less questions that a student could potentially see, and so that means there’s less questions that are countable to a student’s score. You know, the AC t also embedded experimental questions within the shorter test. So they used to have a fifth section that was 20 minutes at the end of your four sections that you take on a Saturday, and it was all the experimental questions. And the problem with that is that students knew it was experimental, and they weren’t going to proceed with the same rigor that they would on the rest of the test naturally. And so it was hard for the AC T to test those experimental questions for future exams. And so what they’ve now done is they’ve embedded a significant number of those questions inside the AC T format, and so that further reduces the questions that count towards a student’s score. And so what that means is like in English, for example, English is now it was 45 minutes. It’s been reduced to 35 minutes. It had 75 questions, and now has 50 questions, but of those, 5010, are experimental. So now you have 40 questions that count versus 75 questions that used to count, and it’s still mapped on to the same 36 point scale for the English. And what that means practically is that you could miss one question and lose as many as two section points, or if you missed two questions on a CT English, you could lose as much as one composite point on your

Lisa Bleich 9:50
score, right? So it’s actually going to be harder. Even though it’s shorter, it’s the reverse of what people might think is that it’s going to be easier. It might be harder to do. Well,

Sean Quinn 9:59
yeah, I mean, it’s going. Be less predictable, that volatility could go either way. It could go on the you could be, have a lucky day and get, you know, a 3536 because Right? So it’s it’s just more volatile, and that’s due to shortening the questions, shortening the test, and embedding experimental questions.

Lisa Bleich 10:19
But do you think having those embedded questions, because when the students knew that they were experimental, they it sort of took off some of the stress on some level, because they knew that they were experimental, but now they don’t know if they’re experimental, like they were not going to know which of those 10 questions or the experimental questions, you think it’s going to put them into a tailspin. If they’re more challenging,

Sean Quinn 10:39
it’ll be better for the AC t in terms of testing out future questions, because the students won’t know, you know, and they’ll treat them with the same I think students shouldn’t dwell on the fact that they’re experimental questions, because they’ll never know where, where they are. That’s true. But there’s other strategic things that that that it has like in terms of the AC T Reading section, for example, usually for like mid level scores, a strategy might be, okay, perform your best on your three favorite styles of reading passages, right, and then just guess on the fourth one, because we didn’t have enough time to go through but now on The AC T Reading section on the enhanced test. One of those four passages is entirely experimental. And so you could gamble and guess on the one you know, on the wrong one, the one that counts, and then experimental doesn’t count and have a as much as a 10 point swing.

Lisa Bleich 11:39
I didn’t know that that was what was happening. So that’s really great, yeah, all right, yeah. It’s also probably hard for you to teach because, you know, you don’t necessarily know what you have to teach them to just be open to the experimental side. And what about the science? I mean, they decided to get rid of the science. They’re making it optional. But colleges haven’t come out yet to say if they’re going to make it optional, if you have said, but most of them haven’t even weighed in what they’re going to do. I mean, we’re recommending that our students continue to take the science what are you what are you doing with your clients?

Sean Quinn 12:12
I think the the move to make science optional was ACT’s attempt to address what the second biggest pain point with the ACT, the first one was the time per question. You know, it’s always been thought of as, like, it’s a race versus the SAT. And so they shorten the test and gave more time per question, right? And it’s, you know, there’s like 17% more time per question on English, and there’s 27 to 29% more time per question on the other section. So that, in of itself, is a good move. And then the second thing is, they made science optional, right? Because, you know, the ACT science is not a pure science section. And I think many students, you know, hear science and they’re scared off by by just the name of science itself alone, right? But it’s not a pure science section that actually is more data analysis. It’s more a test of how to read and interpret data and graphs quickly. But regardless, you know, it turns students away, I’m sure. And so this, you know, making science optional, I think was smart, a smart move by the ACT in that sense. But right now, in 2025 I think we still all have to view that science is essentially mandatory for for students who want to keep their options open in the universities they’re applying to. Because, as you said, 99% of universities have not even announced where they stand on science. Right there’s only been 20 announcements that we know of, the majority of those had said that they will consider it as optional. A couple notable ones that haven’t are, Boston University has said, you know, they said that it’s required. But you know, the second question would be, I guess, like, what does that optional mean? Because, in light of test optional, and it’s kind of changing meaning over the last few years, since the pandemic. Many universities use that term in a different way. And there’s even, like, you know, tests recommended now and test expected that some universities are communicating. So even if the students the universities are science optional. To what extent is that optional? Do they still prefer that you

Lisa Bleich 14:27
and nobody knows the answer to it? I don’t think they know the answer to it at this point. And also, to your point, data analysis. I mean, that’s everything is about data analysis, so you kind of have to have it. And doesn’t the SAT include similar sorts of questions in their reading anyway,

Sean Quinn 14:42
yeah, so the digital essay T did, it doesn’t. Does include some some graphs and their reading section, some some science analysis questions as well. Yeah, exactly. And they made that change back in in 2017 with the the other test. And then. Yeah. So it is an important section. I think, even though it for most students taking standardized tests, the AC T science is the scary section at first at first glance, it’s probably

Abby Power 15:13
the one where they have to learn the most test taking strategies. It’s probably the least familiar, you know, exercise of the whole thing.

Sean Quinn 15:22
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s the it’s, it’s the least familiar. They just haven’t seen anything like it right in school. But it, we’ve found over the years that it really aligns with the AC T Reading section. It’s the same kind of skill set, right? It’s, it’s kind of identify the keywords in the question and in the answer choices, and then go fetch and go make the connections, right? And instead of in a passage, in graphs and figures,

Abby Power 15:49
yeah, we say the same to our clients that you’re reading and your science should be pretty close to each other, because they would just assume that science and math would be, should be proportionate. But it’s really exactly not that way. Yeah, it’s interesting. I think the this, having that section be test optional, adds so much uncertainty and stress to kids. I mean, I I’m imagining that was not the intention. But not only do you not know what optional means, but then you don’t even really know what the school like. Let’s say you’re pre med. I mean, does that preclude you from it’s just adding another level of uncertainty for, I don’t know, no good reason, but I get, I get that they want to sell the test. We were kind of assuming that test scores might go a CT scores might go up now that you have more time per question. But you’re, I think you just implied a little earlier that that’s not necessarily the case. There’s just more kind of variability. But what have you been seeing in terms of average scores with the kids that you’re helping to prepare?

Sean Quinn 16:51
So there’s the variability that is due to just less questions and the addition of experimental questions, but we’ve also noticed that the questions that they cut tend to be the easier questions based on the four practice tests that have been released. So yes, we’ve added time per question, but we’re left with the medium and the hard questions instead of the easier questions. So that’s that additional time advantage is a little bit offset by the increased difficult, increased average difficulty of the questions. So based on, you know that average time alone, we haven’t seen, and we don’t have enough data yet to see how that’s going to impact the student the scores. It might be that many students end up doing better because of that additional time, but my instinct is that they’ll end up needing that additional time because the average difficulty has rise,

Lisa Bleich 17:47
right? It’s gone up. Yeah, that makes So

Abby Power 17:49
would you say it’s more similar? I mean, I guess the way I’ve always thought about them is the s, a T gives you more time per question, but they’re more complex kind of logic based reasoning questions. The A, C, T is a faster, more straightforward test. So are you, it sounds like what you’re saying is they are saying a kind of like converging a little bit.

Sean Quinn 18:07
The AC T questions really themselves haven’t changed, right? So, like the AC T, each section was composed of easy, medium and hard questions to kind of simplify things, and the easy questions essentially have been taken away. But the medium and hard, even with their more straightforward language, remain, right? So they they still have the straightforward language of the AC, T, they still are, you know, one or two sentences instead of some of the more complicated, S, A, T, math problems, right? The content, in that sense, hasn’t changed too much. There’s little things like the AC T math section, instead of having five answer choices, now goes to four answer choices, and stems are tested on the on the English grammar section. But there’s not too much in the content side, and it’s really indicative of the practice test they’ve chosen to give us, because they’re fully taken from past AC, T’s, right? All, all of the the four practice tests are repeated material from old, older a, CTS. In that sense, I don’t think it’s converging with with the S, A, T too much. It remains its own distinct test that has disadvantages and advantages for for students.

Abby Power 19:24
So along those lines, you know what? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? If you can put yourself in the mindset of one of your students,

Sean Quinn 19:32
yeah, I like that. They’re keeping a paper based version of the test, and I would advise all students that are taking the AC T to stick with the paper based version for now. Now. Why? Why the paper based version? Well, it’s the one that’s most familiar to any students that that have been practicing already with the AC T. That’s one advantage, but more importantly, you know, when the SAT. Change to a digital format. They change the structure of the passages on reading and writing. It’s one question and one short passage which makes sense on a screen. Right when you have to scroll to go through a passage, you lose your place constantly on the current UI of the AC T, of the digital AC T, you’ll highlight within a passage, and then you go to the next question, and you lose your highlights. And so both the you, the UI, and the long, the length of the passages are not a good fit for the digital experience. It makes it makes the paper based for screen on the paper based, you can mark up quickly your passage, you can extrapolate on the science graphs very quickly, especially on science and reading. Being able to annotate the AC T on the paper version is a huge advantage, and I urge students to stick with that. And I like that the AC T has elected to continue that paper based version of the test for us students, right? And international students haven’t had a paper based student unfortunately, since 2018 and they’re stuck with the digital version. Yeah, one

Lisa Bleich 21:13
of the things that my clients were asking me, and I didn’t have an answer for it, is like, how do they take notes? You know? How do they underline? If it is digital? Is there a way for them to do it if they don’t want to do the paper based one or they don’t have access to it

Sean Quinn 21:26
on the reading passages, they can highlight, right? Okay, the problem is, once you go to the next question, use those highlights, right? And so that’s not super useful on the on the science, there’s no meaningful way of annotating, you know, a graph, right? They haven’t figured out that out on the UI, so it’s very similar to like when I took the digital SA, T, A, C, T, back in 2019 in Argentina, they give you a scrap paper, and I would draw out my versions of the science scraps on paper, just to make those

Lisa Bleich 21:57
kind of so will they have a piece of paper that they can draw on.

Sean Quinn 22:01
They will, yeah, you will have scratch paper. You can have scratch paper, okay? Because kind of

Lisa Bleich 22:05
like on the Kindle, when you’re trying to highlight it, it’s not that easy. At least for me, it’s not that easy. When I’m trying to highlight it, I’m like, Okay, I didn’t quite get it, and then it keeps going up to there. So you waste time on the technical stuff that is looking so fast with pen and paper.

Sean Quinn 22:19
Conversely, I like that they have the digital format for there are some students, and I had a student like this this year that is not a good paper based test taker. You know, he’s this generation. I mean, is grows up on computers, and they’re very good digitally. And he is, he is a kind of student that was better on the digital version of the AC T, and he did, he did amazing on the on the July test and the June test too. And so I like that they have that flexibility for both kinds of students. I like that they’ve promised to incorporate Desmos into a future version of the digital AC T. That hasn’t happened yet, but that is in process. Desmos, for those who might not be familiar with it, is the calculator that’s embedded into the s, A, T. It’s an awesome tool. I’m not a huge graphing calculator fan, but, and a lot of times I prefer just to write out the math work, but Desmos has changed that for me. And there really are a lot of shortcuts for SAP users to use the to use Desmos. And I anticipate that’s going to be a big help for the AC T, but that hasn’t been implemented yet, and I like that they’re going to implement the Bring Your Own Device right, which is now promised for the September test. I don’t have full confidence that it’s going to happen for September because it has been promised during the soft launch, and then it didn’t happen. And that was an issue, not having your own device.

Stefanie Forman 23:55
This is so helpful. Like Lisa said, we have answers. I feel like to give to my students now, and it hurts my I was an English teacher, so like hurts my English teacher. Art that, like annotating, seems to be this lost art, but it was good to hear you also talk about or looking forward to some of these positive changes that will hopefully happen with this digital enhanced AC T, but because there’s still this uncertainty around it outside the, you know, paper based option. Would you recommend students focus on the AC, T instead? Or, you know, too early to tell the SAT, yeah, S, A, T instead?

Sean Quinn 24:30
Yeah? I think generally students coming in now, you know, it’s a weird year for us, because usually when students come in, I’ll meet with the student and the parent, we’ll talk about where they are. Did they take a PSAT? And usually we would always have them do an S A T and an A C T diagnostic to see which is a better individual fit. And this year, I’ve kind of paused that, and I really am just giving S A T diagnostics unless we see that the score is quite low, it doesn’t. Line with their grades. If they want to take the AC T diagnostic we’ll set that up always using a legacy a CT, the old AC T, as the diagnostic test, because even though it won’t give me the most exact results or the most precise measurements, if a CT ends up being a better fit, I want to save those four practices that we have for later in the process. So, yeah, yes, generally, you know, most students that come our way nowadays, the SAT is just the more predictable path to steady progress. For now, I just worry about the AC T volatility. And to be fair, I mean, the few students that ended up kind of going against our advice, maybe that take the soft launch, digital enhanced AC t have done very well, right? And their scores have have been great. And that the other change, I guess we haven’t talked about yet, is that science is not only optional, but it’s also now not included as part of the composite score. Traditionally, the AC, T composite score was calculated as the average of the four sections. Now it’s just the average of English, math and reading, and it doesn’t include science that I think Abby to your question earlier that could actually cause student scores to increase. I mean, on the loan, because science is this section that students fear or they misunderstand, if they’re not, you know, working on it, and so traditionally, they they have scored lower on that section when you know, these changes were first announced a year ago, we went back and ran the numbers on all of our AC T students and see like, Okay, if we took out science, what would their composite scores have been like? How does this impact? And there was about a one point average gain across across our students. And we’re talking about, you know, a sample set of a couple 1000 students over the last, you know, seven years. Yeah, I was just

Lisa Bleich 27:04
gonna ask, though, if somebody had the science, if they didn’t make it optional, though they would, would, would they not include it in the composite if they didn’t make it optional?

Sean Quinn 27:13
So if, even if they take the science right, it’s, it’s still not included as part of it, oh, for every average scores.

Lisa Bleich 27:21
Yeah, I had a student this year who got like a 36 on the science and did, like, got in the 20s on the everything else. So Wow. Yeah. So that student, because he did really well. So surprised, I’m like, Oh my God, you did so well in the sciences that I know, but it’s not going into my composite. So my composite is so much lower. So,

Sean Quinn 27:45
yeah, I mean, and that’s, that’s another thing we don’t know, like, how the university admissions are going to be calculating that composite. Because maybe, maybe they have their systems that they, you know, if science is required on their end and they are including it as part of their composite, still maybe, right? And so, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really confusing. Test optional was already confusing enough, you know. And I think a CT maybe had the idea that it could go the optional way that writing, a CT writing went optional, which nobody even remembers a CT writing. But it’s, it’s there, you know? And maybe they thought, Okay, we could kind of get rid of science in this, this way of making it optional, and it becomes like the essay, which is the ACP writing and, and I haven’t had a student take that in years, and it’s still there. I mean, you could still opt to take the writing.

Stefanie Forman 28:37
We look a lot at the common data set, and we see the percentage of students who submit a CTS versus SATs, and the, you know, the AC T’s always wins. Wait, I said the S I’m getting, the SATs always win. I keep mixing them up, but yeah, I wonder if there’s a future for both of these tests.

Sean Quinn 28:56
Both the s, a T and the A C T have rebounded from the pandemic numbers, right? I mean, from 2021 I think the SAT has recovered about 27% you know, at growth or has, it has grown 27% it’s back up to about 2 million test taker 1.9 million test takers last year in the US alone and the AC t also has grown, but at a much smaller rate, right? It grew only 7% since 2021 it’s about 1.2 million test takers in the US. But the fact that it’s growing, and I mean, it’s, I see at least an immediate future for both tests. I don’t think the AC T is is going anywhere, and I think that it still remains a good, viable fit for some students. I just think it I was a huge fan of the old AC T. I love the AC T for a lot of test takers, you know, especially students with extra time accommodate. Applications when we could, you know, alleviate a little bit the reading and science timing challenges. Then the AC T was a great test for those, those students. And I’m just unsure of this new test, and maybe we’ll see that the numbers make sense, or maybe they make some adjustments to it, and we find out a year from now? And we think, okay, yeah, actually, they got their act together, and it all worked out and but yeah, I do see a future for the next five years, at least for both tests for a CT stick along. I don’t

Lisa Bleich 30:34
know if this is true, but I heard that, and I don’t ever want to spread rumors that aren’t true, but I heard that the AC T was bought out by a private equity firm, and that was part of why they were making the changes, purely for a business decision, because they were losing market share to the SAT, and they were just trying to find a way to get to bring people back into the fold. Is there any truth to that?

Sean Quinn 30:57
I think there could be. I mean, ACT did go private, right? And so about a year ago, or kind of coinciding with a lot of changes, I think even prior to that, like, you know, the AC T had gone digital internationally in 2018 and they were all they were always planning to go digital in the US. And I think the SCT finally making that leap said, Okay, we gotta try a different form of the test. But, yeah, I think cutting the trimming the length of the test, making science optional, I think those were moves, you know, to meant to compete with the SAT. And whether it’s a for profit or a nonprofit company, I think they were gonna do that anyway, to try to compete with the SAT I think they rushed, I would say maybe the for profit angle of it is maybe they rushed to market a test that wasn’t statistically as sound as it could have been,

Lisa Bleich 31:57
right? Well, it’s interesting. I mean, with so many testings going on. I mean, there’s, it’s always kind of important to give tips. And I know there’s a lot of things that students always are asking us in terms of when they’re preparing. Like, first of all, how do they know which test to take? You just said, I mean, we used to do the same thing. Would say, go take a diagnostic, see which one you do better at, see which one you prefer, and then focus in on that test. But now it sounds like you’re pushing people to really just focus on the SAT for now. Like, how can they prepare best? Like, and when should they start preparing? Like, what do you recommend to students, kind of on the whole prep side of things?

Sean Quinn 32:31
Yeah, so I think in an ideal world, you know, students would approach this or start thinking about this in spring of sophomore year or the summer after sophomore year, and take their first blue book test. And blue book number four, right, which is now the first SAP test. Not that they retired one, two and three, because they, they too, had kinks they had to work out, you know. And, and with, with the launch of the digital sa t version, so that, would be my recommendation, is to think about this like, you know, as sophomore year is winding down at the earliest, generally, right? And then summer after sophomore year, take a practice test SAT. Take that under real time conditions, turn off your phone. Take it in a place that’s not your bedroom, maybe even not your home, in a library, in a cafe, and this is something we’ll talk about like, in terms of homework and practice tests in general, once you’ve begun the process beyond the diagnostic is to try to get outside of your comfort zone and practice because we have many students, of course, that are, You know, they’re doing their homework on their bed and bed, and they’re slouched and and they’re comfortable, and they might do better on their homework. For that, they might do worse, but they’re not doing the same as if they were in an environment that they’re uncomfortable. So like, practice discomfort, because it’s going to be uncomfortable. There’s going to be pressure, so, and you could start that with the diagnostic test. So I would say that’s the first part. I always meet with students and parents in an intake call just to talk about these things at first. You know, did you take a PSAT in October? That’s great to see those scores. It’s not super relevant for now, because it’s been eight months of you know, you had a whole school year under, under your belt now. But let’s take the SAT if it’s if it’s very low or, you know, we, you know, the student wants to take an AC T diagnostic let’s take an AC T diagnostic test. In that case, we would proctor it live over zoom at a time that’s convenient for the for the student. So I think taking these diagnostic tests in as official, arbitrarily, official kind of feeling circumstances are helpful to get a good a good score, base baseline as a start, and then choosing a test, and then you my preference. Is to, do, you know, consistent, smaller amounts of prep, but over more time, rather than, you know, trying to squeeze it all in, you know, in a month or something like that.

Lisa Bleich 35:10
And what would you recommend time wise? Because I usually tell students about you’re going to have to account for probably four hours a week. Do you Is that realistic? Unrealistic? What do you think?

Sean Quinn 35:21
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s identical to what we recommend. So we would recommend one hour of verbal lessons and one hour of math lessons, and then one to one homework to lesson time always, right? So two hours of lessons, two hours of homework, so as a four hour commitment, they should block off, yeah, during the prep,

Abby Power 35:39
over what period of time, how many months? Generally speaking,

Sean Quinn 35:42
it will vary widely by students, I would say, on the fastest side, maybe two or three months. On the longer side, maybe eight to nine months. Oh, wow. That long depends, yeah. I mean, so generally we see, on at onson, we see a seven point per average increase, tutored hour increase, right? So, you know, over the course of a 30 hour program, we’re seeing on average 210 points of movement. And that’s, that’s an average, right? Well, we might have students that start at 1400 and they’ll move a little bit less than that, because they’re on the higher end. We might have students that are starting at 1000 and they move more than that average point because they’re starting lower, but it really depends like that. In that first conversation, we talked about, okay, what are your diagnostic scores, right, if you have them, and what are your goals, even at this early stage? I mean, some students know, hey, I have this school in mind that you know, I’ve been talking to my IEC, I’ve been talking to my school like I have a list already. Okay, that’s great to know, and that helps me know, all right, we need to try to target 180 points in movement, or we need to try. We have our work cut out for us, because we’re trying to target above 250 which that gets to be the hard, hardest part, I think, is after, after you’ve moved already, like 200 plus points. So it depends, like, what their goal is ultimately, and where they’re where they’re starting. But yeah, I would say in the range of three to eight months on average.

Lisa Bleich 37:17
You say the same for the GRE, my daughter is studying for her GRE right now, four months in.

Sean Quinn 37:23
Yeah, it could be the same for GRE. I mean, I think GRE and GMAT were the like, the with, aside from MCAT, because we do all of the grad tests as well. Like MCAT is like, takes so many hours

Lisa Bleich 37:35
of tutoring, all the, all the medical school stuff we do medical school, it’s, it’s all the hardest. Oh, you guys did medical school. Yes, it’s the hardest for the medical school students. Honestly, it really is. But

Sean Quinn 37:45
like, taking away, like the MCAT, I think grad test student could be less tutoring hours. It’s a lot more independent work instead of maybe one to one homework. The lesson is, like, two or three times of outside work to

Lisa Bleich 37:58
Yeah, and every time I talk to I’ve got to study. I gotta study. I’m like, she’s very committed to it. So

Sean Quinn 38:04
that’s great. That’s great. So we’ll see.

Abby Power 38:06
She’ll do great. She will kill it. We’ll put it out in the universe, right? Yeah. Let’s actually, literally putting

Abby Power 38:14
it out. Let’s all do that. Let’s all think good, taking a step back and looking a little bit at the big picture. So a bunch of schools have gone back to requiring tests. Some were expected. Some, I mean, when University of Miami went back, I was actually surprised, except maybe it had to do with them being in Florida, I don’t know, but in any event, sort of as I was implying before, I find this whole test optional thing to be very nervous making and anxiety making, because it just leads to so much uncertainty. But and then sometimes a school will be test optional, but then you’ll look on the common data set, and you’ll see 80% of the accepted freshmen took the test. So to me, I’m like, not so much test optional. It’s a little bit of a Fibber right there. What’s your opinion about the future of test optional? It seems like some schools have committed, but I don’t know, what do you what do you see happening in the next few years?

Sean Quinn 39:06
You know, with the pandemic, over 2000 US universities went test optional. And I think, you know, the last year and a half we’ve seen a lot of high profile, you know, competitive universities go back to test mandatory, but you know, even in that window where they were test optional, like, exactly what you’re saying, Abby, there’s this kind of doubt or uncertainty. Like, what does that mean for this university, for this student, and depending on your high school and your demographics and and your peers, like, are your peers submitting scores? Well, then should I be submitting scores? If my peers are at this school? There was always this kind of uncertainty about about it and I but I think there’s always going to be a future for test optional. I think the majority of US universities will stay test optional. I think it remains a great option for underrepresented. Populations for underrepresented high schools, for international students coming from underrepresented international curriculums that schools are not familiar with. So I, I think you know, taking all of that into account like it’s going to be around, but there are many students that test optional is not so optional, right? And they do expect scores from from certain types of students coming from certain kinds of high schools. You know that they know know of, and that applies to international high schools too, that they they’re familiar with. It’s that they’re on their radar and and if everyone from that school has traditionally been submitting scores, then maybe there is more pressure for you to submit a score. And so I think it’s a good thing that many of these high profile universities are going back to test mandatory, because I think it was a little maybe deceptive or unintentionally disingenuous, yeah, disingenuous to be tested to remain test optional. And I would expect that many of the these highly ranked to these competitive universities to continue to go back to test mandatory, but that there will always be a majority of universities that are test optional, if only also to get more applications. And to see, you know, I mean, most universities are going to be suffering from this, this, this cliff, right? Or this demographic cliff that’s coming, and so they need students applying. They need new students. And so I don’t, I don’t, I think most of them will remain optional.

Lisa Bleich 41:38
Yeah, helpful, actually, just another question. I just made me think about because you work with a lot of international students, and so there’s the demographic cliff, but then there’s perhaps an international Cliff as well. Are you seeing the same interest in US schools among your international clients?

Sean Quinn 41:56
I I’ve been seeing diminishing interest among international clients, because the over the last five years, and this is prior to this administration, but it’s been, you know, it’s been amplified, I guess, in the last six months. Unfortunately, it’s been due to, you know, the rising cost of US universities at the same time, the rising profile of international universities, right, like Bocconi and IE in Madrid and Asada in Barcelona, and the Dutch universities and and their kind of rising profile and prestige and the costs, like at a fraction of the cost of of US universities. So what I’ve been seeing in the last five years is that international students are more and more, only applying to the most highly selective US universities, and saying like, well, if I don’t get into those highly selective universities, I’m not going to pay 100 grand a year. I’d rather go to, you know, pay 20 grand a year at the pony

Lisa Bleich 42:54
No, makes sense. Yeah. So that that that has been happening, we’re seeing similar, I would say that that’s similar, yeah, even among some American students that they just want to go to the top schools, or else they’ll go in state or Joe Public School. Yeah.

Sean Quinn 43:09
And what I’ve seen too, with American students is there it’s opening up that I think is pretty cool. They’re they’re opening up to international universities in a way that I have never seen before, like I had a couple students in Seattle last year that their number one student school was ie in Madrid, the business school, right? And so I thought that was really cool. And then we just saw a report that it will be in our newsletter about UK applications are super up, you know, from US students. So I think that’s a that’s a good thing overall, like us students, being able to, no,

Lisa Bleich 43:44
I agree. Yeah. In fact, I’m trying to get onto a London tour next week to go on visit schools in London, because there is an interest, you know, interested in going, which is why I went to the coney, because I had students that were interested in it, and I wanted to be aware of it and know what it was required for it. So I think it’s important,

Stefanie Forman 44:02
yeah, I think a word that keeps coming up in this discussion, uncertainty, uncertainty, and the past few years, that uncertainty has led to what I think we’ve seen, a rise in anxiety with our students, unfortunately, especially around test taking. So do you have any tips for testing anxiety for students? And also, we have so many students, despite having so many other gifts, they’re just test taking is not their strength. So what strategies do you recommend for those types of students as

Sean Quinn 44:36
well? I mean, our identity is based around this, right? Our name is onsen education. And you know, when I was thinking of like a name, we started off very generically, Quinn tutoring in 2017 because it had nothing else, right? But then I was like, Okay, what? How are we different? How can I think about these tests differently that I think will be effective for students? And what? What I looked at, you know, that I thought was being left out in my experience as a tutor at other companies, and even even privately, was test anxiety and test nerves or stress, or whatever we want to call that, right? Because some people get, I guess, scared off the term by test anxiety, but a nervousness, right that you know, and the other side of knowing the content and the strategies, like being able to implement those content and strategies on, you know, under the inevitable pressure of the official test day experience when you’re with your peers and you have everything that your peers and your teachers and your your your family and your parents and all of these things, unfortunately, have been building and building over the years, right as everybody has more and more exposure to what everybody else is doing around them. And so what I wanted to be really proactive about working on the holistic, a holistic way of of dealing with with test preparation and so onsen, I was, I was in Japan at the time, and I love Japan. It’s my, you know, besides Argentina, my favorite place and so onsen, for those you that might not be familiar, is the natural hot springs of Japan. And so we implement, we started implementing what we call test day coaching, which are practical applications of mindfulness to the tutoring process to help students feel more comfortable and in control on test day. And so we talk about visualizations, breathing techniques, different kind of tools that they can use when nervousness or test anxiety, or whatever form it takes, does creep in on test day. And so in addition to, like, a verbal tutor and a math tutor, all of our students are matched with a test day coach that they meet with, and that’s free and unlimited, and it’s separate from their tutoring, because it needs to be a separate person. And some, some, you know, generally, they’ll meet with students half an hour in the first couple weeks to help them make the most of their tutoring lessons establish objectives, like review at the end of each session. How did they feel about it? What went well? What could be better? And then they also meet with each student as official test day approaches to talk about sleep, schedule, diet, you know, to maximize energy. I mean, no, yeah, amazing, yeah, amazing, yeah, testing, I think so. I think it’s really that, you know, side of it, working on the mindset. You know, going into test phase is really important, and it can turn a student that thought they were not a test taker, not a good test taker, into one and so that to answer your other part of your question. Stephanie, you know, when a student or a parent says, My kid is not a test taker, I really want to, like, kind of push back on that narrative a little bit, because there are some students, of course, that just, you know their standardized testing for a variety of reasons, will never line up with their grades in school and their their demonstrated performance in school, right? But for most students that I’ve seen that have told me they’re not a test taker, they’re not. When we push back on that, we see like, Well, what do you mean by that? Like, did you have a bad have a bad experience? Did you go in unprepared, maybe, and that often is the case. They are there. You know, students that procrastinate and you know they’ve gone into a habit. They’ve built some bad habits over time that has set them up for a tough time at having success on standardized tests. But if we kind of really dig into that and see like, what is this, why are you specifically saying that we can work to help them in that way? And for most students, we have been able to empower them. And you know, test taking is a skill you can learn and prepare for and put hard work in and get better at like any other skill, and we really help to try to dig in. I think that’s really, really important for each individual student to see what’s going on. Okay,

Abby Power 49:15
that is my big takeaway from this, because I when someone has chest anxiety, I certainly empathize, I mean, and I feel for them, and I try to comfort them, you know, and say, Oh, it’s one day your life that it’s doesn’t reflect all the hard work you’ve put into school. And I but honestly, it never occurred to me to tell them that maybe they need to shift their mindset and give it a shot. I mean, I do anyway, because we have, we have to say, Look, you have to prepare for this test. Because you’re applying to college. We don’t have a choice. Yeah, I like the way you frame that. I’m gonna listen to the recording and feel that I want to steal that with my test. Anxious kids, I think that makes so much sense. Okay, in terms of mistakes that students make when approaching the test. So you’ve said, you know, they’ll they’ll do their homework, they’ll prepare in their hoodie in bed and be too comfortable. They then you gave all this good advice about taking the the test day very seriously and modifying their behavior to set themselves up for success. So that’s pretty awesome. So any and then maybe assuming they’re a bad test taker is a mistake. But are there any other mistakes that you see kids making that our families should watch out

Sean Quinn 50:28
for? There? There. There are several, and I’ll try to go through them briefly, because I think one is trying to do everything too fast, right? A lot, a lot of you know, parents come in, they’re like, oh, you know, we have the summer two weeks open, you know? And we want to just fit in everything in two weeks and get sat done August 23 and then it’ll be done, and then

Lisa Bleich 50:52
they’re finished. And also write their essays during that time as well, right that time as well, for that two week time, I

Sean Quinn 50:59
I’ve had very limited success, or I’ve seen students have very limited success with that model, you know, which is the intensive I think it’s always, you know, a little bit at a time, because there’s a limit to how much we can learn in a given day or a given week. And it adds pressure to an already pressure infused system, right? And puts way more pressure on that student than it needs to be. So I would spread it out. Spread it out. The other thing is, you know, not doing the outside work and expecting everything to happen in the tutoring sessions. You know, like I’m so busy, we’re all busy, right? And so I need to have everything happen with my tutor live because of all of these other extracurricular activities and the homework that I have to do, and it’s just really it’s not worth the investment if you’re not going to do the one to one homework to lesson time, because you need to do the outside work, not including as part of the weekly homework time a review of your notes that you’ve Been working on. I think a lot of students will do one or the other. They’ll just read their notes and think that’s doing homework, or they’ll do some practice sessions. But I think the best way to maximize your homework time is to read your notes before doing a practice section, like go through your notes, highlight anything that maybe, oh, it’s been, like, a month or two since we looked at that. I don’t remember what it is, so I’ll highlight that now while I’m reading it, so I know to go over that with my tutor, and then dive in to the homework section while it’s still fresh your notes. And that’s, I think, the best way to do homework, and at a later stage, learning to categorize your own misses, I think is huge, too. And that would be the third part of doing your homework and looking back. And why did I make this mistake? You know? And there’s a there’s a couple ways that I recommend doing it. Maybe the simplest way is, is to time yourself on that question again, you know, and give yourself a minute to do that question. If you can do it in a minute? Well, then it was a careless mistake. Let’s say category one. You know that means you misread something, but you really knew how to do it. And so it’s a careless mistake. And then category two would be okay. I can’t solve it in that one minute. I’ll go back to my notes. I remember what this is for my notes. Okay, it was a memorization issue. Category Two. Category three would be like, I go back to my notes. I’m going through all my notes, and I still can’t figure out what this is. So that’s a new concept or new strategy. That’s category three. And the goal is to show up with your tutoring session say, like, Okay, I did this homework. I made, you know, five careless mistakes, three that I memorize, and then there’s like, six that I really need to go over with you I don’t know, and really have ownership over your mistakes and learn how to learn why, learning why you’re making the mistakes you make, is so empowering. So those are some big ones. I would say, starting too late is a common one. I mean, I just seniors that reach out to us now, you know, and they’ve never taken an SAT or an AC T diagnostic, and they have, you know, very high goals. You know, 1450, plus. Well, that’s hard to to make happen in the window before early decision.

Lisa Bleich 54:21
Those are, that’s, those are such great, great ideas, great tips we always like to end with, like truths and myths. But I feel like you’ve given a few of the myths and the truth you have any more that you’d want to add about test taking. I guess

Sean Quinn 54:35
one, one more mistake maybe would be, I think, or, you know, I would something to avoid is to consider what materials you’re preparing with, you know, I think it’s really important to take a diagnostic test and then your check in points, a practice test with official materials, you know. So, official Blue Book test, you know, official AC T’s, past past papers, past exams. You. Rather than relying on third party materials, third party materials are great for homework, homework and repetitions. You know, there are a lot of really good material we we use third party materials too for homework, but not when scores are attached, right? So diagnostics, practice tests, please, use official, official material, so you can get accurate reads.

Lisa Bleich 55:22
Where can people get those official exams if they don’t get it from

Sean Quinn 55:26
a tutor? So the blue book application has all the s a t, it has seven official S A T practice test. It also has official PSATs, which are great to use as well. There’s also on the College Board website, there’s a question bank of over 2000 official essay T questions, and you can sort for non active questions. That’s what that’s another thing your students should definitely do if they’re using that College Board question bank, sort so that you’re not having you’re not seeing the practice test questions included, because that bank does include all practice test questions, and you don’t, you don’t want to see them before you take the official

Lisa Bleich 56:07
practice Oh, I see so you want to do the non active ones? Yeah, I’ve had students. I had a student who went up like almost 200 points by just re reviewing the practice bank questions. I mean, he worked with the tutor, but then he just kept going over those practice bank questions, and

Sean Quinn 56:24
there’s a ton, yeah, it’s great on the SAT side, that’s it. That’s another big advantage of the digital ACT right now the ACT side, officially, we only have the four in the new book, The 2025 red book that came out. So get that on Amazon if you’re preparing for the ACT. Those are the four official ones. And then there are, you know, past ACT’s you can find online as PDFs as well. And those are useful, again, for homework, but not for practice test purposes. Other myths. Let’s see some families or students will come in and take an official SAT or a CT cold as a diagnostic, meaning, actually go, you know, register for testing, take that and just say, like, oh, that’s, I just wanted to try it out cold. And I think that’s like putting your student, you know, or putting yourself through just the unnecessary pressure and getting a score that is not going to be it’s going to be so far from your potential. If you’ve never seen this test, then why do that? And I think a lot of students still, still do that, preparing for both tests. I think that is you should prepare for both tests. I think that’s a myth. I think you should explore in the diagnostic stage and decide and commit to one test. Sometimes that decision is the wrong one. And in a couple months, you might see, oh, I plateaued on this, and I have to switch to the other one. And that’s okay. And sometimes that’s part of the part of the process, realizing you have to switch fast. But I, I don’t recommend actively, you know, preparing for both of them. I guess the last myth might be certain, test dates are easier

Abby Power 58:04
than others. We hear that all the

Lisa Bleich 58:05
time, scores all the time, right? Oh, all the time, all the time. Oh, yeah, you’re not gonna get as good a score. And everyone takes it in, you know, this month,

Sean Quinn 58:14
everyone takes it in December, yeah, no, no, that’s not, I mean, that’s just not accurate. It’s not going to happen,

Lisa Bleich 58:21
right? And also the, I mean, people always ask about whether or not the October essay T will go towards early decision. I always say yes, but that’s also kind of a myth, that it’s not going to that they won’t be able to use that one for the but they won’t be able to use it. Yeah, exactly my time. Yeah. Yeah. All right, awesome. Any truth, any last minute truths,

Sean Quinn 58:45
colleges only care about your highest score. I think that’s generally true. I mean, you know, in terms of, there’s some students are like, Oh, I’m gonna, you have to show all my scores to the schools. And really that, I think that’s only true of now, like one university Georgetown, is the only one still. So no, I mean, if you have a bad test day, it happens, it’s not the end of the world, and most universities will never see that score, and that’s okay,

Lisa Bleich 59:16
all right. Well, thank you. Thank you, CBMers, for tuning in. Thank you Sean, for such great tips, we will have information for Onsen Education on our website. To catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor, make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!

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