Perfect SAT Score → Shark Tank Deal w/ Mark Cuban

I heard about this show called Shark Tank, and they were doing auditions nearby, so I went to an audition, ended up getting on the show, closed an investment deal with Mark Cuban. He's been an amazing investor advocate and partner for the company ever since. What's it like to work with Mark? You get access directly to Mark Cuban, which is amazing. But you also get access to his Mark Cuban company's team, which manages, you know, a hundred plus portfolio companies, so they have a lot of depth of expertise in helping you with everything from marketing to website to tech to accounting to finance. Everything that you could possibly need is their at your disposal.

It's really a dream come true to work with Mark and be this close to him. Kind of just being, you know, this kid that started a test prep company from bootstrapping. Dr. Sean Patel, a Shark Tank winner, who earned a perfect score on the SAT, and then went on to secure a partnership with Mark Cuban on the Shark Tank show. This changed everything for Sean's test prep company. Their new joint venture has helped over 100,000 students raise their standardized test scores and earn millions in scholarships. Now, while their firm competes with test prep gurus, our sponsor and a company that I founded, I can't deny that Dr.

Patel is an innovator and just generally a great guy. So we're not going to let a little bit of competition get in the way of celebrating his success and talking about how both of us can help more students in the future. Were you always interested in entrepreneurship as a young person? I never planned to start a test prep company that was definitely not on my career path. I kind of stumbled into that world of entrepreneurship. I spent hundreds of hours in the library studying for the SAT, the PSAT. Not everybody knows this. They know your Shark Tank story, but they don't all know that YouTube wrote a book together.

The book's called Kid Entrepreneur for any parents out there who have kids. I highly recommend it. What do you say to those kids that are questioning the value of college today? Yeah, I would say. Welcome back to the next Stanley show where we talk to bold thinkers, top performers and unconventional thinkers who are redefining success. Today's guest is Sean Patel, entrepreneur, dermatologist, author, Shark Tank success story, and business partner of none other than Mark Cuban. Sean turned a perfect SAT score into a multi-million dollar test prep company, a story eerily similar to my own. So we're going to have plenty to discuss here.

And today he's going to share what he's learned about how small changes can spark massive educational transformation. This episode is brought to you ironically by Test Prep Gurus, also a national test prep company and college consulting firm helping students to crush the SAT and the ACT and earn admission to their dream colleges. And as many of you know, I am the CEO of that company. But while Sean and I might be competitors on some level, I believe in learning from the best and the innovators in our field. And Sean is definitely one of those people. And so I am really excited for this conversation today.

Sean, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Nick. It's a pleasure and congratulations on all your success as well. And it's always fun to talk to other people in the test prep industry and learn from each other. And yeah, excited to chat. Of course, we're going to touch on a lot more than just test prep, but I think you and I share that common thread. So happy to dive in wherever the conversation takes us today. Fantastic. Well, let's let's start with your journey. Where did you grow up? Were you always interested in entrepreneurship as a young person? Yeah, it's a it's a great question.

And I would say the answer to that question is yes and no. So I'd say I'm going to give you a two part answer in that I never plan to start a test prep company that was definitely not on my career path. I kind of stumbled into that world of entrepreneurship. And the way that that happened was actually out of facing a lot of rejection and failure to publish a book. So, you know, I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, which if I'm sure many people know is not exactly the best place for education. And so, you know, I went to public schools in Vegas. We had a 37% high school dropout rate. Parents didn't go to college in the United States.

I was a good student though. My parents valued education a lot. I got straight A's, but I was not a very good standardized test taker. A lot of people think I probably you are naturally gifted test takers. And for me, that certainly wasn't the case. On my very first SAT, I barely got above average. And so I spent hundreds of hours in the library studying for the PSA. My 10th grade year, my 11th grade year, eventually my 12th grade year in October got that perfect SAT score that you mentioned. Completely changed my life, got into some of the nation's top universities, got a half a million dollars in scholarship offers.

I ended up taking a quarter million of that to the University of Southern California, not too far from where you're located. And got to go to school totally debt-free, didn't have to pay a dime for tuition, housing books, anything like that. So that was pretty amazing that the financial aid office at USC was writing me a check every semester to go there. And so I wanted to help other students achieve those dreams, get that free school just like I did. And so I was like, you know, it would be awesome if a student who got a perfect score wrote a book about their journey, how they did it, their strategies, etc.

And I didn't see a lot on the market at the time. I think now there are some, but at the time from like someone who had done that. And so I pitched 100 literary agents and publishers on this amazing, what I thought was an amazing idea in college. And you know, this was about 15 years ago. And so back then self publishing wasn't a big thing yet to go through a major publisher if you wanted to be a big player in the space. And so what happened was I got rejected by 100 different literary agents and publishers. And I'm sure, you know, yeah, it's crazy. And it's not surprising though, because everyone had hesitation.

You know, this is a super competitive space. You don't have a platform to write such a book. How are you going to compete with, you know, the Princeton reviews, the Kaplan's of the world. And so that's when I really took destiny into my own hands. I decided, okay, I've already written hundreds of pages of content. Let me just take all that content and I'll do, you know, a course once it was just supposed to be a one time summer course before I went to medical school. And what ended up happening is in that first cohort of students that I taught, which was 18 students over the summer, they had an average score improvement of 376 points on their SATs.

And Nick, you know, how that how high that can take a student or change their lives from 50th percentile to 90th percentile. And so this was, of course, on the 2,400 version of the SAT. So it was a little bit easier to get those giant score improvements. But, you know, I had parents and students who wanted more courses. We began training other instructors to teach my curriculum and, you know, the word of mouth just grew from there. And usually that's the story of any good test prep company. I'm sure that's yours, Nick, is a lot of good word of mouth. And so that's really what kind of drove the growth of the company for many years.

But after about 5 years, I wanted to take it to the next level. I heard about this show called Shark Tank, and they were doing auditions nearby. So I went to an audition, ended up getting on the show, closed an investment deal with Mark Cuban. And he's been an amazing investor advocate and partner for the company ever since. So that's kind of my entrepreneurship journey. But I say I was always an entrepreneur because I started with this whole book idea that I got rejected and failure. And then I pivoted in entrepreneurship. But I always had that entrepreneurial kind of itch, I would say, you know, as a elementary school student, I always, you know, people were trading Pokemon cards.

I started selling them as a middle school student. I started selling Burns music CDs to my friends. In high school, I figured out how to sell like iPods and Jordans and all kinds of stuff and then eBay. So it's like, I always had this knack for buying and selling. And so I'd say, yes, but I didn't realize that entrepreneurship could be a career. You know, I became a doctor and I'm very grateful for my med school training. But I think my real love is entrepreneurship. There's so much good stuff in that story. I mean, one, I can really understand the value of what it takes to do it on your own to start with a, a middling score and then move up to a perfect score.

In many ways, your story is like mine, but just a little bit better. And the, because when when I did it, I was in graduate school and there was a professor who said, Hey, let's these don't really seem like intelligence tests. Let's see how much this little cohort of students could move their scores up. I was the only one who really nerded out on it though. And I was like, I am going to study this. And I'm really going to see if I could hit a perfect score. I got obsessed with doing that. And they were playing by the hour for the study, which helped. And, and ended up getting there. But I feel like that you did it in high school is more impressive because I was a bit older and you got to reap some, some serious scholarship benefits from which, which I did not.

And then funny enough, I mean, it was so wild that like number one, there's a bunch of coincidences between us because it was literally last week someone said, Hey, you're going to be a little bit older. Like someone said, Hey, you know, you should interview that guy on the show that went on Shark Tank with the test prep company. And then really, Assistant reaches out, I mean, within 48 hours. And I was like, this is that might be the universe telling me. Yeah, that's some bad. That's some bad. Festation stuff happening. Yeah. Right. Right. And then funny enough, I mean, just one more coincidence was way back.

I think it was 2016. You were on the show. Yeah, that's so much. Yeah. That's the show. Right. And I was, I, we, the company was running that time and someone put the idea in my head trying to go on Shark Tank. I was a little late to the game though because your episode aired right after that. And then I was like, well, they're not going to do two test prep companies. That's just silly. And so I think that was the advantage. They hadn't had a test prep company yet. So they wanted one. And yeah. But yeah, I guess I just beat you to the punch just barely. Yeah. And honestly, Mark Cuban would have been the, you know, the dream guy to get to work with.

So I, I didn't want to absolutely ask about that. What's it like to work with, with Mark? Because not everybody knows this. They know your Shark Tank story, but they don't all know that you two wrote a book together, which I am in the process of sharing with my children. I think it's fantastic. It's a book on entrepreneurship for kids. So let's, let's talk about the book. Let's talk about what it's like to work with Mark. I just want to hear all about. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I ended up, as I mentioned, getting a deal with Mark Cuban and he was actually, I kind of did the same thing that you did, which is I manifested the deal.

I, that was the one guy that I wanted prior to the show. And, you know, everyone else, if you've seen my episode goes out when Mark comes back in at the end. So it was pretty crazy that it ended up working out that way that I got the shark that I wanted, but he's the best shark to work with in my opinion. I know he's leaving the show now, but he won, you get access directly to Mark Cuban, which is amazing. But you also get access to his Mark Cuban company's team, which manages, you know, a hundred plus portfolio companies. So they have a lot of depth of expertise in helping you with everything from marketing to website to tech to accounting to finance.

Everything that you could possibly need is there at your disposal. And then Mark's an amazing, like, he literally, you can email him at any as a shark tank entrepreneur. And I think he does this for all of his portfolio companies. If you email him at any time of the day, you get a response within like five, ten minutes. It's insane. And he answers a thousand emails a day. But he does not do meetings. So that's a big thing. It's not like you can just hop on a Zoom with Mark. But I do see him approximately once a year. We did an event at the Obama event, a Bama Foundation last year. And, you know, it was, it's pretty cool.

I would say the book though that you mentioned, it really came out very interestingly. You know, we were thinking about what else can we do related to education. And we had an offer from a publisher to write a book on entrepreneurship. And I was like, Hey, Mark, you know, I'm working on this book. Would you, you know, write the forward for it? And he said, you know what, just put me as a co-author. I'll help write some chapters. And the book's called Kid Entrepreneur for any parents out there who have kids. I highly recommend it because when I was growing up, it kind of goes back to the original story, which is, I didn't really, I didn't know.

I didn't realize that you could be an entrepreneur. You know, like I thought that you either have to be like a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, the traditional paths. Now I know it's like YouTube or Tiktokker. There's all these other ones. But entrepreneur is, you know, a real career path. And that's what we tried to teach people in this, or teach kids in this book, which is entrepreneurship is fantastic. One of the best ways to get into it is what I said earlier, which is, you know, buy and sell things, start little businesses when you're in elementary school, middle school, high school, because it gets you in the habit of learning to sell, learning to create a great product or service.

And once you hone those skills as an adult, I mean, the sky, as you know, the sky is the limit. And so, yeah, I think it was a great passion of both of ours. I'm glad that we were able to do it. And yeah, it's just, it's really a dream come true to work with Mark and be this close to him kind of just being, you know, this kid that started a test prep company from bootstrapping really as similar to you. Yeah, this could have been unique. It could have been. I'm glad it's you though. And I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing now. So I think I think it's all picked out for everybody. Of course. No, of course.

I wish I had a successful podcast, by the way. I would say I'm having more fun doing this than, I mean, I'm just excited every day to get to do it. And I'm grateful, of course, for test prep gurus as well and still excited to get up and do the work with that company. But this has been a real surprise. And I don't get to have as many surprises in my 40s as I did when I was in my 20s. Yeah. And yeah, it's really, it's just been, it continues to be so fun. Yeah, it's going to be such a great people. Like, yeah, it's, it's great because obviously I can tell that you love having conversations with people.

And then on top of that, you are excited about it. But on top of that, for your own like asset building, I just saw podcasts made like $6 billion last year double what it was expected. So the growth trajectory of long form podcast is just incredible. So congratulations to all your success. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. It does seem like it's an adult to the 15, 30 second clips. We're all getting hammered with on our phones all the time. Yeah. Like take a breath and listen to two people resonate and chat with each other, but not be in a rush to hit somebody with a piece of information. Yeah.

I didn't want to know one of my favorite things about the book is, and it's right there in the intro is how you defined entrepreneurship for a kid. But I think it's a useful definition for any person, no matter what their age is, which is helping someone plus getting paid to help them. So that could be helping someone walk their dogs and they pay you to do that, helping someone who is thirsty with a glass of lemonade and they pay you to do that. And that is such a nice frame of reference, I think, especially for a kid, but for adults as well, because a lot of kids think of entrepreneurship right now as, oh, I'll go be a YouTuber and I'll be really cool, or I'll be an influencer on TikTok.

And that's not, in my opinion, quite the right mindset to come into it with. But if they thought, oh, I'm going to go on to one of these platforms to help people with X, Y and Z. That's down. That's a good mindset to take into that endeavor. Yeah, 100%. I agree. And, you know, I think it's so funny because the reason I was originally when I was a kid interested in becoming a doctor, and I think a lot of kids is because you want to help people, right? And so what's interesting about entrepreneurship, it's not that different. You are trying to help people. And what's really cool about entrepreneurship is you can help people at scale, right?

I've helped 100,000 students now with PrEP Expert. I don't think I could see 100,000 patients as a dermatologist, you know? So it's just the scale that you can help through, you know, leverage in businesses and the amount of people you can help. And it's just, this is the best thing about our industry. I would say, Nick and Test Prep is we get to help people change their lives. And, you know, my favorite part is getting those texts, getting those emails that I'm sure you get tons of as well of, you know, my score improved X. I got a $100,000 scholarship. I got into my dream school, XYZ. It's like, wow, that makes you feel so, so good.

Right. So, and that's in our industry and I know that well. But that's in any business. If you're doing the right thing and helping people, you get those messages from your customers. And that is so rewarding on top of obviously making money to do it. Absolutely. And I have talked about it internally many times. Like we're as a team, we're lucky to work in a place where we get to hit home runs is how we describe it. Where people are really grateful for how we are helping them and have a chance to express that. And it's just different than if you say you're an attorney who's going after your bankruptcy attorney who's going after people who are in trouble with their finances.

I mean, I'm sure there are wins there too. I don't mean to, you know, pick on those folks in that profession, but probably a lot fewer of them. And it's good to be grateful for when you get to work in a place where you really do. It's obvious how you're helping people and get to do it at scale, like you said. And I heard, by the way, love your idea of how you, your firm now you're striving to do over the next 10 years, a billion dollars in scholarships for your students. I thought that's a beautiful vision that you set right there for everybody. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't put two and two together, which is why I tried to string it together for people, which is the actual financial help that we can produce with test score outcomes.

And it's more than ever now. And it's just incredible. You know, we've catalogued over the last 10 years of PropX, where we've done over a hundred million dollars. And that's just what we know about from people saying, and it adds up pretty quickly, because when a student gets full ride scholarship, that's worth, you know, two, three hundred thousand dollars in some cases. So you get to millions pretty quickly. And so I was like, okay, let's put up a challenge to try to get to a billion. And I'm really excited. We're getting really good traction. Obviously, it's only been one year since I put up the mission.

But we haven't hit the full hundred million in one year, but we've hit tens of millions, which tells me that if we can just exponentially grow this over the next 10 years, we might be able to actually achieve that mission. And even if we fall short, I think it's, you know, I think it's still a great thing that we're doing for parents to do, especially with the cost of college, which, by the way, insane. We are at two hundred thousand dollars for the average private university, a hundred thousand dollars for the average public university. Student debt's at one point seven trillion. You know, there's got to be a solution here.

I like that some of the colleges now stepping in. I know Harvard, MIT announced, you know, free tuition for anyone making under 200,000. I think UT Austin did under a hundred thousand. We need the colleges to step in. We need to make it more affordable to go to college because what ends up happening is you get this media backlash now towards college saying, you know, is it worth it? You know, you don't need to go to college, et cetera. And you and I know all the stats show that it is worth it. You have higher earning potential. You have lower unemployment rates. You earn over a million dollars additional over the course of your lifetime.

But when you inflate the cost of college to 200, 300,000, I can see why people are hesitant. I can see why the ROI is not there unless you reduce that net cost down. And so, you know, scholarships is one way that we tangibly do it in the test prep industry. There are plenty of other ways that we need colleges themselves to do that we need to do. And if we all work together and bring down the cost college, you know, the sky is a limit for how much students can get from an ROI potential from their college experiences. Yeah, I am in 100% agreement with all of that. And one of the things I wanted to dive into with you is one thing that we're seeing on the ground right now are a lot of parents still very much, especially if they have the means of their own.

They have the means to afford it. They want their kids. They expect their kids naturally are going to go to a four-year college and let's try to get into a good one. But there is a growing movement fueled by some very popular channels on social media that talk about college as basically a scam. Not that I agree with these channels, but I see them having a strong influence on students today. And what do you say to those kids that are questioning the value of college today? Yeah, I would say ignore the noise. There's a lot of noise on social media around influencers, channels, media, putting the idea that college is a scam or that college is not worth it into the ether.

And if you look at any data, long-term data on whether a college education is worth it, the answer is yes. As I've mentioned, you will earn on average $1 million in additional earnings over the course of your lifetime. That's the average. Many people are in $5 million, $10 million additional over the course of their 40-year careers. On top of that, your unemployment chances are half. And I anticipate with artificial intelligence that that number is going to be much higher in terms of your unemployment rate if you don't have a college degree. And I'm not saying that college degree is going to shelter you necessarily from the unemployment that AI is going to create, but I do encourage students now to at least minor take some courses in artificial intelligence, machine learning, get some experience no matter what you're studying, because it's going to touch every single industry.

And if you have that experience, or you could say, I did a major, let's say you majored in political science, but I did a minor in AI, like boom, you are set. You're going to be wanted at all of these industries and all of these companies that are, which is every company, by the way, that's integrating AI tech into their workflows. But if you don't have that, if you don't have a college degree, it's going to be really, really tough. All those easy jobs that are administrative are going to be gone. And so I'm generally an optimist on AI. I think it's going to create a lot of new economies, new jobs that we can't even anticipate.

But that's the point of a college degree. It's literally something that's often general purpose, general use, so that you can adapt, be competitive in the workplace in order to get those jobs. Those new jobs are going to be created. Yeah, I'm optimistic on it as well. But I do think it's useful for young people today to think through how can I start to future proof myself and my career a little bit? How might AI affect the world? And how can I build some skills that AI is not going to easily be able to replace? Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, I know you did just list a few ideas there, but just run a little deep with that one.

Yeah, I have a couple of ideas that I've been advising students that I think as we brainstorm with our students as we think through with parents, what the next stages will be. For a long time, Nick, I'm sure you know this, the computer science was hot. Like that was the thing to do is go be a programmer, be a software developer that we saw that actually being more popular than going into medicine or law for the past 10 years. Now, that's kind of in question because AI can do a lot of the coding, the programming, et cetera. So what I'm advising my parents and students, a prep expert to do now, is think about what AI can't replace no matter what field you're going into.

So if you're going into medicine, don't become a radiologist. Become a surgeon, right? I mean, so like robots will get there, but it'll take them much, much longer. If you're going to become an engineer, don't do software engineering. Instead, do robotics or mechanical engineering so that you can be part of the millions help build the millions of robots that they're going to integrate AI into. And so instead of doing computer science back to my earlier point, do artificial intelligence or machine learning. You know, that's how you want to think about it. To your point, future proof, those are just some, a few ways that I think parents and students listening, you might want to think about for your own future.

Now, to backtrack slightly, one question that I had for you just in the course of this conversation, how did you balance becoming a board certified dermatologist, which is extremely difficult to pull that off? I mean, it was my understanding. I was speaking with a doctor friend recently about different paths through medicine. And he mentioned how few dermatologists there are, how competitive it is. I mean, that's not small potatoes to become a dermatologist these days. And yet you also maintained this company that continued to grow through that time. And how can one human pull all that off? Yeah, the secret is I didn't do it by myself.

I have to give a lot of credit to my team. I have an excellent. And I'm sure it sounds like you do as well, Nick. You have to have an excellent team around you. No matter what. The secret is your entrepreneur. Yeah, it is. It is. It really is. I have great operators, great customer service, sales folks, tech folks. And, you know, it wasn't always like that. I would say you have to figure out who the right people to have around you are, but they really helped me throughout the years of training to be able to balance the business. And then as a business owner or CEO, you have to know where your strategic value is because in the beginning, you're doing everything.

Like I was taking the calls. I was doing the email. Right. And then it's like, eventually, you come off the calls, you come off the emails. And then for me now, as the CEO of prep expert, my main value driver is going to be one, developing the strategies, the curriculum, the content. That's, I think, is always like that's how the bread and butter of the company was originally created. And so I don't want to give that an outsource that. And then two is going to be the management of really the marketing sales force. So really, it's like product and then marketing and sales. And that's really every business is like the two keys are like, develop a great product or service and then figure out how to get it in front of people and sell it.

And if those are the two keys, so that's what I focus my time on. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was Novall Robicon who said, there's a lot of people who can build and there's a lot of people who can sell. But if you can build and sell, you will be an unstoppable force. Yeah. I love that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love Novall. First of all, I love that you brought them up. Yeah. That's what I try to model myself as an entrepreneur because I realize the best entrepreneurs in the world, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, whoever it is, it's Steve Jobs. They could build, well, I guess Steve Jobs maybe not build, but make a build and market and sell.

I know it's more Steve Wozniak that did that for the building. But yeah. But typically, if you can build and you can sell, and that's a hard skill set for any, you know, even for me, I'm not a natural. I'm an introvert. I'm not a natural marketer or seller. So the building came really naturally. Sitting in a room, writing a bunch of content curriculum. That was very natural for me, the building, but I had to teach myself over the years to become better at marketing, selling because you don't have a business without it. Right. Well, and I think that's a key entrepreneurial skill as well, which is to understand you can build new strengths, new skills.

Okay. The selling doesn't come naturally, or maybe it's the building that doesn't come naturally, whatever your situation is. Work at it. Be consistent and intentional about it. You can build those skills up over time and tell good stories to help spread the word about your business, or if it's building that content because you're already good at interacting with people. Yeah, there are all things we can learn. There's actually a lot of similarities to preparing for a test to building a business. Right. I mean, when you prepare for a test, you work on your weaknesses and you really strengthen them.

And we were just talking about working on our weaknesses and building a business. It's funny because I actually think there's a lot of people in the general public kind of look down on test prep. Like, oh, you're just prepping for a test. It doesn't really add a lot of value. And I'm like, actually, I learned, you know, when I was prepping for a test in high school, I learned about time management. I learned about working on my week. I learned how to focus and not pull out Facebook and TikTok or Instagram. It's like, you learn all these other meta skills in test prep that are that so, like, I feel like my ability to focus now in my business.

A lot of that I learned when I was 17 years old prepping for that. And it's like, that was a transferable skill, which a lot of people don't realize. It's very, very useful. Well, I, okay, so I have this theory and you will understand it. So I'm still not a fan of the standardized tests themselves. So I understand all those criticisms of just working on a test that doesn't give us crystal clear insights into somebody's capacity for the future or even what their current skill levels are. Yeah. But the, it is standardized tests have this unique property, which is you have a test that is repeatable, right?

There's, there is no test in school that you get to take more than once because it would take so much work to, if, even if an English or math teacher wanted to do this, to create 10 to 20 exams of the same difficulty level. They'd have to do statistical norming to make sure they're at the same difficulty level. And the S-T and the ACT provide that. So you have a student can come in. It's like lifting weights, right? If they can only bench 150 pounds on day one and then they don't do any work, they will only be able to bench 150 pounds a month later. But if they start putting in the work, suddenly more weight goes up or on the S-A-T or ACT same difficulty level, but suddenly they score higher and you can crack their understanding a little bit where they go, well, I, I really can improve at this thing that they may have thought was an intelligence test.

You're, you're opening up their mind as what's possible in terms of skill development. And that opens the doors to all these other transferable skills, like the ones you mentioned. And it can be transformative for that student's whole approach to life after that. And I think that's what, where the utility of those exams really is on a, on a just student facing level. Yeah. Look, I totally agree with you. I don't, I, I'll be the first one to tell you that I do not agree with the S-H here, the ACT in terms of testing intelligence. But that's the wrong premise to approach it. Of course, it's not. Of course, it's not, you know, it's not telling you how smart you are.

No, it's telling you how well you can prepare for an exam. But that's actually pretty valuable, which is, you know, in life, you have to prepare for a business pitch or a sales pitch or you have to prepare for a marathon. I mean, there's all kinds of things you prep for in life, right, that don't necessarily tell you how smart you are or how good you are, et cetera. But it's, it's a, it's a practice, right? And so the, what I would say is yes, that's a T and ACT do not measure intelligence. But that's not what they're meant to do. They're meant to test to your point how well you can prepare for a particular standardized test, which by the way, it is more valuable than ever because there has been so much great inflation in the schools that, you know, half of all kids, and this is a statistical fact, half of all kids, I think it's 47% of high school seniors graduate within a average.

On top now, let's layer on top of something that's brand new that people aren't even talking about, AI. So now there's literally an app called cheat on everything. So you could literally cheat your way through high school, through every essay, through every math problem. And so how do you gauge in any standard form, how well someone is prepared for college, there's literally no other measure left. And so that's why you're seeing, I personally believe that's a big reason you're seeing a resurgence of standardized testing among elite institutions, but even non elite institutions. I mean, you're saying this plays like University of Texas, University of Miami per do reinstate standardized testing.

And I think they're all seeing the tread and the writing is on the wall. They were actually helpful. Because if you take away standards, I mean, it's a slippery slope. Absolutely. No doubt. I mean, we can all understand how the college essay is losing value when everybody's going to use Chad GPT to perfect it or write it for you. And the great inflation is a massive problem. And we're, for several years now, are seeing the trickle down from the top institutions down through the rest of the college ecosystem, a return to standardized testing. And even those schools that proclaimed to be test optional, we certainly see how the data kids are getting in at much higher rates when they submit a score.

And I think it was the University of Missouri. I'm going to, I'll put a note in the, in the show notes, if I, if I'm getting the college wrong, I'm going to have to look it up again. But their dean of financial aid said, well, we would return to requiring the scores, except it would be financially disadvantageous to do that. And then the, somebody said, well, why is that? And he said, because we've seen such an uptick in applications since we went test optional. And so perfect example of the institution knows that there's useful information on who to admit and who not to based on those standardized scores.

But they have a financial incentive to say they're test optional so that more kids will apply, which is a bit disingenuous. But I understand every organization's got to make ends meet. And so yeah, I mean, even in this test optional landscape, it's clearly. Yeah, I want to, I want to dispel that whole test optional theory by parents and students because they hear it all the time. Like, it's optional. There's been plenty of studies. I think the biggest one that I saw was from another test prep company called Compass Education Group. And it showed like it was a two to three X higher acceptance rate when you have a test score versus when you don't have a test score.

They looked at, I want to say like 30 or 40 universities. And those are the universities that publish the data or will at least tell you, I bet you it's far higher than that because most universities are not publishing what's my acceptance rate for students who have a test score, what's my acceptance for students who don't have a test score. And so on top of that, I mean, there's, there's so there's billions of dollars in scholarships that students with test scores are getting. That students without test scores are not getting. So there's just so, I want to dispel like, oh, I'm applying a university that's test optional.

One, you'll have a higher acceptance rate, two scholarships, three, it's probably not going to be test optional for very long given the resurgence that you're saying. So like if you're a ninth grader, tenth grader, there's no question that you got to take these exams. Well, yeah, and what I'm seeing right now, I mean, we work on a close basis with a number of private schools and pretty much all the private schools have significant resources. And in those schools, the message from the school is clear. They say, Hey, we're back to testing just like in the old days where there's every advantage to be gained so everybody should be taking a test.

And then going through that process. And then in the public schools, we work with schools of, of all kinds of different resource levels. And the well resourced ones say the same thing as the private schools, but it's the under resourced public schools. And it's not any faults of theirs. But they're the ones saying, well, if it says test optional, they must be test optional. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. And it's just a matter of them not having the time and energy because some of these counselors have 500 to 1000 students they have to take care of. They've got to deal with mental health concerns.

They've got to deal with social issues with helping families that are in distress. And that information hasn't trickled down to those schools, but it's great to have someone like you come on to help buttress this message. Yeah. If you're at one of those schools, well, take a cue from these really high resourced schools, they know what's going on. They're looking at the data and they are advising their students accordingly. Yeah, I'm seeing the same thing. When I talked to private schools three years ago, they said, Oh, none of our kids are taking tests because well, they're just optional. And now it's the total opposite, you know, but I would just advise parents, students listening, do your own research.

Don't. I wouldn't listen always to the advice of the counselor. You know, I was at one of those schools of 500,000 kids and my counselor said, don't worry about the SAT till junior year in the spring. And that's generally the advice most counselors give. I think it's horrible advice because you're going to miss the PSAT, which is in October of your junior year. So, you know, you've got to take in. That's my general advice on everything is like, you've got to take it in your own hands, whether it's college, whether it's test prep, whether it's your career or your life. You're responsible. And so don't, you know, you can have advisors, you can have mentors, but get a vast variety of opinions before listening to anyone.

Sean, I want to get your thoughts on this from the college point of view. What do you think needs to change in terms of admissions and what is being taught in higher education? To better align with this new world we're entering with the rise of AI, all of the entrepreneurship opportunities that are available to all of us now. There are a lot of bottlenecks that are gone, like you're publishing stories, a great example where when you were young, it was not possible to self publish a book. Now you read stories all the time about someone who self published and they sold millions of copies and got their ideas out there.

And whether it's YouTube or a podcast, like a lot of those gatekeeping mechanisms are gone. And so it's a world of opportunity. But how does college need to change to help prepare kids for that? Yeah. So I think I'll answer the first part quickly, which is the how does college need to change their admissions? I think, I mean, I'm biased here, but I think they need to go merit based admissions merit first. And then the University of Texas just released this whole plan on how they're valuing standardized test scores, then GPAs, then extracurricular, you know, really go merit more than anything else.

MIT was the first university that brought test scores back and they're the most research based university in the world. There's a reason for that. Make it very merit forward for admissions, especially with AI convoluting things significantly now. Now, what do they need to change in terms of their education? I think they need to teach three key areas. One is going to be artificial intelligence. Of course, we've been talking a lot about that teach AI machine learning. Stay on top of the latest trends. So like you can't have a curriculum that you're teaching in 2024 that you're going to teach in 2027.

It's got to stay ever evolving and changing because AI changes literally on a monthly basis. So AI machine learning has to be taught almost as a core course, honestly. I think at least every student should be taking it in their university. If not earlier in high school would be ideal. The second would be teach entrepreneurship. Or before I get to entrepreneurship, the second one would be personal finance. So you got to teach personal finance investing. I think that actually helps insulate you a little bit from the effects of AI because AI is going to inflate away a lot of earning potential. So how do you combat that?

Well, if you're invested in the market and you've learned about investing earlier on in your life, you'll be able to capture those productivity and financial gains of AI across the 500 best company, S&P 500 in the United States. I think that's a big one. And then the third is entrepreneurship. I think back to my book, back to your background, my background entrepreneurship is so liberating financially. It makes you purpose driven. It makes you happier in so many different ways. Some of the entrepreneurs, and now it's hard. Don't get me wrong. It's hard. There's no better place to test entrepreneurship like when you're in college.

And I'm speaking on this being, I started my business in college. So it's a perfect playground because you have nothing to lose. It's not like you're trying to feed your family when you're 18, 19, 20 years old. That's the best playground. They have to start more accelerators, more entrepreneurship classes. College should really double down on this because one of the benefits that college offers is community and in person interaction. You're going to see less and less in that as more people live online. They live on YouTube and podcasts and TikTok. I think people are going to crave in person experiences.

And so leverage that by having in person entrepreneurial workshops where students can gather, collaborate, learn, build, test. That can be huge for any college. And then the amount of companies that could come out of colleges that are AI first machine learning. I'm working with a company right now. There's two kids who are a pan. They dropped out. They're starting at this cool AI startup. I mean, there's just so much potential for colleges to not have their kids drop out like those two kids. But actually, if they got college credit for starting an AI startup or starting an entrepreneurial venture, etc.

would make a lot of sense. So anyway, I got on my soapbox there a little bit, but that's what I would recommend. Yeah. No, I love those ideas. That's great. And you know what? I do go back slightly. I wrote a note to myself because I didn't jump on this. But I had never heard of that app that you mentioned. Cheat. What was it? Cheat everything? Oh, cheat on everything. Yeah. Cheat on everything. I don't know if that's the name on that app. I forgot the exact name of the app, but that's what it's known as. But the it's actually, I think it was founded by you have to look it up exactly because I don't have it in front of me right now.

But it was founded by a student who went to Columbia and was using AI to, I think, cheat on everything. And then he got kicked out. And so he just was like, I'm going to double triple down on this. So you can, it's basically, I mean, it's like any generative AI, chat, GPT, everything, but it's modeled around being undetectable. So there are, you know, turn it in.com and there's there can detect AI sometimes. But in this case, he's literally developed an AI to be undetectable. So that's why he's calling it the cheat on everything app because your teacher can run it through an AI detector and it won't be detected.

So it's getting kind of crazy out there. Everyone having the education space. But definitely something to look into. You know, I did, I did have a question for you here. I wanted to, to follow up on this because I saw there was a, a post you put up on LinkedIn, which I thought was had a really interesting stat in it. And I think it speaks to some broader trends that we have, have touched on, but I'd like to get your, your thoughts on it. You said 25% of low income students don't send in scores to test optional schools versus roughly 6% of high achieving high income students. And let's talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, so it goes back to the misconception that under resource underfunded and low income schools believe that test optional universities are actually test optional. And that's a huge disservice to the population because with these test optional universities are not telling you is one, they're acceptance rates for students who have test scores are much higher, sometimes two to three times higher. Not for every school, but almost every school. And then the second thing that they're not telling you is, Oh, we have this full tuition scholarship or half tuition scholarship or quarter tuition scholarship.

By the way, 85% of people who win these scholarships have test scores, right. And so it's huge disservice. It's a lack of education. It's a, you know, it's almost like a marketing thing. I mean, I get it in COVID, you know, students literally had to be six feet apart. You couldn't have testing centers, but we're now almost five over five years past COVID. You know, the restrictions are gone. Students can test and they need to test. I think honestly it's a great measure of. Attention span. Attention span is, you know, just shrinking and shrinking to your point earlier about getting hit with those short reels all day long.

And we've got to teach our kids how to have longer attention spans. Otherwise, it's just going to be dopamine dopamine hits all day. Brain gets fried. And so in the act of preparing for these exams, what happens? Well, your student is forced to take mock exams that are two hours, three hours long. And so they are now forced to focus on something that is not tick tock, that is not Instagram that, you know, can train their brain and combat against all of this short form dopamine hits that we are getting all the time. And I'm glad that, you know, you I didn't really think about it. Podcasts are another great form of content that can help students do that.

So I'm sure you've heard of notebook, Alam. I recommend that for my students, but we've got to get away from the quick hit sport. Attention draining society we're in and, you know, testing, podcast, those are things to get people go on a long walk. Without your phone. Those are small things we can do to do that. Really agree with that because I think to tie a few of the things we've discussed together, one of the ways to build skills, one of the crucial aspects of how to build skills that AI won't be able to replace is to learn deeply about what it is you're interested in. It is impossible to learn deeply in tiny little increments.

You've got to be able to focus and concentrate for long periods of time to really achieve long term retention, apply what you learn in one domain to other domains, because that's where the creativity and the innovation comes. And a fundamental skill that is now that many students will need to learn that maybe they wouldn't have had to in the in the past, but given our new environment, which is dominated for many young people by social media, learning to focus and concentrate for a long time, can be their superpower, can be an advantage what sets them apart from a lot of competition. And this is a great way to train for that.

Yeah, sure. I mean, it's definitely true. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with you more. I think we have to do more for our kids, our students, and serve them to, you know, I say call it. I call it go from test prep to life prep. So we've got to prep them for life, you know, whether it's building the skills of time management, building the skills of attention, focus. I think they're just going by the wayside right now and we've got to combat it. And, you know, we're in a very niche, very small industry, but I think we can do our part. I would agree with that. Now, Sean, what's next for you? What are you working on now?

And then anyone who wants to find you online? Where can they learn more about you and everything you're doing? Because you're doing, you're doing really good work and trying to make the world a little bit better place through from your place in it. And let's get all that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So for parents and students who want to learn more about me and what I'm doing, our website is prepexpert.com. We offer online SAT and ACT courses. We are working on building now the new ACT as I'm sure you're aware, Nick, and our new platform and new curriculums for that along with the SAT side. We're always trying to make things better.

We're integrating a brand new AI tutor, which is going to be really fun and exciting. That's video-based rather than chat-based. So I'm really excited. I'll send you a demo once we have it ready, Nick. And I would love to see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And so, yeah, prepexpert.com for the parents and students who are interested. And Nick, thanks for having me. Yeah. I know it's a really fun conversation. Absolutely. And I'm really glad that we can do this and share best practices. And because it's funny. I interviewed Ryan Kick, who's the CEO of Revolution Prep. Oh, yeah. And yeah, another person who is in it for the right reasons and is in it to help students and help them become the best version of themselves.

And I think more conversations like this is good for us who are doing this the right way and with the right intentions. And so thank you so much for coming on and just sharing everything. And I think it's really inspirational for kids that are interested in the type of education that we're doing. And then also just students and adults who are interested in entrepreneurship. And it was just an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. I hope parents, students, all your audience got a lot out of it. Whether they're in test prep or high school or whether they're just interested in entrepreneurship.

Hopefully it was a useful conversation. And I think, you know, the world is changing fast. So learning from each other is really, really helpful. So thanks for having me on. Okay, everybody, until next time, ask questions. Don't accept the status quo and be curious.