Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Friday, Thank Gottage, Friday. It's Friday night.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I tell you, no, it's Friday, and it's Ross Kaminski.
I'm KOA eight fifty AM, ninety four to one FM
and on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So I have I have two kids who are of
an age that they will within the next one to
three years, depending on whether they take a gap year
in this sort of thing, be applying to college. And
obviously I haven't applied to college for a long time,
and I'm I'm curious and maybe concerned in a way about, well,
(01:00):
what's changed? What do I need to know? What are
colleges looking for these days? And joining us to help me?
And you understand some of these kinds of questions. Doctor
Sean Patel is a CEO and founder of prep Expert
prepexpert dot com. He's also a practicing medical doctor who
still practices medicine while also while also doing this.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
So, Doc, welcome to KOA. It's good to have you here,
good to be here.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Ross, excited to chat.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So before we get into the college details, I'm kind
of curious what made you, as a practicing medical doctor,
think that they give you this other idea and say,
you know, I need to start this business that's in
a whole different world.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So you know, it all kind of happened by you know,
coincidence almost because when I was in college, I realized
that my SAT score completely changed my life because I
had spent hundreds of hours in the library for the
SAT improving my SAT score six hundred and forty points
to get a perfect SAT score.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Wow, yeah, and completely changing eighteen hundred.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Huh sixteen hundred yeah, well yeah, actually I got twenty
four hundred.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
It used to be out of twenty four hundred for
or ten years. Yeah, so it was even better.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
No, but sixteen hundred yeah, basically the perfect score, and it,
you know, it opened up half a million.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Dollars in college scholarships. I got into top universities.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
And so I wanted to help other students improve their
test scores to get into college and win scholarships. So
it was only supposed to be a one time summer
you know course that I taught, but you know, the
students ended up having an average score improvement of three
hundred and seventy six points in just six weeks in
my first course.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
So it was pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Taking students from the fiftieth percentile, putting them in the
ninetieth percentile. So of course we had parents and students
who wanted more courses. Over the past fifteen years now,
I've trained other instructors to teach my curriculums, and we've
helped over one hundred thousand students improved their test scores,
get into top colleges.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And went over one hundred million dollars in college scholarships.
So it's been quite a journey.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Yeah, that's remarkable.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I probably need to get one of my kids into
into one of your classes. And I thought I was
doing okay because I got eight hundred on my math
part of my SAT. But I only got seven something
on the verbal and I and I and I felt
a little dumb, and.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I and I that's good score. Yeah, well I didn't.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I didn't get into Princeton, so I guess it wasn't
good enough. So anyway, so let let's talk a little bit.
We got about five or six minutes here on what's
going on right now. So there are a couple areas
that I want to ask you about. One relates directly
to to prep expert.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
So there there was a period of.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Time where and I think this was more spurred by
politics than by education, where a lot of schools said,
we don't want to SATs anymore and we don't care
about standardized tests anymore. And then in the past couple
of years there's been the pendul shifted back.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Can you tell us about this?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, so you know, the COVID nineteen pandemic really caused
the shift to many colleges going test optional. And that
was really just because you know, in testing centers you
couldn't you had to be six feet apart, so you
couldn't really have hundreds of students taking the exam.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
It just wasn't feasible.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And then many colleges kept that policy since twenty twenty
for the PA for two three four years. But what
we're seeing now is, to your point, an interesting trend back,
which is places like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, but even
non elite colleges like University of Miami, University of Texas,
all Georgia public universities have reinstated the SAT and ACT
(04:42):
score requirements. And the reason for this is because they
saw worse outcomes for both students and the colleges themselves.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
And so I love that we're going back to a more.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Meritocratus system that's more objective because you know, for the
past few years when colleges were test optional, it was
really hard to predict who was getting in, where it
seemed like it was kind of a crap shooter or lottery.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
It was very random.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But now we're going back to a college admission does
we know it, which is the students with the best grades,
the best test scores, and the best extra curriculars we'll
get into the best universities.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We're talking with doctor Sean Patel. He's CEO and founder
of prep Expert prepexpert dot com.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
He's also a practicing medical doctor.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
At the same time, I read somewhere, I think I
read somewhere. You can tell me if I have this wrong,
although I think you just said something similar that schools
have found that standardized test scores are a better predictor
of success in college even than your high school GPA.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Is Is that right?
Speaker 5 (05:42):
Yeah, that's totally right.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And you know everyone talks about inflation, but one of
the big things that's going on in the schools.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Is great inflation.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, yeah, you know, so twenty years in the past
twenty years there's been so much great inflation in the
high schools that now forty seven percent of all high
school seniors graduate with an A average.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
So you know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So you know, back when you and I went to
high school, it was hard to get an A. But
now if all half of students have a four point Oh,
how can colleges and universities differentiate who to let in
and who not to let in with a GPA? Right?
Speaker 5 (06:15):
And you know the answer is they can't.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
And that's why standardized test scores are a better predictor
of how how students are going to perform in higher education.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
It's like the old National Public Radio Lake Wobegon series
where it in that town of Lake Wobegon all children
are above average.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's what's happened in So I'm glad that
you know, the pendulum is shifting back to you know.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
How you and I probably went to high school where
you know it was tough.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It was a tough, but it's good because it forces students.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
To work hard and they get rewarded for it.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Well, not only that, but these days now if you
take an AP class, you can I think you can
get a five point.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Oh or something, you know. When I Yeah, it wasn't
like that.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
When I was a kid, it was you just took
the AP class because.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You wanted the college credit.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
But the grading wasn't It was harder, but it wasn't
a different grade scale. All right, we got to we
got just over a minute. I want to ask you
about one other thing. So again when I when I
was young, Uh, very big parts of the college admission
process where the interview and and what I want to focus.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
With you on here the essays.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
And it seemed to me in some recent years, again
you're the expert on this, and I'm not that essays
were kind of downgraded a little bit in importance. And
are those making a comeback to kind of like the
essayts are And if so, what's your advice for for parents.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Of collegey or you know, kids applying to college.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, my biggest piece of advice related to essays is
do not use AI or chat EPT.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
A lot of students have gotten flagged.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
There's AI detectors that colleges and universities and missions committees use.
Write the personal statement from your heart, from your own words.
You can use AI to edit it, but not to
write it from scrap, so be careful out there.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Fabulous. All right, last quick thing, I just have a
few seconds. Were you on Shark Tank?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I was, Yeah, I was on Shark Tank in twenty sixteen,
so it's been almost ten years.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
Nine years ago. Made a deal with Mark Cuban.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
He's been an amazing investor and advocate for the company
ever since. It really jumps started the business and I'm
so grateful for the opportunity I've been on the show.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So Mark Cuban is a partner or investor in Prep Expert.
Did he ever invite you to a basketball game?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
We've been to a couple of basketball games, a couple
entrepreneurship panels.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
He's the best.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
You get access to Mark and you get access to
the Mark Cuban companies team, so definitely the best shark
to get.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
That's pretty fabulous. That's what a great story.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Doctor Sean Pateel, the CEO and founder of Prep Expert
prepexpert dot com. I'll be going on the website to
see what makes the most sense for one of.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
My kids in particular. Thanks for being.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Here, Sean, and congratulations on your success with this business.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Thank you ross. Yeah, it's a pleasure anytime, and happy
to do it again.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
All right, appreciate it, all right. Well that was cool.
That was really cool.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
So that's uh prepexpert dot com if you want to
learn more there. No, I'm not getting I'm not like
advertising for him, and just like they've been around fifteen
years and he just said what the statistics were and.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
How he's improving. So I'm not like shilling for the dude.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I legitimately have a kid who probably could use a
little help getting a.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Better SAT score. So there we go. We'll be right
back on KOA
Hello, Friday, Thank Gottage, Friday. It's Friday night.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I tell you, no, it's Friday, and it's Ross Kaminski.
I'm KOA eight fifty AM, ninety four to one FM
and on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So I have I have two kids who are of
an age that they will within the next one to
three years, depending on whether they take a gap year
in this sort of thing, be applying to college. And
obviously I haven't applied to college for a long time,
and I'm I'm curious and maybe concerned in a way about, well,
(01:00):
what's changed? What do I need to know? What are
colleges looking for these days? And joining us to help me?
And you understand some of these kinds of questions. Doctor
Sean Patel is a CEO and founder of prep Expert
prepexpert dot com. He's also a practicing medical doctor who
still practices medicine while also while also doing this.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
So, Doc, welcome to KOA. It's good to have you here,
good to be here.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Ross, excited to chat.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So before we get into the college details, I'm kind
of curious what made you, as a practicing medical doctor,
think that they give you this other idea and say,
you know, I need to start this business that's in
a whole different world.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So you know, it all kind of happened by you know,
coincidence almost because when I was in college, I realized
that my SAT score completely changed my life because I
had spent hundreds of hours in the library for the
SAT improving my SAT score six hundred and forty points
to get a perfect SAT score.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Wow, yeah, and completely changing eighteen hundred.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Huh sixteen hundred yeah, well yeah, actually I got twenty
four hundred.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
It used to be out of twenty four hundred for
or ten years. Yeah, so it was even better.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
No, but sixteen hundred yeah, basically the perfect score, and it,
you know, it opened up half a million.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Dollars in college scholarships. I got into top universities.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
And so I wanted to help other students improve their
test scores to get into college and win scholarships. So
it was only supposed to be a one time summer
you know course that I taught, but you know, the
students ended up having an average score improvement of three
hundred and seventy six points in just six weeks in
my first course.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
So it was pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Taking students from the fiftieth percentile, putting them in the
ninetieth percentile. So of course we had parents and students
who wanted more courses. Over the past fifteen years now,
I've trained other instructors to teach my curriculums, and we've
helped over one hundred thousand students improved their test scores,
get into top colleges.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And went over one hundred million dollars in college scholarships.
So it's been quite a journey.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Yeah, that's remarkable.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I probably need to get one of my kids into
into one of your classes. And I thought I was
doing okay because I got eight hundred on my math
part of my SAT. But I only got seven something
on the verbal and I and I and I felt
a little dumb, and.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I and I that's good score. Yeah, well I didn't.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I didn't get into Princeton, so I guess it wasn't
good enough. So anyway, so let let's talk a little bit.
We got about five or six minutes here on what's
going on right now. So there are a couple areas
that I want to ask you about. One relates directly
to to prep expert.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
So there there was a period of.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Time where and I think this was more spurred by
politics than by education, where a lot of schools said,
we don't want to SATs anymore and we don't care
about standardized tests anymore. And then in the past couple
of years there's been the pendul shifted back.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Can you tell us about this?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, so you know, the COVID nineteen pandemic really caused
the shift to many colleges going test optional. And that
was really just because you know, in testing centers you
couldn't you had to be six feet apart, so you
couldn't really have hundreds of students taking the exam.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
It just wasn't feasible.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And then many colleges kept that policy since twenty twenty
for the PA for two three four years. But what
we're seeing now is, to your point, an interesting trend back,
which is places like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, but even
non elite colleges like University of Miami, University of Texas,
all Georgia public universities have reinstated the SAT and ACT
(04:42):
score requirements. And the reason for this is because they
saw worse outcomes for both students and the colleges themselves.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
And so I love that we're going back to a more.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Meritocratus system that's more objective because you know, for the
past few years when colleges were test optional, it was
really hard to predict who was getting in, where it
seemed like it was kind of a crap shooter or lottery.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
It was very random.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But now we're going back to a college admission does
we know it, which is the students with the best grades,
the best test scores, and the best extra curriculars we'll
get into the best universities.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We're talking with doctor Sean Patel. He's CEO and founder
of prep Expert prepexpert dot com.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
He's also a practicing medical doctor.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
At the same time, I read somewhere, I think I
read somewhere. You can tell me if I have this wrong,
although I think you just said something similar that schools
have found that standardized test scores are a better predictor
of success in college even than your high school GPA.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Is Is that right?
Speaker 5 (05:42):
Yeah, that's totally right.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And you know everyone talks about inflation, but one of
the big things that's going on in the schools.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Is great inflation.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, yeah, you know, so twenty years in the past
twenty years there's been so much great inflation in the
high schools that now forty seven percent of all high
school seniors graduate with an A average.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
So you know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So you know, back when you and I went to
high school, it was hard to get an A. But
now if all half of students have a four point Oh,
how can colleges and universities differentiate who to let in
and who not to let in with a GPA? Right?
Speaker 5 (06:15):
And you know the answer is they can't.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
And that's why standardized test scores are a better predictor
of how how students are going to perform in higher education.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
It's like the old National Public Radio Lake Wobegon series
where it in that town of Lake Wobegon all children
are above average.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's what's happened in So I'm glad that
you know, the pendulum is shifting back to you know.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
How you and I probably went to high school where
you know it was tough.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It was a tough, but it's good because it forces students.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
To work hard and they get rewarded for it.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Well, not only that, but these days now if you
take an AP class, you can I think you can
get a five point.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Oh or something, you know. When I Yeah, it wasn't
like that.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
When I was a kid, it was you just took
the AP class because.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You wanted the college credit.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
But the grading wasn't It was harder, but it wasn't
a different grade scale. All right, we got to we
got just over a minute. I want to ask you
about one other thing. So again when I when I
was young, Uh, very big parts of the college admission
process where the interview and and what I want to focus.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
With you on here the essays.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
And it seemed to me in some recent years, again
you're the expert on this, and I'm not that essays
were kind of downgraded a little bit in importance. And
are those making a comeback to kind of like the
essayts are And if so, what's your advice for for parents.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Of collegey or you know, kids applying to college.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, my biggest piece of advice related to essays is
do not use AI or chat EPT.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
A lot of students have gotten flagged.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
There's AI detectors that colleges and universities and missions committees use.
Write the personal statement from your heart, from your own words.
You can use AI to edit it, but not to
write it from scrap, so be careful out there.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Fabulous. All right, last quick thing, I just have a
few seconds. Were you on Shark Tank?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I was, Yeah, I was on Shark Tank in twenty sixteen,
so it's been almost ten years.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
Nine years ago. Made a deal with Mark Cuban.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
He's been an amazing investor and advocate for the company
ever since. It really jumps started the business and I'm
so grateful for the opportunity I've been on the show.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So Mark Cuban is a partner or investor in Prep Expert.
Did he ever invite you to a basketball game?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
We've been to a couple of basketball games, a couple
entrepreneurship panels.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
He's the best.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
You get access to Mark and you get access to
the Mark Cuban companies team, so definitely the best shark
to get.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
That's pretty fabulous. That's what a great story.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Doctor Sean Pateel, the CEO and founder of Prep Expert
prepexpert dot com. I'll be going on the website to
see what makes the most sense for one of.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
My kids in particular. Thanks for being.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Here, Sean, and congratulations on your success with this business.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Thank you ross. Yeah, it's a pleasure anytime, and happy
to do it again.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
All right, appreciate it, all right. Well that was cool.
That was really cool.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
So that's uh prepexpert dot com if you want to
learn more there. No, I'm not getting I'm not like
advertising for him, and just like they've been around fifteen
years and he just said what the statistics were and.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
How he's improving. So I'm not like shilling for the dude.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I legitimately have a kid who probably could use a
little help getting a.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Better SAT score. So there we go. We'll be right
back on KOA
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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