B-Schooled Podcast Episode #292: Biggest Test Prep Mistakes

Stacy Blackman: So today I am back with SBC’s Director of Test Prep, Anthony Ritz, and we are going to dive into what you can expect from an initial session with Anthony. It’s the test review lesson, and it’s an important part of your process with him, and people have a lot of questions about what exactly it is. So, we’re going to dive in and answer some of those questions.

Welcome, Anthony.

Anthony: Thank you. I’m excited to be here, and you know, you’re right: we get a ton of these questions, and I end up answering a lot of the same ones on calls over and over, and that’s fine. I’m happy to answer all your questions by phone; always welcome to reach out.

But we thought, you know, maybe it’d be good to put some of these out there in the podcast, and maybe we’ll even put this up as an FAQ on the website afterward as well.

Stacy: Okay, so let’s start. What is the test review lesson and why is it useful?

Anthony: Well, that’s a big important question to lead off. The test review is the first lesson that we’re going to do with any student who comes in for test prep, and what we’re going to ask you to do is to bring in a recently completed official practice test that we can go over together, and we’ll basically look at all your answers to those questions on a test. But we won’t just be looking at what you got right and wrong; we’ll be looking at your thought process.

I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions about, you know, why you picked this answer and what you were thinking here, and did you consider this choice or that. It all sounds very accusatory, but I assure you that it’s not judgmental.

I’m really trying to get to the bottom of how you think, how you solve problems, and even how you learn, and then we can use what we see there to build a plan of action for their main tutoring that’s tailored to your needs.

I think this is really important because to me that’s what the real advantage is of individual tutoring versus you know a group course or a book or pre-recorded video or whatever else you might use. The advantage of individual tutoring is that it’s tailored.

It’s that you can work with somebody who’s able to get to the bottom of exactly what your needs are, exactly what is right for you, and just give you that the whole time, and the test review is what we need to do to be able to then make the rest of the tutoring engagement the best it can possibly be.

Stacy: Perfect. So how long is this test review session?

Anthony (2:49): Well, it’s two hours because it will definitely take at least that long to go through a full practice test for almost every student. There may be a very few exceptions for students who are at the very high levels and very, very few wrong answers, in which case, if we go shorter anytime we don’t use, we’ll bank, and we’ll save for a future tutoring session, but much more often we’ll struggle to even get through a whole test in the two hours. In those cases, sometimes it’ll run a few minutes longer.

There’s no additional charge for that time, of course, but you know we’ll see enough in the two hours. I’ve done this a lot of times, and I can make sure to see what I need to get the evaluation. We may not see every single question you missed on the test, but we’ll see a representative sample, and I’ll have a good understanding.

And at the end of it, we’ll talk about the plan ahead. And so, when students come in with these questions about, well, “how many hours of tutoring do I need, or is this score realistic?” I always say I don’t really know; I can’t really answer those questions because I don’t have this information.

But at the end of that test review session, we’ll spend a few minutes, and I will be able to answer those questions and give you a much better picture of, you know, what goals are reasonable and what the timeline will look like for the tutoring to get there.

Stacy: Perfect. So, do students come to you kind of already knowing what they need to work on, and if so, can we just skip the test review?

Anthony: So, I do sometimes get students who kind of go, “Yeah no I just need that,” and I think earlier in my career as a tutor I was more, you know, inclined to be like, “Okay fine, let’s just work on those things.”

And I learned the hard way, I think, that that’s probably a mistake because students aren’t always great self-assessors about that stuff. Students think they know what their problem is, but first of all, they may just be wrong about what they’re missing. And a lot of times, if you are really bad at a certain area, you won’t even recognize it when it comes up in a question. You won’t even realize that’s what you’re missing on the test.

And so, I found that, you know, a lot of times the test review will surface issues students didn’t know they had. If you had the great self-assessment of being fully aware of everything, you probably wouldn’t need the tutor. And then second of all, even if you can speak in a broad way about what you’re missing, there’s a lot of different reasons you might be missing those questions. You know, if it’s an algebra question, there’s a ton of different things that could go into that.

(5:22) Maybe you’re making careless errors, maybe you don’t know a certain algebraic rule, maybe you’re not recognizing a special quadratic, whatever else. Maybe you’re struggling to read and interpret the problems, and it’s more of a word-problem issue.

So, the test review will still help us get really valuable insights that I don’t think we can get any other way. And so we generally want pretty much every student to start with that, even if they think they already have some sense of their weak areas.

Stacy: Okay, so you’re asking them to actually complete a practice test before the session. What if I’m just starting my prep, I don’t know anything about the exam, I’ve never seen it, and I just don’t feel ready to take that practice test?

Anthony: So that’s very understandable. We do get students coming in really raw. They’re like, “I heard I need to take the GMAT or the GRE. I have no idea what that is.”

And in those cases, I always tell students it’s okay if you want to spend a week or maybe two getting the official guide for that test, and both the official guides for GMAT and GRE have pretty good general math review and everything.

You can go through that and familiarize yourself with the different question types and just get your bearings a little bit before taking the test. But what is important, what we don’t want, is we don’t want to have this turn into this sort of never-ending doom loop.

You know, you don’t feel ready to take the practice test so you don’t do the review session so you don’t know really what to work on so you just kind of float around in the book and you kind of look at everything but you’re not really sure what you should be doing and so then you don’t ever feel ready so you don’t take the practice test and it just loops around and around.

So, it’s really important that you set a firm deadline, give yourself a week, maybe two, but then, ready or not, take the practice test, and understand that I have done this a long time.

I can adjust for what I’m seeing, and I can tell the difference between somebody who brings me a practice test and their problem is, you know, they’re rusty, they lack exposure versus somebody whose problem is no, they’ve seen this stuff, but they’re just really struggling to kind of do it, even though they’re familiar with it.

So even if you’re taking it relatively cold, with only maybe like that week or so of general familiarization, it’s okay to take the test. It’s okay to bring that to me, and I’ll still be able to figure out what I need to make sure that our path forward is a good one.

Stacy (7:54): Yeah, I mean, you really I’ve seen so many times you just have that expertise, and you get it. So okay, where are they going to get the practice test? Are you giving them the practice test?

Do you send it to them?

Anthony: Great question, and no, I won’t be sending it to you. I won’t be giving it to you during the session. I will ask that you get it yourself before you come in, and you take the test shortly before the session.

So let me actually show you where to get the practice test. If you don’t mind, I’ll screen-share briefly and show you the official sites for both GRE and GMAT.

Stacy: And for people listening on audio, yeah, we’ll just kind of walk through what Anthony is doing.

Anthony: Yes, I will explain exactly what I’m doing. So, the official site for the GMAT is mba.com, which I have pulled up here, and for the GRE it is ets.org. If you go to mba.com, you have information about the GMAT exam, and up at the top you have a little button that says GMAT prep. You click on that button.

It’s actually very easy. It takes you directly there, and they put the free practice test front and center. Very nice of them.

Practice tests one and two are in the free starter kit. You download that. It’s got two practice tests right at it.

Go further down, and you will see four more practice tests. Three, four, five, and six are available for purchase. I do recommend purchasing them all.

It is a little bit of a discount if you buy them together. It’s well worth it. And by the way, tests three through six, not the two free ones but the paid tests three through six, can each be reset one time with guaranteed no repeated questions.

So effectively there are 10 full practice tests here. Don’t go burning through all of them or anything. They’re valuable, and they’re limited. So just take one of these free ones if you haven’t already; if you have, you can take one of the paid ones you haven’t done yet.

For the GRE, go to ETS.org, and we’re going to click the three little lines in the top-left corner. We’re going to get assessment products, and under assessment products you will have the GRE General Test, which takes you to ets.org/GRE.

I suppose you could go there directly if you prefer. Test and official GRE prep, and you can shop official GRE prep would be the next button to click. A few more clicks on this site. They don’t make it quite as easy for you, but from there you can go to the practice tests, and you will see three paid practice tests.

(10:51) PowerPrep Plus numbers one, two, and three for the lovely price of $45 a pop as of this recording. But what they don’t want you to see as much, and they don’t make as obvious, is that if you scroll all the way to the bottom and then all the way to the right, they really kind of hide it here, but there are also two free practice tests, one of which is PowerPrep One untimed, free unscored practice test.

By the way, the nice people of Reddit have put together a scoring guide for this test, so even though it is given as untimed and unscored, you can self-time and use Reddit to self-score it, and then PowerPrep Two, which is timed.

A lot of students get this confused because (I think they want you) to because the tests are numbered one, two, three, one, and two, which is a terrible numbering system. I’m not sure why they didn’t just call them one, two, three, four, and five, but yes indeed, PowerPrep plus one, two, and three, PowerPrep one and two.

Stacy: So, there you have it. The makers of the GRE do not know how to number (laughs).

Anthony: Yeah, they think they aren’t so good at counting to five, or maybe they just would prefer that you pay for a test and then notice that there are free ones down at the bottom. That might be a more likely explanation.

Stacy: Yeah, okay.

Anthony: But there you go, that’s how you get the tests and you will go online before our session and you will take one of those and that’s what we will review.

Stacy: Fabulous. Okay so those are I guess official tests. What exactly does that mean, and if someone goes to, say, Kaplan, can they just get one of those tests?  A Kaplan test?

Anthony (12:37): Well the official tests are made by the people who write the real test and I strongly would recommend that if you have any official test still available if you haven’t already somehow done them all, and maybe we’ll talk about that in a minute, but you haven’t done them all then I would strongly prefer an official test to a company test because there are subtle differences.

A Kaplan test or a Princeton test is not official. It’s not written by the people who make the real thing. And no matter how much any company tries—any company—there are going to be subtle differences. There are going to be ways where it’s not exactly a replica of the real test.

No company can match the development budgets of the actual testing companies, which I’ve heard through the grapevine are spending four-digit development dollars per question.

Stacy: Wow! Okay yeah. So, what if you have already done all of the official tests?

Anthony: In that case, I will grudgingly look at one of the company tests. I would recommend trying to get one of the relatively better companies there. I think Manhattan has pretty good practice tests. I think Magoosh has some pretty decent practice tests.

So, you know they’re not as good as the real thing, but they’re the next best thing. If you’re coming to us having already taken all the official tests and not recently enough for us to use one of them, that would probably be what we’d need to do.

Stacy: And what if I’ve done the company tests? I’m very eager!

Anthony (14:17): Well, I am sorry to hear that. I certainly would not recommend that anyone be in a position that they’ve done all the official and all the company tests. But in that unfortunate circumstance, we will be forced to look at one of your most recent practice tests, assuming that it’s even somewhat recent.

I don’t really like the idea of resetting and redoing tests because it can really bias you to see repeated questions, things that you—even in the back of your mind, even unconsciously—you know you’ve read that passage before at some point. You know you studied that vocabulary before at some point. It just really throws things off.

So, you know, ideally, we want to have a recent and official test. But as we exhaust that possibility, we’ll take what we can get, and we’ll make the best of it, and generally we can still do a pretty decent job of sort of figuring things out that way.

Stacy: So, the next question I have is one—I mean, we get this all the time–GMAT versus GRE. How do I know which tests to tackle? Which one should I take? How do I decide?

Anthony: That’s a great question and a very complex one that probably is a subject of its very own podcast episode at some point. But, you know, for the purposes of the test review, if you’re not sure, what I would say is it’s perfectly fine to take a practice test of each type and, you know, bring them both into the session.

You know, let me know, “Hey, this is something that I was debating and can we kind of look at both?” And of course, we won’t be able to look at both tests in their entirety. I’ve already said we probably won’t even be able to look at the entirety of one test, but you will be able to look at a little bit of each, and I’ll be able to help you make the assessment that will lead to which test is better. And by the way, that assessment is not which test is easier or feels easier for you.

It’s really about where you’re better suited to the question types to beat the curve, because they are both curve tests. So you know, even if a question is easier for you, if it’s easier for everyone, that doesn’t help. So we can sit down and look through the tests together.

Again, if you take one of each, we can sort of figure out where your skill set is especially suited to the different types of questions on GMAT versus GRE, and that can be part of the test review session at the end of it.

I can probably give you some pretty good guidance on where you’re ultimately positioned to end up scoring better.

Stacy (17:02): Okay, now what if I’ve taken the test, I’ve taken an actual test and didn’t do well, so then decide to come to you for tutoring. Can we just review that score report?

Anthony: So, the official tests don’t release their questions because they want to reuse their questions. Obviously, if you’ve seen the score, you know that the actual questions you saw aren’t on there. And because of what we’re really trying to look for in the test review session, it’s not actually all that helpful to just review a score report.

A lot of times the categories on score reports are borderline mysterious. You know, the identify stated idea versus identify implied idea for different types of reading comprehension questions.  Even as a tutor, I’m not really sure where they’re drawing that line and what it means. And so for what we need to get out of this session, it’s not actually going to be helpful to review the score for you.

You’re welcome to share the score. I’ll want to know what that is, but we’ll still ask that you take a practice test.

Stacy: Okay, so fine, fine, fine! I’m taking a real official practice test. Do I send the result to you beforehand? Do you review it all in advance of our lesson?

Anthony: No, actually. I mean, if you want to show me your score, that’s fine and good. But I’m not going to spend a bunch of time going through your test with a fine-toothed comb before we meet. And not only because I’m working with other students or terribly lazy or whatever else.

Mostly though, because the thing that I’m really interested in is not what you got right and wrong, but I’ll say it again, it’s the thought process behind it. You could get the same wrong answer in half a dozen different ways, so what I really need to know is not, okay, what did you miss? It’s okay, why did you miss that?

And the only way I’m going to find that out is by sitting down in a call like this one and talking to you. So it’s fine if you don’t share the score or the result beforehand. All you need to do is bring it in to the test review session at our appointed time, and you know, screen share, and we will look at it together, and I’ll ask you those questions, and that’s how we’ll get what we need.

Stacy (19:27): Okay, and then should I review my test and the correct solutions before we meet? Or I’m just taking it, and we meet?

Anthony: So it’s maybe a surprise to a lot of students, but it’s probably better if you don’t review it too much before we meet after you take it. Because what sometimes will happen is that students will take the test and then they’ll review it; they’ll go on GMAT Club or GRE Club, they’ll go in the forums, they’ll look up the solutions.

And then when we get into the test review session, I start asking them these questions about, you know, what they do, and they start going, okay, well I know what I’m doing, but what did you do? What were you thinking? They’re kind of at a loss.

They’re like, “Oh man it’s kind of fuzzy now it’s kind of muddied by these other solutions I’ve seen.” And it makes it I think harder to get at what they were just thinking at the time as opposed to having that filtered through their understanding of what the solution is supposed to be.

So, you know, take the test relatively close to the session, and then we’ll look at it. But ideally you don’t really do too much else with it in between.

Stacy: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So, you said take it relatively close to the session can I take it a month before? A week before?  What do you recommend?

Anthony: So, the question that I’m going to respond with is—I’m going to answer your question with a question—how far in advance can you take it and remember what you were thinking? Now I would say to be safe, a day or two in advance is ideal.

I think pretty much everyone, if you took the test yesterday, you look back at the question and you’re going to go, “Oh yeah, this is what I did there. Oh yeah, this is what I was thinking.” And frankly, if you don’t remember it a day later, that probably also tells me something important.

A couple of days is probably fine. For some people, maybe a week before you still remember it. But for some people, you may already not. If we’re getting to a month before, you probably don’t. I bet you don’t remember what you were thinking in a particular moment a month ago, probably almost any particular moment a month ago, and you know if you’re getting longer than that, it just gets non-viable.

So, the strong preference here is for it to be a couple of days to maybe a week on the longer end, but ideally pretty close to this session.

Stacy: Okay, so that makes me think I should schedule the review with you before I take the test.

Anthony (22:15): Absolutely. Sometimes students do call me up and say, “Hey, I took a practice test. When can we schedule the review?” And it’s like, “Oh gee, uh you called me during busy season I’m booked for the next five days.” and they’re like, “Oh but wait, this weekend I go out of town for the next week. If we can’t schedule in the next five days, I’m gonna be gone for a week after.”

And it’s like Oh, so we’re gonna look at this test in two weeks? Wait, yep, shoot, that’s no good. You’re gonna forget it—got to do it all over. So, I strongly recommend if you’re thinking about doing a test review session, give us a call, set it up, put something on the calendar,  and then once you know when that session is on the calendar, you can take that test shortly before the session and make sure that we’re not wasting any effort.

Stacy: I mean, this makes so much sense. I think this is such an ideal way to start off a test prep process. And I’ve seen you do it with our clients and also people that I know personally.

So, let’s get into logistics. Where do I sign up? How do I pay? What’s it going to cost me? Give me the tiny details here.

Anthony: Well, this part is actually very, very simple. The Stacy Blackman test prep page is stacyblackman.com/testprep. For those of you who are watching this as opposed to listening, I will briefly screen-share that page, so you can come right here: stacyblackman.com/testprep.

You scroll straight down and the very first thing you will see under “Choose a Package” is the trial test review package for the introductory rate we actually price this slightly lower than our individual hours we don’t want them to feel like we’re gouging you in that first session.

We want to give you the opportunity to make a fairly small commitment at first and make sure that you feel comfortable. So it is $600 for the two-hour session, $300 per hour, but again, it is priced as a package because it will definitely take two hours to go through the test. And all you got to do to pay for it is click add to cart, and you’ll get this lovely pop-up right here where you can pay right here.

And once you do that, we will rapidly reach out to you and say, “Hey, I see you signed up for the test review session, and we’d love to get a little more information about what your situation is.” And we get you set up for a time for that.

Of course, you can also call us first and have that conversation. And then after you’ve had that conversation, you can come right back to this page and click on the add to cart button. You can do those two things in either order. But either way, you will have a lovely little call with me, and you will have a lovely little click on this button. And once those two things are done, you’ll get a lovely little Zoom invite to go through the test review.

Stacy (25:14): And you know, you’re gonna get value out of this session whether a client proceeds with you or not. It’s just such a helpful way to go through a test, identify how you’re doing, why, like it’s it’s really a great tool.

I want to say I’ve personally seen how ethical you are and how much you care about your students. Like I’ve seen Anthony say to someone, “You know what, you don’t need me. You’ve pretty much nailed this.”

I’ve seen him say, “It’s going to be very very borderline impossible difficult for you to achieve a certain score based on what I’m seeing.” So like, this is not a sales funnel. This is a real exercise for Anthony to understand a student’s needs and abilities and to really provide value up front.

So, I guess my final question is: if you sign up for test prep on the SBC website, does everyone get Anthony?

Anthony: Well, that’s a great question, and I’ll tell you this right now. First of all, I am the guy, and I’m the only person doing this for SBC. But we are also training somebody, and at some point, we may have more people.

So what I’ll tell you is there will be no bait-and-switches here. You will speak with the person you’re working with—which at this point is me—before the test review. You will feel comfortable with that person and their credentials.

Anyone who works with SBC will be absolutely top-notch, and if you’re not happy with them, we’ll get you someone else. But again, if you speak with me on the initial call and we discuss the test review, I’ll be the one you’ll work with for that review and throughout your tutoring. I will not be passing you off to anyone. That is not what you signed up for at any point.

Stacy (27:23): And you’re the best. You are the best! That’s why we reeled you in and got you on our team as the director of test prep.

Anthony: I appreciate that. I do want to say one thing about what you said about not working with students in some cases. And that’s true, and I think what’s really important to me is I’m not trying in the short term to maximize dollars that I can make off of somebody.

I decided a long time ago in my tutoring career that I’m trying to maximize basically the reviews that I get, the Yelp reviews, the wherever else reviews. And in the long run, if I have happy students, if I have students who I’m able to help and make a difference with them, and they go tell their friends. They go write about it online.

I’m going to make a lot more money, and SBC is going to make a lot more money through word of mouth and the chain of referrals of a friend of a friend of a friend years down the road.  And so for me, that’s the mindset here.

I want to help the people I can, and if I am not the right fit for someone, I don’t want to work with them. Because if I’m working with somebody it’s not the right fit, they’re going to be an unhappy customer.

I’d rather, at that point, that they go somewhere else and find the right fit for them. So if you talk to me, I’ll do everything I can to figure out whether I’m the right fit for you. I’m the right fit for a lot of people, and if that’s a good fit for both of us, I will do everything in my power to help you get the score of your dreams.

Stacy (28:56): Amazing! We’re so happy to have you on the SBC team, and appreciate your time today and all the real thoughtfulness you put into your work with every single client. I encourage anyone who is looking for one-on-one prep, which is an investment, but I think a worthwhile investment, to reach out and chat with Anthony at stacyblackman.com/testprep. So, thank you, Anthony!

Anthony: Thanks so much, Stacy. I always enjoy coming on the podcast; thank you.