Inside the Mind of a Test Prep Expert with Matthew Pietrafetta and Shellee HowardMatthew

Well, hello again, parents. My name is Shellee Howard, and I am so excited to chat with you today. I have a wonderful guest I'd like to introduce. I'm going to call him Mr. Matthew. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

Thank you, Shellee. I sure can. I'm Matthew Pietrofetta, and I joke with my students that if you can pronounce my last name correctly, you'll score 100 points higher immediately on the SAT and a couple of points higher on the ACT. So I don't expect it to be pronounced perfectly or immediately. But yes, Matthew Pietrofedda, I'm founder of Academic Approach, a test preparation and academic tutoring company. We work with students throughout the country. We're based in Chicago, but work with students everywhere, East Coast, West Coast, all around. And, and I founded it in 2001. So I've been operating the business for 24 years. I did my PhD work in English at Columbia in New York City. And that's where I got my start as a graduate student teaching in the core curriculum there and a tutor working with students in New York City who were sophomores and juniors preparing to take the ACT and SAT. And that's where the genesis of Academic Approach started over 25 years ago.

Wow. Okay. So I love asking my guests this question. Did you know when you were 15 or 16 that you were going to own a tutoring corporation?

Heck no, of course not. What I did know though at that age was that I loved my English teacher who was a tremendous mentor and put me on a path of loving reading literature and writing about literature. And I understood and appreciated great coaching, great mentoring, and I received it really well. It brought out the best in me. I had an English teacher in my freshman year, and I had the same teacher again in my senior year, bookended my experience in high school, and was just a transformative mentor. Then went on to college, had another mentor who I did 5 independent studies with on literature and psychology and psychoanalysis, and then went to graduate school with recommendations from that mentor. And so what I knew at 14, 15 was that mentoring really mattered. Coaching really mattered. And so I guess you could say that that was always there for me, and that was in my DNA from a young age to value mentoring and then to become one. So there was a little, you know, necessarily owning a tutoring company and so forth, but, but valuing mentoring and, and receiving mentoring and wanting to be one. So that was there early.

So that leads me to, how did you choose your college? Did you apply to one school, two schools? Did you apply to 30, 40 like they do right now? And what was your path to college? Because you went to a very prestigious school.

Yeah. So, so for me, you know, I, you know, grew up in, in Boston and went to high school outside of Boston and wasn't from, you know, one of the first people in my family to go to four-year college. So I wasn't from that kind of culture. So for me, of, you know, that, that, that, you know, college meant this or that, or you must go here or there. So for me, it was just about finding things of interest. And then that just kind of put me on my vocational path. And it goes back to the mentoring point where I didn't know that, you know, I fell in love with reading and writing. Those were things that were a means to an end for me. They were academically interesting, intellectually engaging. And from there, I found my passions. And from there, education followed. And from there, career followed. So I'm a big fan of, you know, finding that authentic passion. And from that, you know, my mother used to say to me as a kid, do what you love and the money will follow. It was never about necessarily scheming out an entire vocational trajectory from a very young age. Is about being engaged, working with teachers, being a thoughtful student. And from there, things follow. So that's how I approach my students when I teach them, which is just try to find what's interesting and what they're curious about. Answer those questions, personalize them to the student's interest, draw analogies that appeal to the student. If they're a musician, try to speak in some of, in musical terms. If they're a mathematician, try to find the analytical or the mathematical way of representing the rule as like an algorithm. If they're literary, talk about books with them and, and the style of great authors and why grammar matters as a writer. So try to find purpose and interest with— meet the student where the student is. From curiosity comes interest, comes commitment, comes passion, comes growth, comes success. And, and so that's how I look at it as a, as a student. That's how it worked for me, and that's how I look at it as a teacher.

Oh my gosh, there's so much to that. That's exciting. So As a mother of 4, I'm thinking, how do we even know any of that, right, about our child, or how do they know about that? So at what age do you recommend starting a student on tutoring and that, that path to success?

Yeah, it's such a, it's such a great question. So I took a perspective on, on that question and all the work that I do. From being a graduate student at Columbia, teaching in the core curriculum in New York City, where I was looking at, okay, what does a college freshman need to be successful, to be college ready, and to persist and succeed? And that was really designed within the core curriculum there as certain abilities to reason and write with clarity, with logical control, with grammar skills, to do certain types of mathematical reasoning and so forth. And that's what it meant to be college and career ready. So then I, when I started tutoring my high school students, I looked at them and said, and when I was assessing them, I'd say, okay, well, I know where you need to be to be at the very best you can be. Where are you now? And so when I do a diagnostic assessment like I do to this very day, when you take a practice test, we go through with a fine-tooth comb and look at all the different skills. And if there's gaps in certain math skills, grammar skills, reading skills, those also tend to show up in the student's performance in the classroom. So I started looking at that as, hey, could you feed 2 birds with 1 seed? That is, could you grow their scores on the test and also their skills in the classroom? So for me, test prep and academic enrichment go together. So if you're a parent, as I am, I've got a, I've got a 6-year-old. I've got a 16-year-old and a 21-year-old, and they're all at different levels of learning, and I'm looking at just how they're performing, whether it's first grade reading or math, or it's adult financial literacy, or it's a sophomore in high school getting ready for these ACTs and SATs. Where are there gaps in your learning? And I'm aware, always looking at it from where you need to be in college, that if you could fill them in early, whether it's honestly first grade— and I will be doing a little extra supplemental math tutoring for my first grader over the summer— or it's as a sophomore getting an early start on the tests, um, you know, that you want to look at all the information you're getting back— grades, practice, uh, tests and scores, any data you're getting back— and say, let me fill in these gaps earlier than later, because they're going to need to be filled in by the time you're a college student. So at any level, you can be thinking about where the right kind of intervention is. That's my, my big answer. I'll give a more specific answer in terms of high school kids getting ready for college and test preparation. We have lots of years of data. I have a Department of Ed with a research team, a technology team, curriculum development team. And so we look at our data. We've been looking at it for years. And there's kind of 3 time, more common times when students start test prep. They'll start because you have to take them in junior year, 11th grade. You have to be done by senior fall before you apply to colleges.. And so we have a group of students that will start in sophomore year. We have another group that maybe start in the beginning of junior year and another group that will onboard in spring of junior year. And unsurprisingly, the early starters that start in, in 10th grade have the greatest growth of all of our students. They will have 3 times as much growth as a student that starts in the spring of junior year because they have more time to space out their learning. They have more time to sit, reflect, really absorb it, and space it out rather than cram it. And all the research shows that spaced learning is better than cram learning. And so, yeah, on that level, for parents who are just thinking about ACT and SAT and getting the best leg up, there is such a thing as starting a little too late. Because these tests cover 7th through 11th grade curriculum, they're summative of middle school through high school learning. All the math from 7th through 11th grade, grammar concepts, reading concepts that have been developing for years, that if you try to cram it in, it's an awful lot. If you space it out, you'll do well. So right now, our 10th graders, our sophomores, they're coming in. We're giving them a practice ACT and the new ACT because it's just getting released, which we can talk about, a practice SAT, which just got changed in 2023 to a digital format, which is not your mom or dad's SAT anymore. And we're trying to figure out what they need to focus on and start now because the more we can space it out, the less stressed they are, the more they grow, the more they have time to really reach their full potential. So for high school students, if you can start to look into this now in sophomore year or a little bit earlier even, that is desirable. That's gonna, you're gonna have the best outcomes.

That's so helpful. You know, every student has to have their own path for this. If you do what every average student does, either you're going to have to relearn some math or some English because you took it your freshman year if you're advanced, or maybe you're not as strong in a subject and you haven't even learned it yet. So know your child. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about, reach out to Matthew because I've had several freshmen get perfect scores on their ACT. They were ready. They had all of the information they needed, and they were successful. If I would have had them wait until their junior year, they would have had to relearn or brush up on several concepts. And then the flip side of that, right? The ones who haven't learned it yet, and they're going into high school at the end of high school, and they still haven't learned it. Now we're in a totally different predicament. So let's, let's talk a little bit about— there's, there's still adults who think that you need to take both the SAT and the ACT, and one is better for a particular kind of school. I'm not saying that is true, but that's what parents are coming to me and asking. Can you speak to that?

Absolutely. Yeah. So as a, as a high school student growing up in the Boston area, I only knew the SAT. So roll out of bed on a Saturday morning and took the SAT. I never heard of the ACT, even though it existed at the time. And then moving out in 2001 to Chicago, to the Midwest, ACT was the state exam in Illinois. And everyone thought about the ACT. And there was regionalism. ACT, you know, is an Iowa-based test and organization, and SAT East Coast. So there was some regionalism to them originally. But well over a decade ago, they became kind of neck and neck. ACT national test takers surpassing SAT and then vice versa. And all colleges or universities will accept now either or. There is no regionalism, there is no preference, there's no bias. So what's great about that is it's about your individual student. And we've had a phrase at Academic Approach since I trademarked it years ago: tests are standardized, students are not. And so you want to figure out what suits your child. So that's why we begin all our programs with a diagnostic SAT and an ACT, because either or will get you into any school or any college that wants a standardized testing score. University will accept either or, no bias. So then it's about, well, what suits the student best? So you take a practice test, practice SAT, practice ACT, and we have the new ACT that's been enhanced, and the, the current ACT is being retired in July, and this new one is going to be the new ACT that's available. We have the new version ready to— and we're giving it to our students now who are starting. And the new SAT started in 2023, March, has now been around for a little bit and been vetted and been around. We have plenty of those. So we give— you give students one of each. And then you do this process. I call it the double check. Check, is there one that is higher than the other on a comparison table? So 1,600 is the highest score you can get on the SAT, 36 on the ACT. You grade 'em, you score 'em. Is one a few rungs above the other? Is your ACT higher? Is your SAT higher? Oh, check, my ACT is higher. And then you sit with the student and we do this all on a complimentary, you know, complimentary testing and complimentary meeting. 'Cause we wanna meet the student, meet the family, and go through the results and ask the student questions. And then you dig in with the student. How did you like this reading section on the ACT versus that reading section on the SAT? And they're differently formatted and there's different experiences. Psychologically, it affects students differently. Oh, I really preferred all these things about the ACT. Hey, and your score was higher on the ACT. Well, that's a double check. Check quantitatively, this test is better for you, and check qualitatively, your own experience of it, what you preferred. You preferred the ACT. Okay, we're going to design a program for you around the ACT. But my older, you know, um, brother or sister took the SAT, and my neighbor says the SAT is great, and my cousin across the country says the SAT is the best test in the world. That— those are all those people. And then there's you. You're an ACT kid because quantitatively it's higher and qualitatively you like to— and it's not going to do any— it's going to do nothing but help you to focus on this one path for this test because it's your test. So tests are standardized, students are not. Even though— and it— I've worked with 4, you know, students in the same family, um, and they all had different paths and they all looked different. And even though there were siblings and there's some, some genetic relationships there. They're all different test takers, all different learning styles, and different tests that they took. So you really personalize it, and that's a great empowering thing for students because I don't have to follow this path or that path. I gather information about who I am as a test taker, about which tests I prefer, and then I carve out a program in that direction. And that's why it's really important to do this before you sign your student up for, you know, there's a summer SAT class going on in town, and I want to keep them busy over the summer, so I'll just put them in there. But do you even know that they should be doing the SAT first, or should they be doing an ACT class, or vice versa? So find that information out first before you just sign up for something or do something because a cousin did it, or a neighbor, or an older sibling. Um, and that's very empowering to have choice and to be able to personalize it to yourself as a student.

You know, that brings up such, such amazing memories. My oldest, the one who ended up going to Harvard, it was, um, it was an interesting time. He was really ahead in math and pretty normal in, in English. And he said, Mom, I've never gotten a B. Let me test prep on my own. I think I've got this. And I'm like, wow, okay. I, I wasn't gonna debate him on it. Well, He said, just buy me one of those books and that's all I need. And I'm like, wow, okay, $24 for a book, whatever. Bought him the book. At least 3 times I found him super asleep right inside the book, head down, out cold. And I told him, I said, I'm just not feeling very confident about this. He goes, don't worry, I've got it. He takes the SAT, he gets his score. He literally starts tearing up and he didn't tear up a lot. And he said, Mom, I'm so stupid. I can't believe my, my teachers must give me easy A's because I'm really not that smart. And it just destroyed his confidence. And I said, now, will you do it my way? And so I got him a wonderful test prep person like yourself. And this was 17 years ago. And he went through a very custom strategized approach. Not only did he increase his score by 300 points— 300 points, it's huge— yeah, he also used that same strategy for the MCAT and got in 98%. So help me understand, is testing really optional?

Yeah, so there's all sorts of great research out here, out there, on— and we have some on our website, www. Wacademicapproach.com, where we take the Common Data Set, which is published every year by colleges. And you're familiar with that, Shellee Howard, you use it as a college counselor, where you can see the schools where testing is required. And as we know, more and more schools have been going back to that. And the reason why is not surprising, but GPA is so different from high school to high school, and colleges would like to know, are you truly college ready on some sort of universal like common assessment that can tell us where you, where you stand in relation to your peers. Because your, your GPA at this school, like to your, you know, what your son was saying is maybe the English teacher likes you, so it gives you a slightly more favorable, uh, grade on that, on that essay than at this other school. So how do these, how do these GPAs compare? We don't know. But a standardized testing score can give you that clarity. So one of the first schools after the test-optional movement post-COVID that back was MIT because they wanted to see that our students, our engineering students, really ready. Do they have the math chops to do this curriculum? And when they relaxed the requirement, they got results that they were not very happy with in that class. And so they brought it back in. And so, and so, and so, and so many more schools followed. And so you can look and you can see at a number of schools, you must have them. It's just required again. And more and more are coming back to requiring it. And we'll see more and more of that. Then some, and this is where it's a little interesting, they say they're test optional, but if you look at the Common Data Set, they will say that while we are test optional, we highly prefer, highly prefer students just to submit standardized testing scores. Well, that's not entirely test optional then if they highly prefer you to submit standardized testing scores. And so you go from school to school, and as you know, as a great college counselor that works with families on this all the time, you may end up taking the standardized tests and submitting them to half of your schools and maybe not submitting them to another half because it's more favorable not to because of their particular policy or philosophy around the test. So it's now become, as you know well, a more complex advising strategy from someone in your seat. We don't do any college counseling. We're just— we just like to teach the proper use of a semicolon, how to fix run-on sentences. In growth skills and scores. But, but we, we collaborate with college counselors like you and understand that the advising has become a little bit more complex. But there's so many values, as you know, to a standardized testing score. It's not just about I need it for these schools to require it. I just had a student who got a 1380 on the SAT and at a, at, you know, University of Indiana, that will give you, if you get above a 1370, automatic admission into the Kelley School of Business. Plus, if you get high enough, some tuition remission, some scholarship dollars. So even if the school doesn't say we require it, you may find that merit-based scholarships can come your way. And if you put a little bit of investment of time that you put a few thousand dollars into test preparation or something, you get back $15,000 in tuition remission. And that's a nice return on your investment. So it's a complex answer. Like, do you need it? Well, yeah, some schools, absolutely. At other schools, it may look like you don't, but you do. At other schools, you may not as much. But there's also, even if they don't disclose it, other advantages that you may get— automatic admission to certain schools within a school, to certain programs within a school, or merit dollars associated with. So this is why, you know, the work that you do is so valuable to families, because if there's so much information out there. And you can find some of it yourself independently researching, but it's really helpful to have that information given to you by an expert who can help you understand the value of investing in preparation and how it can impact your success on multiple levels— admission, but also, like I'm saying, access and scholarship.

There's so much to that. And what I, what I'm encouraging students to really look at is this class that's just accepting college right now. They were part of that. I don't know if it's optional or not, because that's— everybody dumped it and then they started coming back. Well, I had students who just didn't want to test prep, and they said, I am not going to because my schools don't need it. Guess what? When they applied, they couldn't apply to that school because now it was required. Talk about regret. That family is like, what do we do now? And I said, unfortunately, you can either test prep and, and go for it and, and hopefully be able to get off the waitlist or submit it, but it's not a great scenario. And so I always tell families, if money is important, scholarships. We had a student this year who was a National Merit Scholar, $250,000 scholarship. That's because they took a test.

Yeah.

Yeah. So when I, I don't teach test prep. I don't make any money on test prep. I just believe in it because it helps me. Get your child money. So I think it's so powerful. Let's talk about for the, the student who the parent comes because the child's not so motivated and the parent says to you, I know test prep is important. Can you please motivate my child? How, how do you handle that?

Well, I've been doing it for more than 25 years. And so, um, I, I often joke that if, um, you know, if adolescents, and I have my own, uh, listen to their parents, then, I wouldn't have a job. And I have tutors for my own children. They will accept my tutoring because I have good relationships with them, fortunately. But I have tutors within my company that work with my own kids because I understand the value of having an intermediary, a coach, a mentor. Back to my original point about my own mentors. But for parents who've seen their children work with an athletic coach, a music teacher, any kind of mentor, and you've seen what it can bring out, the confidence it can build, um, the personalized insights that can be offered to the student. Like, you understand what mentoring and coaching is. And we look at test prep as sometimes this kind of weird industry off over to the side, but it's not. It's just— when it's done well, it's excellent teaching, right? They can make a student more college-ready. They can grow both scores and skills. And, and why I love one-on-one tutoring, um, so much, and why I fell in love with it as a graduate student in, in New York City years ago when I was doing it, is you are a coach to a young person. You can build their scores, their skills, and their confidence, and you can find a way to connect with them and find, find that curiosity that my mentors found in me when I was in high school, bring that out, celebrate it, build their confidence. And so I, I look at it as, you know, it scores its skills and its confidence. And every— I, I learned this as a graduate student. So when I was teaching college freshmen at Columbia in New York I looked at my high school students with the kind of respect of looking at them as like young people, young adults, like my college students. And instead of talking down to them and thinking about the test cynically, like, hey, let's beat this test. Let's, let's get over this. Write a passage. It's just silly. I never talk to them about that. I don't talk about the test cynically or pessimistically or anything. I talk about them as opportunities for the student to learn. And I treat the young person with respect. Like they're an intellectual. They've got information that they need to learn that will help them in high school, in college, and in career. Because who wants to be writing run-on sentences? You know, when you're— and you know, you read the personal statements students write all the time. You don't want to be correcting all their grammar. No admissions officer wants to be reading an essay, you know, rife with errors. No college professor wants to read that. And no employer wants to see an email full of it. It's not just about getting better at the writing section or the English sections of these tests. It's about developing skills that are valuable to you for now and in college and in career. And if you talk to young people that way, if you take them seriously and you show that you're invested in them, they take themselves seriously. They work harder and they get motivated. And, and they— because they know they're treated with respect by a coach who cares about them and that the information they're learning is not just to get over a test, but to your son's experience, Shellee Howard, you'll use it again in a critical reading task for the MCAT. You use it again in some academic tasks you're doing in school. The best thing you can get as a mentor, and I've gotten this, is letters from students or emails from students at college who say, I just got an A on my first paper freshman year. And I want to thank you because all the things that you taught me to get better at this test transferred over to my performance here in college. So you motivate young people like any good coach does by giving a sense of purpose, setting some context about why this is important, and showing that you believe in them. And when you do that, it's just wonderful. It's wonderful as a teacher. It's wonderful as a coach. And, and all adolescents just want to be taken seriously. And when they hear it from someone who, you know, I can't give you an F because I'm not a teacher in your school, and I can't ground you because I'm not mom and dad. So I'm an authority figure because I've been doing this for a while. I know what I'm talking about, but I'm non-threatening, you know, and I'm available for you to help you. And when you provide that kind of coach or mentor, you know, to your child, it can really allow them to have a safe place to learn, to ask questions. They may want to— might, you know, not want to raise their hand in the classroom and ask that question because it's embarrassing if you don't know it. But in a one-on-one session, there's, there's, you, you're captive audience. You've got one mentor there to help you and support you. It's a safe place to learn. From that comes motivation, confidence, scores, skills, all, all that. And that's why I love the work that we do.

Oh my gosh. Wow. Time has just flown. So if I am a parent and I'm looking for some support, How would I get in touch with you?

AcademicApproach.com is our website, and you can inquire there and schedule a meeting with one of our directors. The entire onboarding process is complimentary. So the practice ACT, the practice SAT, the consultation analysis, and you can go through that process and choose not to work with us, but you've been enriched with insights. When you go through that process and, and we want the student involved in it in that meeting, what you'll find is students leave that bought in and they say, you know what, if I was on the fence about this before, I now see how I could improve. I now see which test is better for me. I now see that actually I know exactly what I could focus on and that's kind of interesting. And then we like that process because to your question about getting a student motivated, getting a student bought in. We don't want you to— we don't want to design a program for you. We don't want to commit you to anything until we've had that time with you to get to know you, to get the student invested in the process. And then when we do design a program and begin, the student's bought in. We know what tests they're focused on. They know why they're there. They know what they're going to be doing. And it's a great process. So, so you can contact one of our directors and learn about that process more. It's all complimentary. But it puts us in a position to be very good counselors to you because we have all the information we need. We've got to know what the, what the student needs, and we can design something really personalized and individualized to the student's needs.

That is so helpful. So in our program, testing is one of the 7 factors that we consider when we're trying to find the best fit— academic, social fit, and financial fit. And without the one piece of testing, there's almost a void that we have to balance with something else. So parents, he is offering you a complimentary session where you will find out how close or far is your student from getting that score, either to help them get accepted or for scholarships. So I highly encourage you reach out to him. And until next time, Thank you, Mr. Matthew, for being on the show.

Thank you, Shellee Howard, for having me. I appreciate it.