Overcoming Test Anxiety: Customized Strategies for College Planning Success with Bara Sapir

Hello parents, is your teen college ready? This is Shellee Howard, the founder and CEO of College Ready, and today I have Bara Sapir.

Sapir, you did it!

I try so hard. Every guest, I struggle a little bit. Um, but can you go ahead and, and tell our parents a little bit about yourself?

I'd love to. Thanks so much for having me, Shellee. So yes, I'm Bara Sapir and I'm CEO of City Test Prep and MindFlow Speed Reading. And I've been in the test prep landscape for about 30 years. I started 6 years with the Princeton Review and learned the sort of big box theories and structures, which are really great for some students, but saw that there were people that fell through the cracks, you know, people who couldn't finish their test on time and people who had mindset issues, like they would do great on diagnostic tests, and great on their homework, but they'd go into the test and be like a deer in headlights. And so surreptitiously— that's an SAT word— I would go in and teach them different ways of getting into flow state, which is the state of getting into the zone. Um, and I did that because my actual formal training is as an artist. So for a while in New York, I designed children's museums, and I was an art director, and I was a professor, but I always did test prep on the side. And in 2005, when I opened my company, I brought in other modalities like speed reading and mindset applications and like hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming and EMDR and growth mindset and bilateral stimulation. These are words that you might or might not know, but they come from the wellness field to really help students get out of their own way, to fire the inner critic, and to really be able to manifest their best self on tests. So I've been working this whole time in test prep. I moved to California. We've got an office in New York as well and develop these different strategies to help students do their best when it counts the most.

So important. So important. My second of my four children had massive test anxiety and we tried so many. I mean, we tried basically everything. And the final thing that worked was hypnosis.

Yep.

And so we were at our wits' end because on a practice test she would kill it. And then she said, I sit down and my mind is blank. And it's hard from a parent's point of view, like, really? Because is that even possible? And, uh, we put her through hypnosis. She ended up scoring well enough to get into her dream school, but even better, she was able to pass her NCLEX so she can be a nurse. And so there's some times where you can't even do a career you want if you're not good at testing. So I am so excited to jump in because I know that this worked for her and it's super powerful. So let's talk a little bit about, um, how did you blend— I call testing the left brain and then the art of mindfulness the right brain. How did you first put those two together?

Well, the way that, that we approach this at City Test Prep is that we, we know that students really need to master the four aspects of test-taking, which are content mastery and test-taking strategy, which you're calling the left brain, and the right brain stuff, which would be more of the the creative, the more open-ended, more free side is the mindset piece and even the time management piece through speed reading. So really, as, as soon as a student comes to us and this has been happening since we integrated all of these pieces, we have an intake and we gauge exactly where a student is on those 4 aspects because sometimes it's timing and sometimes it's they don't know the material, but they have no qualms at all about taking tests. So when we understand what a student needs, we then integrate that into the program. So it's not as if someone is studying algebra questions and then we're like, okay, let's stop and let's do some ohms. It's not really like that. It's that there are these different aspects that we chunk that the student can then bring— they bring it all together. And so some students come to us and they only need mindset support. Some students come to us and it's just timing. Some students need all of it. So it's each— each student comes with their own strengths and weaknesses and then we address them.

Right. So how do you know? Do you have them do a diagnostic test? How do you uncover what the challenge is for that particular child?

So we have them take a diagnostic test, or if they've already taken a diagnostic, or if they've taken a real test, we can have access to the actual questions and their answers and the correct answers. We can then look and see, okay, what kind of patterns are here? Are there any patterns here? You know, sometimes a student will always get number 5 wrong. That's a pattern, even though it's weird, right? Like, it's strange that at that point on the test they just have some sort of meltdown, right? It's a time— it's kind of a timing issue. So we look at that. They can self-diagnose whether they have feelings about taking the test. They kind of know, like, well, I'm kind of nervous all the time, or I'm nervous on math questions, or I don't sleep the night before. So we give them a battery of questions in our intake, and then we also assess what their reading speed is. So this is just a really straightforward process to find out who they are and what they're about, and then we pair them with the right tutor, and then I or a coach will work with them on the mindset piece of this.

Yeah, so it's really custom and individual is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, that winds up being the most efficient, uh, method to really move through test prep. I think that the big box companies are great when you've got time or you've got, um, like they're more economical in some ways. But to fine-tune your efforts, often it's getting that customized approach. It's kind of like you can go to a gym and take a class, or you can go to the gym, you could take a class and work with a trainer on some of the areas that you really want to develop. Is it strength? Is it flexibility? Is it endurance? You know, what, what is it that you're wanting to get? It's very similar to that.

It makes so much sense. And it's interesting because at College Ready, everything we do is custom. And I talk to parents all the time and I say, you know, how does your parent— how does your student learn? Are they— do they like to see it, hear it, touch it? Like, what is that? Because if you're not aligning, they're not going to absorb it. And so it's great. I've never met somebody like yourself, so this is wonderful, um, that I can now offer this to my clients who are struggling. You know, when they have a super high GPA and a low test score That's a red flag. Something is not lining up. Either it's, you know, great inflation, which I hope that's not the case, or it's something is not happening for the testing. And that's how I, as the first person who sees that outage, I'm like, that doesn't make sense to me at all. And so it's, it's wonderful. So what does it look like? A student comes in and they're like, hey, I have straight A's, but my test scores are not great. What would that look like? Uh, you said they do an intake form and then from there, what would happen?

So we also have the diagnostics, right? We also have the diagnostic material. And from there, we're going to look and see what do they need to correct. If there's patterns, then we could just like spot check exactly what they need to do to improve. If they got lucky, we want to also know, are they guessing? On questions. We also want to know how they answer questions, not just that they get something right or wrong. So we really get into the weeds with what they need, and then we develop basically an individualized education platform for them to learn that material. We set them up with a tutor, and the tutor goes through the material. And depending on partially learning styles, which is what you mentioned before, and personality, like we get a sense of who would be a good fit for them. We have them work with tutors that are gonna really inspire them to, to be their best self. And I, I wanna follow up on something else that you said about your child and the NCLEX, which is super important, is that when you, when you go through the mindset training of this, whether it's hypnosis and neuro-linguistic program, whatever it is, you wanna empower the student to learn these life skills because once they learn how to do this, they have the skill for life.

Right?

It's kind of like learning to ride a bicycle. Like, I haven't ridden a bicycle, I don't know, in 5 years, but I have no qualms. I can get back on a bicycle and do it. At first, it might be like, oh, oh, and then all of a sudden I can, I can ride and it's no problem. So you're not really going back every time you've got this kind of anxiety, but anxiety shows up in performance for many, for many people. And unless you nip it in the bud, it will get worse and worse. I've worked with students that are taking the medical boards for like anesthesia, and they just never dealt with their anxiety. And all of a sudden they're just— they've come to the end of that road. They can't actually perform on the test even though they're masters at being that level of doctor. So once you learn it and you understand how your mind works and how to get out of your own way, then like, like your child in taking the NCLEX, they're going to continue to be able to do this if they continue to use those skill sets.

For somebody who's not familiar with hypnosis or mindset, um, could you maybe simplify it or, or make it more tangible than out in the universe?

Sure. So I'll give you a little bit of a scientific but very user-friendly way of thinking about it, and then maybe I'll give you, give you a sample. So The way that our mind works is that we've got our conscious mind and we've got our unconscious mind. And our conscious mind is very deliberate, and it's how we choose to engage, and we know what we're doing, and we're really self-aware. The unconscious part of our mind is the part that handles, for example, breathing and our heart beating. We don't have to think about breathing. We don't have to think about, "Oh, I better make sure my heart is beating." Those things are happening automatically in the background. It's sort of the hardware of the of your, of your body. So when you're doing hypnosis, what you're doing is you're passing over something called the critical faculty. It's the part of your mind that protects the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is what you want. It's making sure that you're safe. It's making sure that you're doing the things that you want to do. So hypnosis is a state of trance that you get into. It's just a highly relaxed and focused state. So the way that I would describe it is, for example, if you are in a movie theater and someone sits down next to you, or even at home and someone sits down next to you, and you don't notice that they sat down, and then all of a sudden you realize that they were there, it means that you were just really living in that zone, that unconscious zone. And as soon as you realize they were there, it's like, wait, when did that happen? Like, this has happened to me even taking the subway or taking the BART. It's like, wait, when did we pass all of those stops? I was just so highly focused that I knew, like, I just kind of got back into gear to see where I was. So late at night, this can happen. You can be watching television and see a vacuum commercial and say, oh my gosh, I need that vacuum. It means that you're highly suggestible at that, at that moment. So when you're highly suggestible, you might not want to buy the vacuum, but you do want to basically input information that you want to have happen, which is how people lose weight, stop smoking, all of these things that are habits that we feel are ingrained, and they, they might be, but you can actually bump out of it if what you really want is to make those changes. So it's different than willpower, which is a very conscious action. This is actually shifting the unconscious belief systems to move in the direction that you want to go in. And, you know, many people will say to me, well, does that mean I'll be like a chicken? Like, am I gonna like Am I going to, like, run around and cluck? And it's— if you want to do that, we can do that. But it's much more effective and efficient, like economical, to, like, do something that you really want to change. But you can go to a lot of stage hypnotists, and that's what you see on stage is them breaking down that critical faculty so that people feel at ease. They feel like it's just a simple transition to do the thing that the hypnotist is asking. So does that clarify? Yes.

Yes. I just remember when somebody first brought it to my attention that that was an option. I'm like, what are they going to do to her? And, well, you know, are they going to manipulate her brain? Or, you know, it was just, it was so different that I thought maybe there's other people who are listening that are like, wow, that sounds great, but I really don't know enough about it. And I, you know, want to do some more homework. Um, so that's fascinating. Let's, let's move over to the speed reading because this is huge. I know when my children were going through high school, I sought out a speed reader and I put them both in a program. And people are like, why are you doing that? They're straight A students. And I said, because now they can enjoy life and not have to spend so much time studying. And they thought, what? And so it wasn't that they were a bad reader. It wasn't that at all. So can maybe you talk a little bit about the speed reading side of things, why you started adding it, the benefit, the— that part?

Well, I think you nailed it, actually. You know, I— if you take— there's two things you can do. You can actually time yourself for a minute, take a book or a newspaper or magazine and see how many words you read. There's, there's an easy way to, to count it, but for the— for brevity's sake, just count the words, right? Or you can go on to our website, mindflowspeedreading.com. We have a reading assessment there so you can actually see how fast you read per minute. The average reader reads between 150 and 300 words per minute. And this is everyone from the person who checks out your groceries to your teacher to the crossing guard. To just— that is the average reading speed, somewhere between 150 and 300. Standardized tests really require you to move through it as fast as possible, but you're not becoming an expert on the test. You really want to answer questions correctly. So you don't want to spend so much time really understanding verbatim and, and all the intricacies, or take notes. You really want to understand what is this about, what is the main idea, where do I find the information when I need to find it. It's like if you had a final exam, you wouldn't take the book and start reading. Like, if you had 5 minutes before the teacher came in and started the exam, you'd probably read through the table of contents. You might flip through a couple of the sections. So it just gives you a sense of ownership. Now, that being said, when you practice it enough, you can read up to, say, 1,000 words a minute. But most people do not need that. Most people that are taking the SATs and ACTs, if you could even bump it up to 400 to 500 words per minute, it means you can read at the same level of comprehension that you're reading at 150 to 300, but you have all that extra time to really grok the questions and figure out what the— with Reading Comp, it's the least wrong answer, right? You really can figure out what the question is asking you to do without getting uncomfortable about the timing. So it's really a tool exactly like what you said. When it's not a testing situation, is why not read more quickly if you can have the same level of comprehension, but then you can have time to do the other things that you would love to do. So when I saw that my students were having issues that they either weren't finishing or they did something called regression, which means they're reading, but then they forget they're reading and they're thinking about something else, and then they have to read again. Or if they read and they've got voices in their head, like, reading faster actually makes you focus more. So By focusing more, you're actually being much more effective as a reader. So it's not, it's not anything really all that strange. Our, our eyes can read and our brains could take in information at 4,000 words a minute. But if we're only reading 150 to 300, there's that big gap. So speed reading just gives you that special sauce to read faster and understand more.

Do you find that, um, students who are good students who get good grades, um, struggle more with timing on the test? What I have seen year after year is they've been taught slow down, get the answer right, and then when they take the standardized test, they run out of time and they're like, but I know, I know it. Do you, do you find that in your practice? Because I do find it with my students.

Yeah, we work with a variety of students, right? So we work with middle school through the medical boards. So it really depends where they are in that, in that arc. And I wouldn't say I could definitively say that I've had the same experience as you because we get all different kinds of students. Some students like love to read and they're voracious and they're struggling with the math. And then some students are just they just are overly careful in everything they do, right? So it just depends on the student, where they come from, how comfortable they are. Some students have had speed reading in school already, right? And so then they're able to move, to move through it with greater ease. But I don't know that I've seen it better students being slower readers per se. I don't know that I can make that, but But whoever you're getting, wherever they're coming from, it's— I believe you, that's their— that's the experience.

It just is one underlying current that I seem to notice, is they tend to run out of time. And so it just would make sense. So what if somebody, um, is like, oh my gosh, this would help my child immensely, how could they reach out to you? How can they get support?

Well, they can certainly email me, bara@citytestprep.com, and they can also, if they, if this sounds like something that's going to work for them immediately, whether it's the mindset piece or it's the reading, reading assessment and the reading speed piece, they can go right to MindFlow Speed Reading and sign up for that online platform because that's a 12, around 12-hour training and exercises, and people will see improvements after 3 hours. But they can actually sign up for that. It's a 3-month, uh, program, but it's, you know, 12 hours of, of content. So they can, you could finish it in a few days if you wanted to. Um, and, and sign up immediately there. And that's mindflowspeedreading.com.

Okay. That's outstanding. Would you have any words of advice or encouragement for parents who are listening?

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, the, the best is yet to come, right? And the worst is over. And it's really about finding solutions for your child. You know, there's nothing that can't be accomplished. They can be the best version of themselves if you find the tools that are going to help them get there. I should also mention that if people do want to work with me individually, I also do do that kind of coaching. I typically work with people 3 to 5 hours on the mindset piece. It's not like therapy. It's not a long, drawn-out process. But to parents, I mean, kudos to you for wanting to help your child become someone with agency and success. And so, you know, you, you deserve props for that. And, and it can be done and it is done. I'm sure you're already doing it. Yeah, outstanding.

Thank you so much for being on the show and your wisdom and just opening up the world of possibilities. We are truly grateful and we wish you all the best.

Thank you so much. It was great to chat with you.