Ep.11/ Standardized Test Prep: Interview with Dr. Lauren Rubin [Part 1]
In this episode Thomas connects with Dr. Lauren Rubin. She shares several tips and strategies for standardized tests. Highlights the differences between SAT and ACT, and the importance of reading and writing.
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In this episode of Admittedly Podcast, Thomas connects with Dr. Lauren Rubin. Dr. Rubin has over twenty years of experience teaching test prep and essay writing to students of all ages.
In today’s show, she shares several tips and strategies for standardized tests. For the student to reach their greatest potential, it’s important to take the proper test and the one whose particularities the student has more ability with.
Dr. Rubin also highlights the differences between SAT and ACT, the importance of reading and writing, and how often the student needs to study for the tests to succeed.
Key Highlights
Reading is crucial to succeeding on tests.
Students should start to study for the tests in their junior year.
Sometimes quality is more important than quantity when it comes to studying.
Learn the differences between SAT and ACT.
Tips for international students (writing and grammar).
Reading well and writing well are connected.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Thomas: Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes, but I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
Today we have a very, very special guest. Not only is she an expert in her field, but she's a very dear friend, Lauren Rubin, Ph.D., otherwise known to her students, as Dr. Rubin has assisted hundreds of students to succeed in test prep and writing skills. Through instruction catered specifically to each student's strengths and weaknesses.
Dr. Rubin helps students achieve academic excellence. She is the owner of the Center for Scholastic Success for over 20 years. And she teaches students how to improve their academic skills through personalized assessment and instruction. Using her expertise from her extensive experience. I could talk a lot about Dr. Rubin, wonderful, wonderful qualifications and background. But I thought maybe we'd give her a chance to talk about it. She and I have been working together to help students achieve their goals for high school, college, and graduate school for I was trying to figure out for at least eight years.
And so, I've gotten to see up close and personal, what Lauren is able to do, she, she really just some of the students she'll work with over the course of four years. And taking somebody who, an international student, a US student, who is not a strong reader is not a strong writer and giving them the confidence and the techniques and the strategy, watching them excel on the standardized tests, watching the best part is the teacher reports come back over time and just say, Wow, what a big improvement you've grown, your analytical skills, your writing skills, your participation in class. Those are things those victories that she and I have celebrated. We've celebrated wins in admissions to Penn, Columbia, Brown, UCLA, Stanford, and Berkeley, among others. And it's just getting that phone call from the student, really, I think, is why we do this. So, Lauren, welcome, and thank you so much for taking the time.
Lauren: Well, thank you so much, Thomas, for having me. I'm really excited to talk about this today. And I'm so glad you're doing this podcast, I had the opportunity of meeting Thomas a number of years ago. And I've always been incredibly struck by his ability to support kids and his genuine desire to do that, to bring out their greatest skills. And so I think that's one thing we really share is that real desire to help a student achieve their greatest potential. And then when they do that, it's just incredibly heartwarming and very, very satisfying.
So I've had a business, helping kids with test prep of all types, and writing skills, homework support for quite a long time. And I've worked with many different types of students, from students from rural areas in the US to students, half a world away, Saudi, China, Hong Kong, Ukraine. And so it's really given me that extensive amount of time has really given me an understanding of how different everybody is, and, and how to approach them so that they can do their best.
Thomas: Absolutely. And, I think one of the things that strikes me about the way that you work with students is the fact that you don't spoon-feed them, you really challenge them, you teach them the skills that they need to grow and progress. And I saw this firsthand, my oldest son, who's now at boarding school, there was nobody else I was going to let him work with him besides the famous Dr. Rubin and just watching his confidence grow in the way that he spoke and the way that he writes and those learnings that he's carried through to his freshman year and even the test prep, although I will admit he did not hate his end of the test prep. But certainly, certainly, Warren didn't put a tremendous effort in there.
So we can talk about test prep and your views on that and how you work with students and then move on maybe to the writing because that Sounds great, great.
And for our listeners, the important thing to remember is that these are not mutually exclusive. Right? So by working on your reading and writing skills, you are improving your classroom experience, but you're also laying the foundation for a successful testing strategy. And while nobody knows what the testing requirements will be for universities, and three, four, or five years, or graduate programs, I think we need to assume that there will be some element of testing, even if it's optional. And so it is something that you want to consider. And we'll talk about that at length in a later episode. But Dr. Rubin, tell me about your philosophy on Test Prep.
Lauren: I think that I first got involved in teaching test prep, honestly, because I didn't like standardized tests, I didn't think they were fair, I didn't think they really effectively showed a student's intelligence and that and I also felt that it can really undermine their confidence, if they didn't do well, especially if they were very attached to their academic ability, as part of their who they were and then to not do well was pretty devastating.
So I tried to figure out a way to help them achieve a good score that they were really proud of. So they could let that go in their lives when they were done with it, and move forward to bigger, better things. So that's how I started it. And I've seen these tests, the SAT, ACT, SSAT ISEE, TOEFL, and GRE go through many different iterations over the course of 20 years, they've changed quite a bit. And so it's been interesting for me to watch the progress. And then I've adjusted how I work with people based on what the tests are now offering. And even more, most recently, they just removed the whole essay from the LSAT. And so that changes the format of the test to some degree. And it certainly changes my approach to how I teach, because now they're no longer required to do any kind of a rhetorical essay or an argumentative essay. And so it's different. It's always changing,
Thomas: always keeping us on our toes. And so in that case, what if you're looking at the LSAT? In particular, what are you focusing on? What are the things that you look to accomplish when you're working with a student?
Lauren: I think that there are different types of students, there are a lot of students that are very strong in one area and weak in another, that's very common. So and that's typically true in math, for example, the math, someone can be very confident. But when it comes to reading, and particularly reading these things from the 18th and 19th centuries, they really struggle. And one of the reasons for that is that kids don't read as much as they used to. I mean, we read a lot. We read a lot in school, we read a lot on our own people read his hobby, and I've noticed that wildly change in the past 10 years. You know, in fact, one of my students said to me recently, well, do you know what TikTok is when I asked him if he read? So? Yes, I do.
Thomas: I don't think that reading the captions on TikTok is reading but I could be wrong.
Lauren: Exactly. And I even had a father, I was having a really interesting conversation with him. And he said I said, it's very hard to get to a very high level for reading comprehension and never read on their own. And he said, my younger kids don't read the way my older kids did, even uncertainly the way I did. So I understand that it's a struggle. So they come in with a hope or an expectation that they're going to achieve a 750, for example, in the verbal, but without doing any reading in order to achieve that.
And the LSAT I do think does a good job of being able to separate the people that can read effectively and the ones that don't. So, the reading is the most challenging part of the LSAT. I think for many students, the grammar of the writing section is what it's called, but it's not really writing, it's about grammar, they pretty much copied from the ACT, and they made a big change in 2015. And so both tests basically have an identical section that's very teachable. A lot of the kids don't know what to expect. So once they do, once they understand the kind of questions that are being asked and how it's repeated over and over over the course of the section. That gives them a lot of confidence and their scores go way up as a result in that section. That's very doable.
Thomas: Thank you. There's a lot that you brought up there and a few things that I want to unpack if you don't mind are very funny. The first thing that comes to mind is this 18th and 19th-century writing, okay, as I was speaking with a young man, we did a live coaching session on an earlier episode Maui, and he said much to his parents, chagrin, I don't understand why we have to read Shakespeare and what some 400-year-old dude as why what he has to say has any bearing on my life now. So, would you like
Lauren: A Maori? Sure, absolutely. I think that it's not so much Shakespeare particularly, but anyone in our history in general, you need to have the ability to read it, irrespective of the style, and the vocabulary. And otherwise, you're missing out on so many important philosophical and social ideas that people shared from a period of time that we no longer have. And if you can't understand what they're saying, because you either are uncomfortable with the style of the time, or it's just too much effort, then you lose out on all those people's thoughts that you could be gaining from in a subject you might be really interested in. And that's, that's a shame to me.
Thomas: I think very well captured. Thank you. And so I guess, I'm a parent, and for other parents listening in, they're trying, they're thinking, look, I have enough trouble getting my high schooler to pick their laundry up off the floor and eat their vegetables. And now I have to get them to read Shakespeare. Does it matter? Are you saying that these students should read more classic works? Or they should just start by reading anything that they can get their hands on?
Lauren: Well, that's an excellent question. I think, first of all, the issue of timing is quite important. And on any one of these tests, you can't avoid that issue. And in fact, many people take the LSAT, even though the writing is I mean, the reading is more difficult. And the math is a lot more obscure, just because the timing is much more forgiving than the ACT. So that's difficult, already, right, and someone can have the skills. But if they don't have the reading speed, even in math, they're not going to finish the section. And if they don't finish the section, they will not get a great score, you can't get a superior score without completing the test.
So any kind of reading to go back to your question, which is an excellent one, speeds up someone's reading speed. I have a student who read on him comics, that's all he read. He doesn't even like school for the most part. But his reading is not that bad. And that's why he's reading something at least he said, I read them every time they come out. There's a new one every Sunday. So I was like, Wow, that's pretty interesting. So I think what's really important, the first step is to get them reading anything. That's important.
The second step is for it specifically for the LSAT, not the ACT, they do need to be able to read that kind of mostly nonfiction work. But some fiction, most of my kids have never read Jane Austen. I don't even understand that. And partially, it's not really fair to them that the coursework in their English classes doesn't include those things anymore, for the most part. So they walk into the LSAT, with no history of reading anything before the 20th century. And that's difficult. So I think once they get to that point, no, there's not much point in reading the classics. When you're trying to prepare for a test and you're halfway through your junior year, I think you just have to do it off of the LSAT and learn that kind of reading. And then hopefully someday take a class in college that fills that up.
Thomas: Okay, as an extension of that, and this is a personal question because I have a teenager who, interestingly enough lives on Audible, he is a voracious consumer of books, but through his headphones, right? You know, I'm, I'm old fashioned. I think you have to read it. And the diet exercise is a different part of the brain. Is that the case?
Lauren: I totally agree with that. Don't transfer? Absolutely not. And it's too bad. Because there certainly are kids that learn much better orally. And there are people that learn much better visually, I don't like watching YouTube to learn something new, it takes too long. For me, I'd much rather read it I read much faster, and I can get to what I want. But I'm one of many. And there are a lot of people that are the complete opposite. So but the test if they want to succeed in the test, they need those visual reading skills.
Thomas: Okay. And that's very helpful to know, and not wholly shifting gears here. But you've brought this up a couple of times. And I think it's very important, because it's a question that I know, both of us get on a regular basis, right? You kind of dipped in and out of the ACT versus the LSAT. You know, I can say from an admission standpoint, there's really, there's no preference, one or the other room when students and their families are looking at those two tests and deciding which one to take what do you see as the main differences and is there a particular type of student that might do better on one versus the other?
Lauren: I think that's a great question and an important one. So I have this happens a lot. Sometimes I'll get a student and they'll say, Oh, I'm going to take the LSAT. I said, Why have you thought about the ACT? Oh, I know it's not good for me because it has a science section. Will Have you ever practiced it? Have you looked at the test? No, but I know that's not the right one.
They discount one or the other before they've even given either one a chance. And actually, people can do significantly better on one than the other without even knowing it, and the ACT tends to be the one in the shadow. And so I've had some kids switch to the ACT, and crush it. So the ACT has some important differences from the SAT and depending on a student's ability, one will be better than the other. So the biggest issue, as I mentioned earlier, is the timing. If a student is slow, if they read slowly, if they struggle with that the ACT is cruel. And if they can't finish the last quarter of a section, they are not going to do well. So that's the biggest difference.
However, if they can read fast enough to do it, I think the ACT is a better test. For most kids, it's much more straightforward, the reading is a million times easier. And the grammar is basically the same for each test. So the reading is only four passages, and none of them are old. So they're all within, probably 50 years, the style is easy. The vocabulary in general is easy. It's a much better section for a non-reader, if you have a voracious reader at home who's read everything for years then the SATs are great. But for most students, they really struggle. And the only reason they're taking the LSAT is because they can't finish the ACT in a timely manner that works. So that's, that's a big issue.
Thomas: Okay, thank you. And I've heard you advise students we've worked together on before to maybe take a practice test in each. Absolutely they score.
Lauren: Right. So my first point does not discount either one don't come in being certain you're going to do either one second, really take after, I think it's a good idea not to take the test cold, but to at least have one session. So you're familiar with each test before you take it, and then take it so in other words, you can take it early on in your test prep. But you don't want to take it where you have absolutely no idea of what's coming, you should know the instructions, you should know the sections, you should know the order of the sections, how many problems are in each section, all of those things are important going in.
So then you take a practice one and each one very informally, it doesn't have to be a formal thing. And you'll quickly see students are very rarely ambivalent, they really want to do one or the other. And they know that's the right one for them. And they're usually right. So don't discount one or the other, take the time to explore both of them and find out which one's better. And then the third issue for a lot of international students is the AC T is much harder to take. It's not as available in as many places a lot of schools don't offer it. And so I've had a number of students that were far better in the AC T, and we could not find them a test center. So they had to take the LSAT instead. And so that's something you want to think about if you're outside of the US.
Thomas: And as you're looking at your high school career, for example, when do you start studying for these tests? And how often should you study for them? Or what is what does that look like?
Lauren: That's an excellent question. I think it really depends on the student. Ideally, if you don't have a lot of similar types of academics at your school, for example, your school focuses on other things, than the skills, the LSAT or the ACT tests, you need to start early ninth grade, 10th grade, build those skills up if you want to get a good score, and then start taking it August of your junior year, taking a number of times that year. But that's not helpful for everybody, because most people don't want to spend that time doing it. So the other extreme is a minimum of eight weeks, a junior who's got a whole bunch of AB classes doesn't have much time. Never take this test cold. That is an error. Always
Thomas: We've all heard about this one person that took it and got a 1600 and an urban legend.
Lauren: That's right. And you know what that is fabulous. I'm all for that. But that's not the majority. And the majority really can benefit from eight sessions of prepping one for each section to learn the skills, and then one for each section timed. So in addition to that, obviously, you learn multiple choice strategies, and all sorts of other testing strategies, but most of it is about the actual skills that it's being that it's testing and how to achieve those in the best way.
Thomas: And you also touched on something you brought up about the AP tests. Did you want to talk about those? I know you've worked with some students on AP test prep, what's the difference between an AP test for example, and a standardized test SAT or ACT?
Lauren: I think they're completely different animals in a lot of ways. One tests a class to some degree that they're given in school although those class acids vary a lot in their content. The other one is supposed to be sort of a cumulative test of everything you've learned up to this point. So they'll test things in math that a kid might have learned in seventh or eighth grade and now they have to.
So there's a lot of review involved. For the SATs, even my best, best math students who are now in AP Calculus, all of them have always said to me, I do review before the test, I didn't remember all those things, I learned them in seventh or eighth grade, and then you forget them because they don't continue. And then they're tested on something that of course, they know how to do, but they don't remember it, because they're not doing it now. And so they have that review, for the math is crucial, for a good score, even if you're a great math student. And I have quite a few students that are really good math students but didn't test well on the test initially, which is why they come to me, because they weren't prepared for it. So it has nothing to do with their ability, it has to do with their ability to take the test effectively. And those are two different things. Yeah, and
Thomas: I think that's an important thing. You know, these tests are not a measure of your intelligence, or how now or as a student or a human, it's really about learning how to take the test. And that's one of the main arguments that the universities are putting forward in terms of moving away from testing, going test-optional, right, trying to look again, more deeply at the whole student.
Lauren: I think that's a really good point, some of the skills, the LSAT or the ACT, or any of them tests are effective, and fair, for example, careless mistakes, I think that the test teaches the ability to be precise, and follow through, in a way nothing else does. First of all, because the student is highly motivated to do well. And when I show them what they could have gotten if they hadn't made those careless mistakes. So I often get 48 out of 50, right, but miss an extra 10, from not reading the problem correctly, or not carrying over the negative sign, et cetera, et cetera. And so a lot of the work I do is to clean that up because that makes an enormous difference.
So that's a good part of it. I think one of the very bad parts of it is, these kids aren't tested on how long they're supposed to do their homework. In other words, they don't get an A for their, assignment, if they spent more or less time on it, it's the quality of it. And yet these tests determine how good these kids are based on whether they can do it in the time allotted. And that's not a good preparation for how good they're going to be in school necessarily. So that I think is a weakness. And I'm glad in a lot of ways the schools are looking at that.
Thomas: I think that's just a wonderfully put, and very succinct way to look at everything. So thank you very much. I appreciate the experience on that. And I think the last question I have on testing, and the reading part, really is you and I speak several languages. I personally can't even imagine having to study at the level some of our students study. Second Language.
Lauren: It's amazing.
Thomas: You know, if I'm an international student, how do I get up to speed on us? You know, us reading, what should I be doing besides reading on me?
Lauren: Well, first of all, I think all of these kids that are trying to be completely fluent in writing and reading in two languages, or more, many of which languages are very different from each other, deserve a round of applause, I have tremendous respect for what they're trying to do because that is not easy. And so I think there's a number of things. One is, there are specific things from specific places. So for example, someone who speaks Chinese, often in English struggles with verb tense, because my understanding of Chinese which I don't speak is that there are no verb tenses in the same way. So they're often wrong. So they need to be very careful about that. Also, prepositions, prepositions are very strange in English, and hard to understand, so somebody's writing is weakened by using the wrong ones. And so they have to be careful of that.
So there are certain writing issues that are true for everyone. And then there are certain ones that are very specific based on language. So they need to be able to do both of those things. That's the first thing. Secondly, they need to read decent work, whether it's and it has, it can be in whatever they like. A lot of kids I have loved nonfiction. I love fiction. I could read fiction all day long. They don't like that. That's fine. They want to read about National Geographic or they have different interests, reading, reading, reading something that's not that's of a certain level of scholarship or quality, so that their vocabulary broadens their ability to understand more sophisticated phrasing and proves they have to be able to do that, but the subject matter is far less important than the quality of the prose to me.
Thomas: Interesting, okay, and then you started touching on the writing. So the reading translates directly to effectiveness in writing.
Lauren: I think that reading well and writing well are intimately connected. Yes. And I think that, especially when you're writing an essay, if you have to write an essay on a subject, like analyzing a section of a book, if you don't thoroughly understand what's being said, in the book, you can't possibly write a good essay. I had a student recently who I had written something about a subject I knew she knew about off the top of her head. It wasn't anything to do with any journal or book. It was just knowledge she had because I wanted her to write without having to refer to anything. And she wrote an astounding essay on something she knew well, and she was able to look at how to organize an essay effectively because that's all she had to concentrate on. But when you add, having to understand The Great Gatsby and the symbology behind it, and Fitzgerald's phrasing, then it's double the work. And so both of them I think, are crucial to be a successful writer.
Thomas: Okay, we're going to take a break here. I'm so glad that we were able to cover test prep strategy, and how to prepare for standardized testing.
In our next episode, we're going to dive into the writing piece and understand why being able to write effectively is key to academic success, regardless of what you end up taking in school.
Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to the admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedly podcast. I look forward to continuing our journey together.
