Entering high school, I wanted to be an engineer.
My dad used to tell me about a guy he know who was a doctor, a lawyer, AND an engineer. This was what I looked up to. Never actually met this guy, or learned his name. Now I see someone who was unleveraged, inefficient, and likely in a lot of debt. Pick the lane that frees up your time the fastest, guy.
So I won a bunch of academic awards and then high school came around. I failed a placement test. Held back two years in math, back to algebra 1. Apparently I did so badly that the head of math wouldn’t even let me try to take algebra 1 over the summer to get into geometry. At 14, my engineer dreams were over thanks to a placement test. All the Legos I built, the computers I was working on, the math awards, the Hopkins awards — none of it mattered.
And sure enough, Mrs. O taught me freshman year. And algebra 1 was hard. All the steps, so impractical, doing the math exactly the right way, step by step, it never felt like math to me. The shame compounded at home, and I was legit scared of math for three years.
Until the SAT. When I was told that the steps didn’t matter. The answers did. Work backwards from the answer choices. If you’re doing hard algebra you’re likely wasting your time.
To this day, my brand of math is big picture, not granular. I only execute when the upside math is infinite and the downside is measurable and minimal. This doesn’t require spreadsheets or algebraic steps. In poker, I don’t measure odds with precision, I measure them comparatively. And generally, if I play a hand, I know when I’m gambling and I know when the odds are on my side.
As my business gets bigger and margins get thinner, I’ll be hiring for MBA skillsets: those who can extract percentage points rather than create new categories.
The SAT, itself, is nothing. Specifically, its repetitive problems formulated to produce a replicable curve year after year to provide context for grades, and the repetition can be recognized across the SAT to the GMAT to the LSAT to the MCAT. This is why an SAT tutor can teach the GMAT with a little training.
Most parents I ask don’t even remember their scores, and they’re titans. The process itself, the execution under pressure, the realizations about what your skills are (there’s totally a way to go through the SAT with a granular math mindset rather than big picture), these things stick. These skills are what matter to us, and what we build in house.
Not every students needs or requires this level of introspection. So we partner with other companies to match them, no ego, no greed. Just a long time understanding of who needs Ashland Prep, and how to meet every student and family at their level.