The College and Career Ready Podcast | empowering students for the careers of tomorrow
Join your host Sonia Cacique on a transformative journey preparing high school and college students for real world careers, equipping them with practical skills, professional experiences, and career guidance.
As a dedicated career guidance counselor, career coach, and education leader, Sonia has spent her entire career empowering the next generation for the future workforce. With her expertise, she helps students develop self-awareness, motivation, and career guidance, building the essential skills needed for success in both their educational and future professional journeys.
Coach Sonia is ready to shift the focus from GPA, class rank, and grades to career connections, self-identity, character development, and real-world skills. She aims to challenge the traditional narratives and provide students with a comprehensive approach to education and career readiness. Changing lives for our next gens, one student at a time.
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The College and Career Ready Podcast | empowering students for the careers of tomorrow
76. How to Help Your Student Improve their SAT and ACT Scores, Get Into Top Colleges, and Win $1,000's in Scholarships w/ Dr. Shaan Patel
Dr. Shaan Patel, MD, MBA is founder and CEO of Prep Expert. As seen on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” Prep Expert is a leading education company that has helped more than 100,000 students improve their SAT and ACT scores, get into top colleges, and win over $100 million in scholarships. Dr. Patel raised his own SAT score from average to perfect, has 20+ years experience with SAT prep, and has authored 15+ test prep books. A board-certified dermatologist, Dr. Patel was named one of Inc. Magazine’s “30 Under 30.”
Imagine a world where the daunting SAT becomes your ally, opening gates to financial freedom through scholarships and a less stressful college application process.
We will explore:
- How to ace the new Digital SAT
- How to secure $100,000+ college scholarships
- How test prep prepares your student for their career and beyond!
That's what we explore in this episode with PrepExpert's CEO, as he details the structured methodology of a top-notch live online test prep course that goes beyond the classroom. Test prep is more than just about the score; it's about setting the stage for a thriving college experience and a career that soars.
Learn more about Prep Expert: https://prepexpert.com
Connect with Dr. Patel:
https://www.facebook.com/prepexpert/
https://www.instagram.com/prep_expert/?hl=en
https://www.tiktok.com/@prep_expert
https://twitter.com/Prep_Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/company/prep-expert
Connect with Sonia Cacique
LinkedIn
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Join our College and Career Connections Club for free at www.CollegeCareerReady.org/join
Learn about our Career Connections Course: www.CollegeCareerReady.org/COURSE
"Stay well, be present, and enjoy the journey"
Hi everyone. I'm Sonia Casique with the College and Career Ready podcast.
Speaker 2:And I'm Dr Sean Patel, founder and CEO of PrepExpert. And today you're going to be learning how to help your student improve their SAT and ACT scores, get into top colleges and win thousands of dollars in scholarships. I'm excited to share all of this information with you.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm excited to get started. So everyone stay tuned, because you're going to be in for a great episode. Welcome to College and Career Ready, the only podcast that helps parents equip their growing teen as they transition from high school to college and college to their career. My name is Sonia Casique. I'm a former educator, certified school counselor, turned career coach, and founder of Discover U. Together, we will redefine what it truly means to be college and career ready. I believe that you deserve all the tools and support necessary to open the doors to endless opportunities of success, and with our community, you don't have to do this alone, so come with me and let's get started. Welcome, sean. Welcome to the College and Career Ready podcast.
Speaker 2:Hi Sonia, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm super excited. I'm sure you have lots of stories to share, so we're going to get right into it. Why don't you tell our audience which I know you as the Shark Tank winner? But tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So we can certainly talk about Shark Tank, but I'll start before. That Is actually back when I was in high school, I was a pretty good student, very similar to probably many of the parents who have students here. I got straight A's in high school, but I was not a very good standardized test taker. So what I mean by that is I had a lot of test anxiety. I did not know the first thing about test preparation, scholarships, college admissions. My parents didn't go to college in the United States and so you know, on the very first SAT that I ever took, I only scored a little bit above average. So that wasn't good enough for the colleges and the scholarships that I wanted. So I basically locked myself in the library the summer between my 11th grade year and 12th grade year and I self-studied for the SAT. Eventually I was able to raise my score 640 points and achieve a perfect SAT Completely changed my life, got into some top universities, got a half a million dollars in college scholarship offers, and so when I got to college, I wanted to help other students improve their test scores and so I started PrepExpert, and in the very first six-week SAT course that I ever taught, my students had an average score improvement of 300 points, which is equivalent of taking a student from the 50th percentile and putting them in the 90th percentile.
Speaker 2:So of course I had parents and students who wanted more courses. I began training other instructors to teach my curriculum and over the past 12 years we've helped over 100,000 students improve their essay. Ago, I pitched the company on ABC's Shark Tank and I made an investment deal with Mark Cuban, who's been an amazing investor, advocate and partner for the company ever since.
Speaker 1:I love this and you know. Tell me, when you were studying, what made? What do you think made your study habits or your studying different than all the other students who are studying for hours and hours?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So you know, one of the things that I did when I was in high school was I only practice with a fish, and I still recommend this to all of our students at PrepExpert, which is. I only practiced with official questions produced by the test creator. So who creates the SAT? It's a company called the College Board, so when you use questions by the test creator, you really get an accurate sense of the types of questions you're going to encounter on test day. So I must have taken over 20 College Board official SATs during that summer in the library.
Speaker 2:However, it's not enough just to practice, so you really have to apply good strategies, good test taking techniques, get used to timing and you know approach the exam differently, and so you know. I read so many different books with different strategies. I created my own strategies. I would study why I got certain questions right and wrong, and I would write all of these insights in a notebook. So I called it my insight notebook and basically a lot of the strategies that I developed on what worked well for me and what didn't work well for me ended up turning into my essay curriculum and books that we teach students now, and I think it's effective because these are strategies that help me go from average to perfect and I think they help a lot of students go from you know, mediocre scores to 90th or 99th percentile scores. Some students have even scored perfect at PrepExpert as well, but it's very difficult. 0.02% of all students.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's incredible because now we're opening the doors for college advancement, for opportunities to all students. We are not being you know for a certain demographic or a certain percentile. This opens the opportunity for so many students for so many students.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a lot of people think that you know, prep expert or test preparation is only for elite students or students who are, you know already, geniuses at standardized tests. And actually my favorite part of the company is helping students who are more average or even below average, you know. So I just read a review from a student who took our new digital essay course and she said she started off at a 900 on the digital essay. Just, you know, for the audio information, and 900 out of 1600 is below average. Average is a thousand. So this was a student who started off below average and after six weeks she got into 1200s. Now you may say, well, 1200 isn't that high of a score on the essay. However, 300 point improvement in six weeks totally opens the doors to new universities, new colleges. Now she's competitive for scholarships. So literally a student's life can change in six weeks. So it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love this and you mentioned scholarships, so tell us how does this play a factor in scholarships? And and after that we'll bridge into the changes that a lot of schools are making now as far as test optional that being revoked and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. You know, I actually think that taking these exams STA exams, at exams you know a lot of people associate them with college admissions, but I actually think the more important reason to take these exams is actually to get scholarships and get your college tuition paid for. Everyone knows college is getting very, very expensive. Average cost of private university now is $200,000 in the United States. Student debt is close to $2 trillion I think it's $1.7 trillion right now and so, in order to make college more affordable, there are billions and billions of dollars in what are called merit-based scholarships.
Speaker 2:So these are scholarships that are awarded based on your child's academic merit, such as their grades, their test scores and their extracurricular activities. So in order to qualify for these, most students cannot qualify just by using their grades. The reason for that is because so many students now have A averages. So 47% of all high school seniors graduate with an A average, so it's almost half of students. So it's very unlikely your student is going gonna get a scholarship just based on their grades. So in order to stand out, you either need or, ideally you need good extracurricular activities, but, most importantly, a high test score will really help you win scholarships. We've had so many students who win a million dollars in scholarships, half a million dollars in scholarships, 100,000, 200,000 dollars in scholarships, all because they had high test scores. And the colleges are looking at this, even if they're test optional, and oftentimes they're awarding half tuition, full tuition scholarships to students who, of course, have good grades but that's most students but also have high test scores and good extracurricular activities.
Speaker 1:That is the news that we need to be sharing with parents, because it's so disappointing for students to not have the opportunity to go to college, because you know they just can't make ends meet. And then the other thing is, students think, if they're not in the top percentile right, that they won't have these opportunities. Now what you're saying is that through test preparation something that is accessible to any student they can have the opportunity to increase their scores on the SAT or ACT and then are able to really have an opportunity for scholarship and funding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and you know I think you make a really important point there, where you know I know a lot of people will say well, you know, test preparation it's only for wealthy families. However, you know, if you think about, if you don't use standardized test scores, what are you going to favor? More extracurricular activities and who can afford the best extracurricular activities in terms of the most expensive summer programs, sports like water polo and lacrosse, starting non-profit organizations? I see that all the time with the wealthiest families, and so it actually favors wealthy families more when you take away test scores, because any student in the inner city or rural area can go to a library, like I did, get a bunch of essay books for free and just rent them from the library and study, and it takes zero dollars to do that. Now, of course, there are some investments you could do in tutors and test preparation programs like mine at PrepExpert, but that's obviously a parent decision on whether they want to make that investment to give their child additional advantages, but any student can do it without those advantages.
Speaker 2:I did it myself and so I'm walking proof of that, and so you know what's really interesting about Yale University, dartmouth University, brown University, who all reinstated standardized test scores in the past couple of months.
Speaker 2:Here is all of their research, and data showed that removing test scores from college admissions actually disadvantaged low-income and underprivileged students the most. So Yale's blog post on this actually says you know this is going to sound shocking and counterintuitive to most people, but standardized test scores are actually level the playing field for students who don't have resources like extracurricular activities. Or you know, many inner cities and rural high schools don't even have many AP courses, right, and so people it's typically white and wealthy neighborhoods that have the best lineup of A courses, the best extracurricular activities, and so if you want to level the playing field, that's why standardized test scores have existed for over 100 years and why they've worked so well. I know we had to go test optional during the pandemic because students couldn't take the exam together. You know all the pandemic rules, but that's long gone now, and so that's why we're seeing this huge wave of universities starting to reinstate SAT and ACT score requirements.
Speaker 1:That's. You know, that's good news, because I personally have experienced this with my son, where he didn't score high enough right on the eggs on his math star, and we're in Texas, and so we were like why? Like he's competent, I know he has, he has a twin sister and he scored even below her. We're like that just doesn't make sense. And so we had to really sit back and realize that it was testing strategies, like that's. All he needed is testing strategies, know where he was lacking, know what worked well for him, and then within a year he had a turnaround, you know, on his performance. And I'm assuming that's exactly what's happening with students who take test preps like yours, like yours that they gain the confidence they see, questions that are that are similar to the test preparation strategies. I mean, it's all about knowing what works for you.
Speaker 2:And then yeah, exactly, you hit the nail on the head. You know, it's all about applying the right strategies to the right questions and gaining the confidence reducing your test anxiety. You know, one of the things that I love about our program at PrepExpert is so many students come out of it and say I didn't just learn about that SAT or the ACT. Instead, I learned about how to take academics more seriously. I learned about self-control, delayed gratification, hard work, how to study effectively. I mean, these are all skills that are going to be helpful not only for your students' standardized tests, but it's helpful for all of their academics, their future college career or even in their future work career with time management and productivity skills. And so you know, I think it's really, really important that your student learns these skills early on so that they can be successful throughout the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and we're not going to generalize, but there are some schools who are making it a little too simple too, easy for students, students and that they don't develop the skills necessary, that's not only going to just get them to graduate, but move on to college. And you know, if they don't, they don't learn those skills early on, it's going to backfire them later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you know, I'm really a believer in that. You need to learn to do the hard things, the things you know. Most students would, of course, not like to study for that. They would prefer to scroll TikTok or watch YouTube, and that's the easy thing to do. But it really can have a negative impact on the rest of your life if you don't sit down and do the hard thing and learn those skills early on in life. So I'm a huge proponent of whether you learn it through test prep, whether you learn it through starting a business or entrepreneurship or starting a podcast, doing things that are difficult to do, and learn those skills now so that you'll be able to apply those habits to a wide variety of academics or business career, whatever it may be, to be successful in whatever you do.
Speaker 1:Let's give some tips for parents, right? So you said this is a six week course and we're definitely going to dive into your course specifically, but what do you recommend parents? When should they start having their child prepare for standardized tests?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So if I had to choose when to prepare your child for standardized testing, I would actually do it a little bit earlier than most counselors recommend. And the reason for that is so most counselors recommend, you know, start your test prep in spring of junior year we hear that all the time spring of 11th grade. I actually would do it about a year earlier, like in the summer between 10th grade and 11th grade. Let me explain why. So what happens is in October or fall of 11th grade your student will be taking the PSAT. So the PSAT, the preliminary essay or pre-essay, is also the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which means that if your student scores high on that test, they will qualify for over $100,000 in scholarships to over 100 different universities that automatically give National Merit students scholarships.
Speaker 2:So I always encourage students like why don't we start your prep a little bit earlier, in 10th grade or summer, before 11th grade, so that you have a shot at potentially, you know, using all of these strategies on the PSAT which can qualify you for national merit, because that's a one time chance you have. It's in fall of 11th grade, you don't get to take the PSAT again, and so that's why I would recommend. So you can kill two birds with one stone. That way you do well on the PSAT in fall and then you can register for a fall LSE exam and do your studying one time. So that would be my ideal. Now, if there are parents listening in their 11th grade, they're past that part or they're even 12th graders now no worries, you can still do it now, as you mentioned.
Speaker 2:You know, I really think six weeks is the best amount of time to do preparation. That's how long our course is, but that's usually where I see maximum results for students Nowadays. The SAT and the ACT. What's really nice about both exams is they do have summer administrations. So July and August July for the ACT and August for the SAT. I love those administrations because they used to only do it during the school year, and the problem with that is students are so busy. High school students are so, so busy between their grades, their extracurricular activities, their sports, I mean they're busier than adults, and so you know to try to stack test prep on top of that. It can be very challenging for many students. So I usually recommend prep in the summer. Take the July AC or the August SAT and really focus on it and make it a priority.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Let me ask you this why do you think parents are so afraid of standardized tests and why they're not giving even a shot for their child? You know, especially right now, when we had test optional for a lot of schools and they were like, oh, I'd just rather not have my child take it. Why do you think that happens?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's super interesting and I'm not just saying this theoretically, I'm living proof of this and I've had tens of thousands of students now go through this themselves, and so it's so high impact. It sounds like your son had a very similar experience, and so you know, I really try to tell people your. Gpa, your extracurriculars, your college essay they all are important, but the most important thing that can really differentiate you is standardized testing.
Speaker 1:Wow, we are evening the playing field for students.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I think that's the biggest thing is. I love when students who no motivation previously to go to a top college and their family did not have the money to you know, go to a university that has a $50,000 a year tuition or $60,000 tuition and all of a sudden that student gets the academic motivation after taking one of our courses and they get the score improvement and they get the scholarship to go to a top university. I mean like their whole life has now changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. We know that the SAT is now digital. Any tips or tricks that you would like to share with parents and students?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so huge change. That happened in 2024. For the first time in almost 100 years, the SAT is going from paper to pixel, so from a paper-based test to an online test. Now one of the things that I want to share with parents and students is this is you know, I think a lot of parents and students are a little bit scared of this change and they're worried about it, but I will tell you that this is going to be the most student friendly version of the SAT that's ever existed. The reason for that is it's almost one hour shorter. So instead of being a three and a half hour exam, it's two hours and 14 minutes.
Speaker 2:Instead of being 150 to 200 questions like the paper based SAT, this new digital version is just 98 questions. The paper-based SAT this new digital version is just 98 questions. The passages on the reading section instead of being 750 words, they're now just 100 words. They're short passages, one question per passage. On the math section, there used to be no calculator sections. Now there's a digital calculator you can use on every single math question.
Speaker 2:So this is going to be the most welcome change, the most student-friendly version of the exam ever. Now does that mean the digital SAT is going to be easy. It's not going to be easy because it's still a standardized test that's based on a curve and it is adaptive, which means the questions will get harder as you answer more correctly, which is why they can have fewer questions overall and still get an accurate score. However, I do think that it will be easier to prepare, for students will like it a lot more because it's shorter, it's easier to complete, it's not as taxing. You know, everyone's attention span now to talk is a lot shorter, and so I think it's going to be a welcome change for parents and students.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's good news and exciting to hear what about? Okay, so what if the parent is thinking well, my, my child's high school offers test preparation strategies and they have practice tests. Why would I need to add any supplemental test preparation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. So I really think there's two keys to studying well for any standardized tests. The first is to you know you we talked about this at the very beginning use those official test questions by the test creator. Now, those are, of course, free, doesn't cost you a thing. Now, the next thing you've got to do, though, is use it's not enough just to practice with questions. You've got to apply really amazing strategies as we've been talking about to these questions, and so, of course, here I'm biased I believe the strategies the hundreds of strategies we teach our students at PrepExpert are the best strategies that will help your student maximize their scores.
Speaker 2:I created them myself, as I mentioned, and I went from average to perfect, and we've helped over 100,000 students now. And then the other thing about you know using PrepExpert digital essay courses, or AC courses, is all of our instructors have scored in the 99th percentile of the exam they teach, so they've scored in the top 1%, and that makes a difference, because when your student is reviewing their practice tests or their practice questions, they get to learn from an absolute expert at the exam on how they would approach it, how they would solve it differently, and those insights really help skyrocket scores. So I think that's really the difference compared to just studying on your own and going through practice tests is learning the amazing strategies, but also learning from amazing instructors.
Speaker 1:Tell me more about your course, what makes you unique and how much investment of time. You said it's a a six week course, so what does that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our courses your, your all parents and students can look at them. At prep expertcom, we have over 100 course schedules every single year. Our primary course is our six week flagship essay course, completely online, so anywhere in the United States or even around the world, you can take the courses. Now we really do something that's a lot different than other companies, so, like if you look at Khan Academy or some of these other test prep companies, they are online courses that have no interaction. So this is live online with actual instructors teaching your student the curriculum, and so that's going to be twice a week, usually for about three hours of time, so that's six hours of class instruction. They go through the curriculum content, they go through practice exam content, homework content, review questions, etc. And then, once a week, they take a full length diagnostic test, which, as I mentioned, is about two hours and 14 minutes for the new digital essay Track their progress over six weeks, and so that's about eight to 10 hours of work per week between class time and homework and practice exam time over six weeks. So you're looking at around 670 hours total. This has found to be a winning formula in terms of maximizing students score improvement over six weeks, so that's kind of how it works.
Speaker 2:In terms of the investment, it comes out to around $20 per hour. So it's 60 hours. $20 per hour is $1,200., and so you know it is an investment for sure for parents and students. But what I really think about is, you know, if you spend $1,000 on a test prep course and you get a $100,000 scholarship or $200,000 scholarship back, it pretty much pays itself back. And even if you don't get those big full tuition, half tuition scholarships, most of our students will get at least a $50,000, $20,000, or at least $10,000 scholarship, which makes it all worth it.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. And what if a child decides to, or a parent decides to purchase this for their 10th incoming 11th grader? Is this a course they can continue to access? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have courses that you can access unlimited. So we have different versions. We have unlimited access courses, we have one year, two year access. It really depends on which course you purchase in terms of your access level. We even have courses where, if you want to get really early started, you can get started in the eighth or ninth grade. Then you'll have access all the way until you graduate high school. So it really depends on the parent and student and how much stuff we have. We have certain programs that offer, you know, scholarship and college admissions as well. So that's why I really encourage PrepExpert parents and students to head over to prepexpertcom. They can see all the different options. They can talk to our customer experience team to figure out what the best course schedule and package would work for their children.
Speaker 1:Very good. Would they work with the same instructor every single time, every session, or is it a different instructor each time?
Speaker 2:So for each course? Yeah, they would work with the same instructor. However, if, for some of our unlimited packages, you choose to take different courses with different instructors which many students like because learning from different perspectives always helps you can get one-on-one tutoring to work on your weaknesses. So it really just depends on what each parent would like.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that. And going a little bit back to college admissions, is there any other tip that you recommend parents? General tips for college admissions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for college admissions.
Speaker 2:One of my biggest tips is, if you have a dream university, one of the things that I would do is really get to know the admissions officers at that dream university, especially, you know, if it's a larger university that has what are called regional admissions officers, meaning they're responsible for a certain geographic region.
Speaker 2:So, for example, a lot of the Ivy League schools will have this, where you know they're responsible, let's say, for Nevada, Texas and California applicants. So that means that if you're from Nevada, California or Texas, you should probably get to know that person because they're going to be the one reading those applications. That can really give you a leg up in college admissions at competitive universities, you know, and it's getting more competitive than ever. I think Harvard and Yale just published that they had their most competitive or lowest acceptance rates ever this past year. So highly, highly recommend getting to know the admissions officers because they will remember your child when they see their application, if they've made a good impression on them, if they've taken the time to email them, meet with them a lot of times they'll meet these different regions or you guys go to visit the university. Huge, huge leg up in the college admissions world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did you make your own decision as far as where you went?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, I did get into the Ivy League and I got into some other prestigious universities like Johns Hopkins, northwestern Berkeley, but ultimately I made my college admission, college decision a financial one. So the University of Southern California gave me a full ride scholarship, so I didn't have to pay a dime for tuition, housing, books, food or any other college-related expenses, and so I turned down all the other top university offers, knowing that I wouldn't have to go into student debt. And that's really what I encourage many students and parents at PrepExpert to make their college decision around, which is, you know, don't go into mountains of student debt just to attend a university brand name. If you can get into maybe a less prestigious university but maybe a state school that gives you a state scholarship, or even a community college sometimes, as long as you're not going into huge amounts of debt and you've been able to reduce your cost of college, I think it's a smart financial decision for your future.
Speaker 1:For sharing that, sean, because that's exactly what I say day in and day out. I always tell our students, you know, and our parent listeners is it's what you do in college. What's really going to make the difference the networking, the community service, the internships, like that's what's. At the end of the day, when you graduate, you're going to have a degree you know with, with a name on it, obviously. But they're also going to be asking you what did you do? Where is your experience with you know? What else do you have to offer Besides a you know a degree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and don't get me wrong, I think a college degree is super important. It, you know. I know a lot of people say is college even worth it? Is it important? But if you look at all the statistics, the earnings, the applicant potential is still very, very valuable. But, like you said, it's what you do with that college degree after or during college and then after that really matters, not always the brand name, like if you get into an amazing university it's your dream Absolutely. But I would say, make sure you've figured out how to pay for it or figured out a career that will for sure pay for it after.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, because we even hear of parents still paying their own education while financing their children's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, I went to medical school and I still have doctors and colleagues that I know that are still paying off medical school debt, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. I've even met doctors that are paying off 30 years later.
Speaker 1:As far as test preparation. Before you know we wrap up, are there any tips that you know, takeaway tips as far as test preparation for all of our listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, a really quick and easy tip that I can share with listeners is one for the grammar section, so the writing sections of the SAT or the ACT. There are certain words that are always going to be incorrect. So two of those words that I can point out are the word being and the word very, so B-E-I-N-G, and the word V-E-R-Y so very and being. If your student sees those words on answer choices on grammar-based questions on standardized tests, they can be confident that those answer choices are incorrect, and the reason for that is they often create passive voice. I'm not going to get into the difference between passive and active voice right now, but really quick and simple rules like that are great examples of the types of strategies that your student needs to learn in order to succeed on these exams.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. As far as time, I know that would be a little bit of concern for some parents, like what if I can't have with my child, doesn't have six to eight hours a week at a time? Do you have an extended timeframe where they can take it, or what suggestions or what time of the year do you recommend they take it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so six to eight hours a week is definitely a time investment, especially in high school students busy schedules. So usually I recommend taking our courses in the summer because they are so in time intensive when your student has more time. Now if your student is in high school and needs to take our course or do some tutoring, I would usually recommend like one-on-one tutoring, where your student has the flexibility to schedule sessions around their busy schedule. So you could do one-on-one tutoring with our tutors and just do a couple hours a week rather than have to do six to eight hours of class and testing during the school year.
Speaker 1:Okay, I like that. Those are a couple of options here. And $1,000. I mean, I'm going to make a plug here for you, because $1,000 is nothing compared to the amount of money that you're just going to be spending in education, college expenses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I know you know the amount of value that your student will get for $1,000 in terms of, one, reducing their cost of college through scholarships. Two, one college class is like $4,000, even at the cheapest schools. But then, three, I think that what's really unique and special about prep expert courses is we don't just teach your student about SAT and ACT. I have 20 strategies that are simply dedicated to time management, productivity, studying effectively, and we have so many students who come out of this like I didn't just learn how to study for the SAT, I learned how to study for my AP exams, my high school exams, my English exam. I got more serious about academics. It's like how valuable is that you know for your student?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I'm gonna ask you just a personal question, because I'm excited that you're the one here, right? You don't have someone else representing you and your company, and I love that about you. What's what's in the future for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so many people may not know this, but I'm also a doctor, so I am a dermatologist and I do teledermatology, which allows me to have the flexibility to run PrepExpert as the CEO, and so what's next for me is I'm looking to expand, both as an entrepreneur and as a doctor. So, who knows, maybe I'll start my own teledermatology platform one day, but for now, I'm really focused on PrepExpert and growing it and delivering the best possible estimate anyone offers online, and that's really been my focus. I spent over 1000 hours this past year revamping our curriculum just for the digital essay, and I think it's better than any other company out there, but also just so good for students. I really, you know, took a deep dive in on what's going to be the most effective curriculum to put together for students, and you know, the initial reviews we have on our first pilot digital courses has been amazing, so I'm glad that the hard work has been worth it for students.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome. Thank you so much for doing what you do. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you're like? I'd like to share this as well.
Speaker 2:No, thank you for this amazing interview on college admissions, test preparation and scholarships. I think it's going to help a lot of parents and students out there. And for the parents who are interested in learning more about PrepExpert, head over to PrepExpertcom. You can see all of our course schedules for our digital ST courses. I know a lot of people take A, so we do A courses, college admissions, consulting, all kinds of stuff and you can find it all at PrepExpertcom.
Speaker 1:That's super, that's super easy, and I'll make sure to have a link on the show notes. Thank you so much, dr Patel, for being here with us.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Sonia. Yeah, this interview was a lot of fun. Appreciate the time.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Thank you for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much to me. If you share it with a friend, a colleague or your own community, If you share it on social media and tag me, I'll make sure to personally thank you. My two favorite places to hang out are Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our show notes for a direct link. I'm so thankful for each and every one of you.
