Tony Di Giacomo:

Today’s expert interview we’re joined by Jared Small, the director of programs and co-founder of Peak Performance Prep and educational enrichment and test prep company based in Rye, New York. Their tutors offer private and class-based AP, SAT and ACT prep services using a unique team instructional model to provide optimal tutor, specialization, and customization for your student. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of today’s standardized testing landscape and how you can prepare your student for this important step on the road to college. Hi, I’m Dr. Tony Di Giacomo from Novella Prep, and this is A Novel Take. Jared, thanks for taking the time to chat with me today.

Jared Small:

Thanks Tony. I’m really happy to be joining you today.

Tony Di Giacomo:

I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background and the work you do at Peak Performance Prep.

Jared Small:

Let me start with my background and I’ll work my way to the current day as an undergraduate at Harvard, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I found an incredible mentor at the local public high school in Cambridge. In addition to majoring in history, I took additional courses at the Harvard grad school of education in order to get certified, to teach in public schools immediately upon graduating in 2002, I began teaching AP World, AP Euro, and a few other courses at a local high school. I also established Peak Performance with two colleagues, Judd Rothstein, and Terry McEwen in 2004. I had been an sat teacher for Kaplan during college. And so I was just ready to take my next step and develop a brand that really meant something to me. And in Peak Performance, we found that for the next 13 years, I continued to teach high school history.

Jared Small:

I managed Peak Performance and I coached soccer and that took me up through 2015. And at that point I was ready for a little change. I took a three-year sabbatical of sorts where I enrolled in Harvard law school between 2015 and 2018. And my primary goal was really to expand my intellectual horizons, explore my interest in human rights. This took me on legal projects to Kosovo and to the middle East, and really got to see and do things that challenged me and pushed me in new directions at the same time. While at law school, I worked as the full-time assistant men’s soccer coach at Harvard and my responsibilities range from recruiting running training sessions. Perhaps most importantly, I think for me, mentoring players on everything from academics to their emotional and intellectual growth presently, I actually serve in a similar but much less time-intensive role with the student athletes on the Yale men’s soccer team.

Jared Small:

I bring this up Tony because I think mentoring these high level student athletes for me has had a transformative impact on my sense of self. And I’m really what I think is possible to achieve through Peak Performance. I’ve benefited tremendously from those three years away from Peak Performance. And even though I dabbled in various legal fields, I took an internship with major league soccer. I did a summer position in big law. Ultimately I felt most excited and re-energized by the prospect of resuming my day-to-day leadership role with what I envisioned as a more powerful, more impactful version of Peak Performance. I came back here in May, 2018. I think I returned to quick with a newly honed set of leadership skills and a really clear vision for how Peak could continue to thrive as a business and ramp up our already established commitment to pro bono work in local communities and also in the South Bronx in terms of my current work with Peak really it’s all inclusive. I oversee every aspect of our SAT, ACT, advanced placement, other school, subject tutoring, L-SAT, and community centered pro bono programming. It affords me the opportunity to work with students in multiple States and countries. I really enjoy providing students with a blueprint for how to think through problems systematically and efficiently, not just to do well on these tests, but really to develop habits of mind that I think will serve them well in the future,

Tony Di Giacomo:

That kind of background is one of the things that I think drew me to wanting to reach out to you in the first place at novella prep focus a lot on a holistic approach to our work. It’s a word that might be used a lot now, but truly is meaningful to us. We’re looking at all aspects of student wellbeing, whether it’s study skills enrichment or on the way to college planning, looking to help students figure out ways to make improvements to their life and overall wellbeing. Understanding of course, the competitive nature of college admissions and some of the different decision points that come their way. I’m wondering if you could tell us how Peak Performance seems to focus on individual and holistic needs of students. And if you could share with us a bit more on what makes your philosophy and approach to test prep and academic enrichment so unique?

Jared Small:

Say before I even get into what Peak does, I think one of the things that drew our company to you, Tony, and to Novella Prep was from the moment we met your emphasis on holistic needs of students and really seeing the entire picture. This is a larger process than any one domain of a student’s life. It’s really all encompassing. We share a lot in that regard in terms of our approach. I would say that right from the beginning, starting in 2004, we looked to provide a team of tutors for each of our students to equip the tutor, the student and the parent with a robust set of data obtained through an initial diagnostic exam and frequent practice tests throughout the course of instruction. Let’s take, for example, a Peak ACT student. That student works with a team of educators, each of whom is intently focused on the student’s growth. Within that specific domain. We have an English expert, we have a math expert, we have a reading science expert. One of those members of the teaching team will also be responsible for monitoring the larger picture, the holistic growth you overall score improvements, really the larger narrative of that student’s experience with Peak and that students experienced navigating high school. We believe this approach enables to best achieve the best of both worlds. We bring an immense amount of specificity and experience to each individual component of the test. And then our collaborative and holistic approach enables us to be attentive to those broader emotional and intellectual needs. We just hope that this approach really motivates students to take ownership of their own learning and reach their peak.

Tony Di Giacomo:

One of the things that I realized in the work that we do is helping students and parents understand the difference between intelligence skill and talent. Being able to appreciate how you can turn talents into skills through hard work and focus. And also when there is a standardized test that it does focus on measurement, right? We’re measuring a student where they are in a given moment through certain means. Part of that can be stressful for families. But what we’ve found is the more they come to understand about standardized testing, the more they can perhaps appreciate its role and combat in grade inflation and helping predict college GPA. One of the reasons that colleges use it isn’t to try not to admit students, they want to admit students so that they can be successful. Part of your work. I would imagine therefore is helping the best representation of that student’s skillset come forward, whether it’s an SAT or ACT for this year. One of the things that we’re finding is testing is particularly stressful. There’s a lot of new policy that we have to think about what really matters we’ve found given all of this backdrop is time. Can you break down for us when this process should really begin? And the overall wider timeline?

Jared Small:

There is no right or wrong time to start the process. One of the things we strive to do really well at Peak, and I know that you emphasize at Novella is that families need to develop a timeline that works for their needs for their schedules. The first step from my perspective is students should take a diagnostic act and a diagnostic sat to determine which tests better suits them. I encourage students to take these at any point, starting in January of their 10th grade year, we offer one complimentary initial diagnostic sat, one initial ACT to any student who was just to participate about 40% of the cases. These diagnostic tests reveal that one test is clearly better than the other. The other 60% of cases, the results probably are close enough to make this a toss up. We value a student’s input and qualitative reactions, and often encourage students to weigh in on what felt better or what was more comfortable.

Jared Small:

The timing and types of questions are quite different on the two exams and students know what works and what doesn’t for them. We add data and we think we can make an informed decision by using all those metrics. Once those diagnostics are completed, I would encourage families to think about for primary starting windows for instruction window, number one, late spring, early summer after 10th grade, that’s probably the most popular right now, window number two, late summer, early fall, heading into 11th grade and years where students have a lot to do in a summer or might be traveling or doing immersive internships that often works well. A third window would be November or Thanksgiving time. After the first quarter of 11th grade, let’s get students feeling comfortable and into the flow of the school year. And then we can add the instruction. Finally, a fourth window might be considered January of 11th grade.

Jared Small:

It’s not the most common anymore. People tend to want to start a little bit earlier, but for many students, that’s the right time and developmentally, emotionally, intellectually that’s really when they’re going to begin their strongest work and hopefully hit their Peak in June of their junior year, in terms of our instructional programming, we offer our programs to coincide with these four windows. That means we start small classes at each of these four windows. And when I say small classes, I mean eight students, that’s generally where we tap our classes. We also can do private tutoring starting any day of the year. I often get a question from families and they say to me, we want to start this and we want to go by what you’ve recommended, but we’re kind of eager to get going earlier than you’ve suggested. What can we do? Can we start winter spring of 10th grade?

Jared Small:

And I know you probably get that question as well. We answer that question by saying yes, if you really want to start, start with the grammar component. So our head grammar tutor and co-founder Terry McEwen, as well as her daughters for 15 years ago were actually, Acing the SAT grammar as Peak students themselves. They do an incredible job teaching the fundamentals of grammar, and very few students come to us with a strong command of grammar. So this early start in grammar can really help students ace this portion of the exam learn rules that are gonna benefit them in school. And we think that’s probably the most appropriate way to start on the earlier end if you are so inclined to do so.

Tony Di Giacomo:

The shift toward using rubrics for English teachers in particular to evaluate student writing, perhaps as helpful with understanding structure and the main elements of writing, but we don’t see any kind of growth model applied really throughout the New York metropolitan area where students are encouraged quarter after quarter to try to build and make improvements to their overall writing. And we think that’s a missed opportunity and that’s where the instruction of grammar can be so helpful. A lot of times when we find that students aren’t writing as well as we would like them to write, it’s easy to say that it’s the student’s fault when in reality, they’re not held accountable to that, nor are they will look at papers that were graded and they’re not copiy-edited. And they don’t know that errors are being made. And this matters, right? When you take a test, a summative test or a skills-based test, and you’re trying to figure out what could you have done differently or better?

Tony Di Giacomo:

A lot of times having a more precise understanding of what you know, and don’t know is key. And that’s something that we like to try to focus on as well, that kind of accountability, but also focus. The other part of it, of course, is thinking about what do you have within your control as a parent to advise your students. And so switching back to this of overall policy and the idea of test optional, we see a lot of news talking about test optional, particularly coming out of California. It looks like at first glance, the trend is test optional, but it’s actually not true. Patently. The vast majority of competitive colleges require and will continue to require standardized testing as a component of their applications in part to combat rate inflation and part to help predict college GPA because that’s one of their main roles. And that allows their mission officers to know that if admitted, the student will succeed, but during COVID-19, it’s been particularly challenging because there has been conflated messages between is a test optional or not does test optional apply to certain geographic areas or schools. How do you tend to advise your families? And I’ll also share afterwards some of the notes we provide our families.

Jared Small:

Well, I think the most important insight I can share with students and parents is to avoid conflating test optional with test blind, just because admissions committees do not require students to submit SAT or ACT scores in a given year. This doesn’t mean that the committees don’t hope to see really great scores from the ideal candidate is strong test score in a test. Optional climate is probably even more powerful than a strong test score in a test required scenario because this test conveys a few messages to admissions committees. Number one, that the student has a strong set of analytical skills, which themselves are still the single most predictive factor of academic success in the freshman year of college. Number two, taking the exam and submitting your best score, shows that you embrace the challenge and you opted to put in the work to achieve a strong score. These are all powerful and probably timeless messages that you can send to an admissions committee.

Tony Di Giacomo:

When we look across the landscape of, or even consider the overall portfolio, that must be submitted more information and more data tend to be helpful for admission officers to get a full sense of a student’s overall performance. Certainly some students might have a stronger GPA. They feel their test scores pulling them down, but we always recommend to students that they go through the process of formal test prep. It’s not to game the score. It’s not to try to trick your way in it’s to really make sure that you get the score that you deserve based on your skill set, as evaluated within those subjects as evaluated in the format of the test. And that’s something that parents need to remember. This is not a test of intelligence. It’s a test of skill. It is not also something that is going to single handedly limit you in some kind of binary way, but it is typically somewhat of a reflective test of a longer timeline of student performance.

Tony Di Giacomo:

or example, we see on our end, anyway, students with higher scores tend to have a strong rigorous course load dating back many, many years, but that doesn’t guarantee score gains to be equal. If they don’t put time into test prep or get proper strategic guidance, they may not land that score that they deserve. And that’s where a lot of instruction and guidance and strategy can be so important. One of the reasons we recommend it so that any student who takes the test can perform their best. We do recommend that students do test prep. We do recommend that students take the tests, but we also recognize that if their score is not something that is going to add value where their score is above the mean or average test score of a given college, we may say, let’s not send it right. It’s not going to add value to your application, but it is still worth going through the motions of prep. It is still worth going through the motions of getting some kind of instruction for testing so that you can at least know you did all you could to advance your candidacy for college. The College Board recently announced that they will no longer offer sat subject tests or the optional SAT essay. We can imagine that ACT will follow suit regarding their essay, but they’ll probably wait a certain amount of time to look like they’re not following suit. What do you think this means for college admissions? How should students change their testing approach

Jared Small:

To really understand the impact of the announcement that you just referred to? We probably should first consider the origin of these changes. So subject tests, formerly known as SAT II Tests had already become far less relevant than they once were. Even prior to the pandemic, fewer colleges and universities required, or even recommended that candidates take these one hour exams while subject tests allowed students to showcase their expertise in the high-level academic disciplines like chemistry or biology, math two, and a host of other subjects. I think that these tests suffered from two major problems. First, they consisted solely of content-based multiple choice questions in an educational climate that increasingly values analytical thinking and problem solving. Subject tests fell pretty far short when it came to assessing critical thinking skills. Second subject tests were really redundant AP exams, which are typically three hours and feature a mixture of questions that are aimed at determining a student’s understanding of robust curricula.

Jared Small:

Those have become the coin of the realm. It’s important to first point out these shifts, which predated any recent announcements, as far as the disappearance of the optional sat essay. I actually think this is going to help on muddy. The waters for students who in previous years would probably have struggled to decide whether to write the essay even prior to the pandemic. Only a handful of colleges and universities were requiring, or even recommending the essay as a result, fewer and fewer students were opting to spend an additional 50 minutes writing an essay that most admissions offices really weren’t that interested in reading. Additionally, the optional essay always carried with it. Another burden. It just wasn’t very realistic. Few of us have to write time to handwritten writing samples as a meaningful part of our professional lives. Many of us, however, do need to be able to brainstorm draft an essay or memo, revise, share a finished product.

Jared Small:

These are the skills that college admissions essays require while the traditional college admission essay and the shorter supplemental essays are not free of controversy. They do offer a much more real-world way for students to demonstrate their writing skills and articulate their passions in life experiences. Those who follow this closely as you do have a sense that the optional ACT essay is likely the next to go. The SAT essay, the ACT essay just doesn’t impact the actual test score. It hasn’t captured the hearts or minds of the college admissions folks. While it’s difficult to offer a blanket recommendation for all ACT students. Today, I’m going to double down on the advice that we’ve already been giving to students for the past couple of years, unless you have a compelling reason to write this essay. Don’t bother the last response to your question here regarding how should we prioritize our time and energy for high school students and high school families.

Jared Small:

How do we evaluate how to best support our children and prioritize our resources? I’ve got a few recommendations. First prioritize your schoolwork. If you take AP classes, your effort and your performance on the may exams matter more than they probably ever have this isn’t to add pressure. This is just to let you know, here’s where you should prioritize your time. Second redouble your effort on the SAT or ACT a leaner menu of admissions exams likely means that the SAT and ACT you will take on heightened significance. Since many colleges have implemented these tests, optional policies that we talked about earlier, a strong score really does have the potential to carry even more weight and finally, to continue to enrich your life with projects, activities, jobs, sports, community, service, music, and fun. This is the holistic part that you focus on Tony. This is the part that we feel strongly about. If you follow your passions, now you might just enjoy writing those college essays in a year or two.

Tony Di Giacomo:

You have to realize that we’re not unique in the United States with having major standardized testing, many countries around the world have standardized testing. And in some cases they’re far more limiting or restrictive of a student’s future. One of the things that I like to work on with our students, particularly if our students are also working with you is to make sure that they really are all in, on their prep while they’re in a cohort while they’re actively studying for the test, because I don’t think they realize how competitive things are. And if you factor in that there are 24,000 high schools in America, a significant number of high performing students at any given high school and only so many colleges, only so many slots when you’re able to have grit and consistently put forward time, that can devote to your studies, of course, but that you can also devote to your prep.

Tony Di Giacomo:

You can get that score that reflects where you really are. And I feel like that’s a lot of what you’re working toward in the end, certainly score gains happen. But that score gain is getting you to that highest Zenith that you’re reaching for. That reflects where you are as a person based on a long year or many years of work as a student, while it is incredibly important. Part of the application, students should also know that it is part of a series of components of an application and treated as such by pushing hard and making the most of information you get from test prep. You’re able to look back and say, you know, you did all your code. That’s, what’s really important to have good guidance from an education-based entity like Peak Performance, giving you a strong council, weekly assignments and diagnostic support. So you look back and say, I left it all on the field. And I think that’s really important for students families before we go, where can people learn more about Peak Performance Prep?

Jared Small:

I invite everyone to take a look at our website, peakperformanceprep.com. I also invite you to email me at [email protected] know that once you reach out to us, we will be excited. We will be passionate and we will be committed to helping you, your child and your family.

Tony Di Giacomo:

Jared, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. That’s all for this episode of A Novel Take. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe for more discussions on the latest education headlines, key topics and expert interviews. As always, you can learn more about us at novellaprep.wpengine.com and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Novella Prep. I’m Dr. Tony Di Giacomo. Bye for now.