Episode 332 | Nicholas Sennott | The College Lad | Part 2 | The EdisonOS Podcast

Key Topics Covered 

The testing landscape has changed but the fundamentals have not. Nick says that from his own experience working with students, not much has fundamentally changed in how he sits down with a student and figures out what they need, and that the biggest visible shift is the proliferation of new practice tools and resources, some of which are genuinely good and some of which are not, and that an experienced tutor can now point students toward more quality materials than ever before.

The new digital SAT does a really good job of testing thinking skills. Nick says the new SAT in particular tests thinking skills, not intelligence, and that shortcuts and hacks that used to work on the old test no longer get students to the highest levels, because there are now questions that simply reward good cognitive work, and that he spends more time building skills with students now than teaching content tricks.

The ACT right now is behaving more like a high-variance test than it used to. Nick explains that the average ACT question is more challenging than before, but that the scoring curve is not working well, that a two-question difference can easily mean four points and a four-question difference can easily mean eight points within a subsection, and that he does not think a test should work that way because it is oversensitive to what is happening on any given day.

Try both tests before committing, and go where the practice materials are. Nick's default recommendation for families in mid-2026 is to have students take both a practice SAT and a practice ACT before deciding, and that if all else is equal he would lean toward the SAT right now simply because there is a much greater wealth of practice materials available, though he expects that advantage to even out over the next twelve to eighteen months as ACT resources catch up.

If you are on a short timeline, the ACT may be worth considering. Nick says that if a student has only two weeks before a test, the ACT can behave more like an elevator where a small number of questions can shoot the score up quickly, and that embracing variance is a real option for someone who just does not have time to build skills, though he is clear that two weeks is not enough to meaningfully improve and that this is a narrow exception rather than general advice.

Once you go down a road, keep going. Nick says he is not an advocate for switching tests in the middle of the process because students build invisible skills, familiarity, and intuition that compounds over time, and that unless something is seriously wrong with the earlier tests, the compounding effect of staying on the same path consistently outweighs starting over on a different exam.

The tutor-student fit matters as much as the material. Nick says he thinks of the relationship between a tutor and a student as a team of collaborators rather than a traditional teacher-student hierarchy, that he and his team try to present themselves as knowledgeable peers or older friends working together toward a goal, but that he is also honest that he is not a good fit for a student who needs someone to crack the whip, because he likes the students too much and has too much fun with them to be that person.

For students stuck in the 1300s, short-term fix is grammar and long-term fix is reading everything more closely. Nick says the highest return on investment fix in the short term for a student at that level is to learn grammar rules on a need-to-know basis because there are still points to be gained there, and that the longer-term fix is reading every single word with extra caution and paranoia, actively thinking about what you are doing and why, because the digital SAT is a thinking skills test and a little paranoia goes a long way.
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Conclusion 

This conversation is a candid and experience-driven return visit from one of the most thoughtful voices in one-on-one test prep. Listen to the full episode for the complete methodology and actionable strategies that could transform how any student or family approaches the SAT versus ACT decision, digital adaptive testing, and the mindset that separates students who keep improving from those who plateau.

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