Episode 235 | David Blobaum | Summit Prep | The Knowledge Entrepreneurs Show

Key Topics Covered

• The Perfect GPA Paradox: Why 80% of college-bound students now have A averages while actual academic achievement has plummeted to 30-year lows, and how this grade inflation crisis is forcing top colleges to secretly rely on standardized tests more than ever
• The Ancient Wisdom Advantage: How reading 2,500-year-old texts enabled accurate predictions about post-COVID work patterns when modern experts failed, and why classical education provides timeless insights into human nature that technology cannot change
• The Preparation Trap: The three critical mistakes that cause well-prepared students to plateau or decline, including why taking breaks destroys progress and how underestimating difficulty leads to systematic failure
• The Adaptive Testing Reality: Why students scoring below 1200 on the digital SAT literally never see the hardest questions, creating false confidence that backfires when scores improve, and how the new format fundamentally changes preparation strategies
• The Desmos Revolution: How the built-in calculator has become so powerful that students spend multiple hours just learning to use it, and why traditional math preparation now misses the most impactful score improvements

Conclusion

This conversation demolishes conventional wisdom about academic achievement while revealing the hidden forces reshaping college admissions. David exposes how grade inflation has reached crisis levels—with UCLA's median admitted student having a perfect 4.0 GPA—while actual learning has declined to levels not seen in decades. His insights from classical education provide unexpected clarity on modern challenges, from predicting workplace trends to understanding human nature's resistance to technological disruption.

The most striking revelations center on how digital testing has created invisible preparation traps. Students below certain thresholds never encounter the hardest questions, creating false confidence that collapses when they improve. Meanwhile, the Desmos calculator has become so central that mastering it requires dedicated tutoring sessions, fundamentally altering what effective preparation looks like.

What specific Desmos techniques can transform math performance overnight? How do colleges secretly weight standardized tests despite being "test optional"? Which preparation mistakes cause the most dramatic score plateaus?

Listen to the complete episode to discover David's exact strategies for navigating adaptive testing complexity, the classical reading techniques that build foundational skills across all subjects, and his predictions about how the return to test-required admissions will reshape educational priorities. The full conversation reveals insights that challenge everything you thought you knew about modern test preparation.

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