Episode 242 | William York | The Knowledge Entrepreneurs Show
Learn More About William York
Explore William's expertise through the following links:
- LinkedIn: Connect with William York and his multi-test preparation expertise
- 3-4-5 Tutoring YouTube: Access his SAT/ACT preparation videos and educational content
- 3-4-5 Tutoring: Discover his comprehensive approach to SAT, ACT, GRE, and GMAT tutoring
Key Takeaways
Episode Description
In this episode, William York discusses the transition to digital testing for the SAT and ACT, sharing his experiences as a test prep tutor. He highlights the challenges faced by students during this transition, the changes in test structure, and the adaptations he has made in his teaching methods. The discussion also covers the impact of technology on testing, student engagement, and the future of standardized testing. Multi-test expert William York reveals how SAT's shift from 2400 to 1600 scoring prepared him for digital disruption, exposes the quality crisis in third-party practice materials, and shares the GMAT technique that revolutionized his SAT reading approach—plus why his student enrollment flipped from 50-50 SAT/ACT to 99% SAT despite not planning the change.
Key Topics Covered
- The Multi-Test Advantage: How mastering SAT, ACT, GRE, and GMAT creates cross-pollination of strategies, with specific examples like using GMAT critical reasoning for advanced SAT students
- The Practice Material Crisis: Why third-party SAT questions vary from "pretty decent to not very good at all," with vocabulary levels and answer patterns that don't match real test tendencies
- The Arrow Annotation Revolution: The simple up-and-down arrow technique borrowed from GMAT instruction that helps students track variable relationships in complex reading passages
- The 99% SAT Shift: How William's student split went from balanced SAT/ACT to almost exclusively SAT without intentional marketing, driven by YouTube response patterns and international student preferences
- The Desmos Calculator Transformation: Why uniform calculator access changed everything about math strategy, making polynomial division obsolete while requiring new test-taking approaches
Conclusion
This conversation reveals how expertise across multiple standardized tests creates unexpected advantages in preparation strategies. William's experience with four different exams provides unique insights into question patterns and technique transfers that single-test tutors miss.
Which specific techniques transfer between different standardized tests? How do international students drive YouTube engagement patterns? What makes third-party practice materials inadequate compared to official content?
Listen to the complete episode to discover William's exact cross-test strategies, his detailed approach to variable tracking in reading passages, and his predictions about Enhanced ACT's impact on the testing landscape. The full conversation reveals advanced techniques that most tutors never learn.
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