This kid got paid THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to cheat on the SAT!

Written by Oklahoma DaVinci scholar, Director of Launch Academy, and University Guest Speaker

If you want your child to have a fighting chance in today’s competitive job market, they have to get into a good college.  But in order to get into a good college, they need good SAT scores!  If your moral compass is a little shaky, than you can hire Sam Eshaghoff, a Long Island teen who knows how to beat the system.  Before being arrested (yes, it is illegal), he managed to take the SAT exam at least 16 times (that’s the number he confessed to) with HUGE results!  “My first time ever taking the test for somebody else,” Sam explains, “I got a perfect score on the math section.”

Most AP students don’t even get those results!  Sam ran this testing fraud (up to $2,500 per test!) for three years, consistently scoring in the 97th percentile.  When asked about how his experience has compared with typical SAT/ACT Test Prep programs (usually costing upwards of $3,000), this was his reply:

“I’ve seen my friends study for the SAT while in these [test prep] courses and they were totally studying the wrong things or at least wasting their time.”

WOAH! Luckily for you, Launch Academy was already savvy of the competition’s time-wasting programs and developed our own test-buster method, which is pretty similar to Sam’s (minus the criminal activity)!

If you’re of a curious mind, you can watch the full 60-minute interview but if you prefer the Launch Academy “No-Fluff” Fast Tips, read on:

These are the top 5 gold nuggets we took from the video for you:5. Flashcards and lists do not work.  You never know what words are going to be on the test, so you should rather be memorizing prefixes and suffixes and the roots!  This allows you to think and win on your feet.

4. Essays don’t have to be truthful!  They’re simply testing your ability to present and defend a written argument.  You can make up quotes, books, articles, just as long as you sound coherent!  The biggest issue students run in to is translating their verbal arguments (parents know about that one) into a written one.

3. Get a good, graphing calculator. If math is simply being able to memorize formulas and crunch numbers, then we’ve taught students to be computers – how dumb!  Many students are unfamiliar with using graphing calculators and, in turn, don’t use this test-saving tool.  Some of the calculators literally do the problems for you simply by plugging the problems in.

2. There are tricks for solving the problems you don’t know.  Just by bubbling in an oval, you have a 25% chance of getting a question right.  If you can eliminate even a couple of choices, simply because they’re so erroneous, you can increase your chance of getting it right to 50% and sometimes even 100%!  The trick is knowing how to eliminate the answers without eating up all your testing time.

1. The most important factor when studying for the SAT is the student’s work ethic.  Not their GPA, natural intelligence, or logged study hours.  If a student really wants to do well, then they’ll follow the prep program and get the results they worked for.  There is no magic potion or formula to transform unmotivated students into testing champs unless you first change their work ethic.  Most tutoring companies don’t even acknowledge this and, in turn, deliver marginal improvements.  Thankfully, we’ve realized this from the start and have seen great success.

I always remind you (because I never want you to lose sight of this), if you want to get serious results….then you’ve got to study and follow a program!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and good luck on your future tests!

STAY SMART.

Dominick