I had the pleasure of sitting down with my friend Nick on his podcast, The Nick Halaris Show. We covered a lot of ground, diving deep into the world of elite tutoring, the pressures of modern education, and what it truly takes for a young person to succeed intellectually.
Parents often come to me focused on a single number, an SAT/ACR score, believing it’s the golden ticket. And while scores are important, my years of experience have shown me that the real transformation, the kind that creates lifelong learners, happens at a much deeper level. It’s about building what I call “cognitive confidence”, the unshakeable belief in one’s own ability to learn, reason, and solve complex problems.
In this article, I want to distill some of the key insights from our conversation and share my perspective on how we can help students not just perform better, but become more curious, engaged, and confident individuals.
Table of Contents
What You’ll Learn
- The true purpose of elite tutoring (it’s not just about test scores).
- Why developing a passion for reading is the single most effective way to boost intellectual growth.
- The concept of “cognitive confidence” and how to cultivate it in students.
- My take on what standardized tests actually measure and why they still matter.
- Practical steps you can take to help your child become a more engaged and confident learner.
Video
Watch my interview on The Nick Halaris Show.
Or watch it below.
Full Transcript
Nick Halaris: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Nick Halaris Show. Our guest today is Dan Lerman. Dan is an interesting person. He’s one of the very best private SAT and ACT tutors. He gets flown all over the world. He occasionally teaches at the elite of the elite private high schools around the globe. He’s a Ph.D. from Columbia in Cognitive Sciences and Education. He’s also a professor at Columbia. He’s teaching the first college class in America on tutoring. And an incredible person. So, Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Lerman: Thank you for the kind intro. Nick, you covered a lot of ground there.
Nick Halaris: Yeah.
Dan Lerman: Did you rehearse it?
Nick Halaris: I didn’t, but hopefully it wasn’t too disjointed.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, yeah, we’ll see if I can live up.
Nick Lerman: Yeah, man. I mean, I’ve been excited about having this conversation with you for a long time, ever since we met, ever since our mutual friend introduced us. And it’s become really relevant to me because my family members and some of our close friends, you know, have kids kind of going through this process, and it’s just, you know, I knew there was an issue, right? Like, Operation Varsity Blues happened. That happened for a reason. But this has been eye-opening. And so why don’t we just start with like, how did you get involved in this crazy world of elite tutoring?
Dan Lerman: Wow, great one. I didn’t know. So my origin story: I was in New York City and needed some cash to pay for acting classes. And so I applied. I was always good at standardized tests. I applied to a company called Kaplan that you’ve probably heard of. They paid $20 an hour and they gave you a binder of exactly what to say to a class. And I thought it was a great job. You kind of. And, and that’s how I started. And then eventually got hired at a company called Manhattan GMAT. A guy named Andrew Yang was my boss. They paid $100 an hour. I was like, my financial issues are solved, I’m rich. And. But again, it was kind of just something I did on the side. And then at Manhattan GMAT, I found that there were people who treated teaching as an art, and they were real craftspeople. They were incredible. Some of the best teachers I’ve ever met in my life. They’re incredible. And I was like, wow, this can really be a life and a lifestyle, and the money’s there. So a couple years there, started my own company, and here we are 20 years later.
Nick Halaris: Wow. And just to rewind the clock on, on your own kind of experience with standardized tests. Were you someone who could just, like, do it, or did you have your own kind of tutoring experience?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, I was always that way with math. I was like a math, I don’t know, freak. Like, my dad would carry me on his shoulders when I was three years old and ask me, like, “What’s $10^2 – 10$?” And I’d parrot back the answer. So, like, I was always very good at math. That came to me naturally or through, you know, crazy parents or whatever. Verbal, not so much. I was not the strongest reader; that came to me later in life. And, yeah, in high school, I got a perfect score on the math SAT and less on the verbal SAT, and I had to go back and really get solid on the verbal, which I think almost makes me a better verbal tutor because I have to work for it.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. Yeah, right. Like, it’s something you have experience with. That’s interesting.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: And when you started. So, like, rewinding the clock back to this GMAT business, like, what was the going rate for a good SAT tutor in New York City then?
Dan Lerman: Yeah. When I was in high school, it’s probably 80 bucks an hour, maybe 100 bucks an hour. Um, GMAT. Yeah. But, like, a couple years later, it kind of started to get into two to three hundreds. And now, 2025, we’re living in a world where I personally know a handful of people who charge over a thousand dollars an hour. I think the top one I know of confirmed is charging $2,100 an hour in New York City.
Nick Halaris: Wow. Which means it’s only accessible to, like, a very small percentage of families in the world.
Dan Lerman: By design. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn’t, you know, and he’s kind of playing the market, and he’s incredibly, incredibly good. He’s really good.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. So let’s talk about that for a second. Like, okay, so there’s this. This new world that’s emerged in the last decade of really wildly competitive and expensive tutors for these standardized tests. Right. Like, a couple, even $1,000 an hour to $2,000 is what, like, an elite partner at the best law firms in the world charges? Like, how much of an advantage is it? Like, what’s the difference between you and your friend who charges $2,000 and sort of like, the average SAT tutor in America?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, it’s a good question. And I’m generally lucky. And I’m lucky enough to not be in the business of selling myself too often. People kind of talk, and they’re like, “Who’s the best SAT tutor? Who can like, get this done no matter what?” And my name pops up and, and it’s, it’s done. But if we, if we, like, zoom out, like, what’s the advantage? I think the top tutors see the core skills that actually move the needle, you know, a lot. I don’t know percentage-wise, Nick, but a huge percentage of tutors are doing this kind of part-time. Some, some people in the industry call it “the new waiting tables.” Like, you kind of, you’re an actor, but you tutor on the side. And people are fine, but they don’t really know how to raise these scores and raise intelligence like the way the elite tutors can. Do you want me to, like, specifically? I know I’m in V-land right now.
Nick Halaris: I’m super interested in, in understanding. Like, I don’t want you to give away your secrets, but, like, the tactics, like, well, I’ll just share my own experience with this. When I was younger, I wasn’t, I don’t think I was naturally good at these standardized tests, but I was incredibly motivated to be good at them. And so I took a bunch of practice tests and bought all these books and studied on my own. I never had a tutor. And then what I realized is that as soon as I could, as soon as my reading speed essentially was up to par and I could like, comfortably complete the exam without any time pressure, my scores started to get higher and higher. And that’s how I ended up getting good scores on the ACT and the LSAT, for example.
Dan Lerman: But yeah, yeah, I love that story, and that. I think that still does happen to some extent, Nick. I think it does. You know, you can’t re. You can coach it a little bit, but you can’t give someone that level of grit. And someone with that level of grit can still figure it out. There’s more free resources and, you know, there’s more free resources on the Internet and on YouTube than there ever have been before. So I think that level of grit, Nick, in 2025 still crushes the test. I think we provide ways of doing it quicker. You know, like, here’s the things that’ll work, here’s what’s not going to work. We can be motivational in some capacity and remind people what they’re capable of. And specifically like, to the core skill. A lot of people, you know, the very common thing, “My kid is very smart, but they’re a bad test taker.” What that is code for, I’ve seen, is they’re not an elite reader. And you nailed it. The key skill, even on the math sections of these tests, the key skill is being a close reader. On the SAT, you actually have to read poetry. Now, I’ve always taught poetry because I think it’s kind of the best mental exercise for close reading. But literally, you have to read poems on the SAT. And I don’t know if you spent much time around high schoolers nowadays, Nick. They’re not reading poetry. They’re doing the opposite. So you’ve got to train the mind. I almost think of it as a meditation. You got to train the mind to just read closely. And, and that’s kind of a. I know I’m, like, kind of simplifying things, but that’s a core skill that I think I’m one of the best in the world at. I can take kids who haven’t read a book that they’ve liked in their entire lives and get them into reading and doing it at a high level.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, fascinating. And what’s the. What’s possible for someone like you? Like, let’s say there’s a kid, and on the first go-around on the SAT, they get 1200.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: What happens if they work with you consistently?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, I work with plenty of people who get perfect scores. Every year I get people with 1550s. Once in a while, I’ll get perfect scores. There’s a bit of variance on the test. On the ACT, every year I work with people who get perfect scores. 1200. It kind of depends on the math and the verbal breakdown and how hard that kid tried on the 1200. There’s one kid I worked with. His first test was a 1080, and he just tested last week at a 1500. So I definitely. There are a lot of moving parts. I think the best predictor of it is grit. Like, if a kid really wants it, they’re like, “I want to go to Dartmouth,” and “I know I need a 1500 to get in.” I can get them there.
Nick Halaris: Okay, from a 1200?
Dan Lerman: Oh, definitely from a 1200. Probably from lower. Yeah. 1200 is, like, an average starting score of kids I work with. Maybe a touch on the low end, but unless there’s some, like, major processing issue or they’re going really slow, I can do that 100% of the time.
Nick Halaris: Okay, that’s interesting. So it really is like, just zooming out to, like, examine this from a societal perspective. Like, it actually matters quite a bit. Right. Because, like, you get the untrained kid at 12 that can. That, with a little training, can get to 1500. The opportunity set for that individual is, like, dramatically different. With a 1500?
Dan Lerman: I think so. And it was in a weird place a couple years ago, Nick, when that, you know, during COVID, schools were test-optional. And yeah, now they’re kind of back towards requiring them, and we could talk a little bit about that. But yeah, like the opportunities, again, if you’re, if you’re just trying to apply to Harvard on academics and not something out, you know, outlandish, like something crazy, like you’re a world-class fencer and you apply with a 1200, you have a 0% chance of getting in. Like, you wouldn’t even submit that score. And then 1500, then they start to look at the rest of your application. So yeah, it starts making those schools possible.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. I do want to talk about the societal stuff in a second, but before we do that, I want to close the loop on some of the, the test-specific stuff.
Dan Lerman: Sure.
Nick Halaris: You’ve been working, you’ve been working in the, in the trenches of these tests for a long time. Like, what do you think these things are measuring?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, great question. For sure, ability to read. Right. And there’s been a bunch of articles, Nick, published recently about kids. I think there’s a girl who graduated top of her class, some school in New York, and is now suing her school because she, she actually doesn’t really know how to read at all. And in today’s grade infl. Like, everyone gets a trophy kind of culture, it’s actually possible to graduate with an amazing GPA, seem like an incredibly well-rounded kid, be perfectly pleasant and not be able to read. And so like, if I see a kid has a 1550 on the SAT, that kid’s a great reader, elite reader, like, done. So for sure that box is checked. Beyond that, there’s an element of like, ability to study for a test. Like, just cram knowledge into your brain and like, memorize the semicolon rules, memorize the geometry rules, the math rules. Beyond that, I’m not so sure. You know, I know there are plenty of arguments out there around it correlating to socioeconomic status and stuff like that, but I don’t have a nicely packaged answer about what exactly they’re measuring beyond like, definitely ability to read.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. And what about just. I don’t really know anything about the sort of science of intelligence testing, but like, is there, is there a component of intelligence that’s being actually measured in these scores?
Dan Lerman: Yeah. Very few people know this. And the most common IQ test in the world. Do you know anything about IQ tests, Nick? Yeah. So we talk about IQ, and I think it’s one of the most misunderstood constructs in the history of the world. But the most common IQ test in the world is called the Wechsler, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or the WAIS (W A I S) Version 5. And it’s worth a peek on the Wikipedia page just to see the structure of that test. But they’re. They’re basically 12 or 15 little subtests that combine to form your IQ score, which is 100, 120, 140, 80. Like, it’s. It’s in that range. I bet you have a high IQ, Nick. It would be measured by. I’m sure you do. It’s measured by these little, little subtests, one of which is reading comprehension, one of which is vocabulary, one of which is arithmetic. So by, you know, it is correlated. There are certain things on the IQ test, like picture completion, like general knowledge. One of the questions on an IQ test is, “Who is the Chancellor of Germany?” Which I think is pretty weird, but that’s not. That’s not on the SAT. So I think correlated. And in the same universe as any IQ test that’s out there.
Nick Halaris: Okay, so like, somebody who first. First attempt on the SAT score, 1600 is likely to score high on the Wechsler.
Dan Lerman: Very, very, very likely. Very likely. Yeah.
Nick Halaris: And just going back to something you mentioned in the early part of this conversation. You mentioned that the work that you do, this. This one-on-one, can actually move the needle on intelligence. Tell me, tell me more about that.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, well, first, intelligence is undoubtedly an improvable construct. People don’t really know that. But just from that example, I shared, if a question on the IQ test is, “Who is the Chancellor of Germany?” And I tell you, at least at the time, this was the fourth version of the test. So at the time, it was Angela Merkel. And I’m like, “Hey, Nick, it’s Angela Merkel.” Your IQ, by definition, just went up. There we go, is it. I don’t actually know who it is now or if that’s even a question up. So it is improvable, for sure. And it’s improvable in a bunch of different ways. I think it’s improvable in your cognitive confidence. You know, a lot of kids come to me and they don’t know if they’re smart or not. There’s a certain private school in LA I work with a lot of. I won’t name it by, by name, but it’s probably the most famous private school in LA. And kids there are brilliant, and they come to me kind of broken and unsure because everyone around them is brilliant and they have a culture of kind of creating doubt around your intellectual ability. So one thing I can provide, Nick, is like, “Hey, here’s a reminder. You’re really smart. You’re, like, really able to process things quickly and at a high level.” And this comes from someone who, like, has been out there. And just that, I think, has trickle-down effects which make people feel smarter and act smarter. So I think that’s another part of it.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, it’s interesting you say that about the private school. I had a similar experience in my own life when I got to law school at Stanford. Yeah, there was a part of me.
Dan Lerman: That was just name-drop Stanford on meaning I did.
Nick Halaris: But there’s. This is a moment of vulnerability, so it makes sense.
Dan Lerman: Okay, good.
Nick Halaris: Okay. So when I got there, I, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I was smart enough to be there. Yeah, you know, like my, you know, I went to the University of Michigan, which is a great school, but I met all these kids that were from this elite private school track. They had perfect LSAT scores and perfect SAT scores, and some of them were, you know, fantastically successful already financially. You know, people who were multimillionaires when they were in their 20s and stuff like that. So in the first few months of law school, I was like, “Man, I better step it up.” But after, after a semester, I was like, “You know what? I can hang with these people.”
Dan Lerman: So, dude, I love that. Yeah, there’s a term in psychology for that called a narcissistic blow. Right. It’s when you’re surrounded by people who are also badasses and your ego takes a bit of a blow. I had that. I went to Duke for undergrad, and I, like, crushed high school. Had a very, you know, two very loving parents who told me how smart I was and surrounded me with their love. And then I got to Duke and had a similar experience to you, Nick. I was younger. I wasn’t in law school yet. And I. I didn’t respond well. I wasn’t. I kind of didn’t get great grades for a couple years. So I feel what you’re saying. I think you respond, that’s, that’s cool that that was motivational for you, but it is. Yeah. Your environment. I think we, as humans, we look around a lot. “Am I smart? Am I tall? Am I attractive? Am I a good person?” I think we look to our environment, the people around us, to give us answers to that. And being at Stanford Law School, that’s a tense environment.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, for sure. They’re people that were, you know, very confident in class and could think on their feet.
Dan Lerman: And.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, it’s. It was a. It was a very good life experience. Just.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: To get some grit. Some more grit.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, totally. Really cool.
Views on Education
Nick Halaris: Okay, well, let’s zoom out a little bit because I, I feel like this area of the world, your expertise, kind of dovetails to a broader conversation about, like, education and society and fairness and equity and all these things that are in the news for. For one reason or another. And so the first question I have for you is how has developing this level of expertise and engaging with young people in this sort of intimate way, how does it impacted your views on education?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, yeah. I think I grew up kind of middle class at a good public school in Long Island, and I really felt unsure of what was behind the door of, like, wealthy private schools. And I’ve gotten to see it now, and I’ve seen it for quite a bit of time. I do think education doesn’t mean what I thought. I don’t think it’s informational. You know, certainly not in today’s society. Like, to educate is, is not to gain information. I guess back in the day, there were, there were information keepers and you could go to a great med school and get that information. What I think you can check me on this, but I think the original root, or one of the roots, of the word educate is, is educare, which means to, to pull out of, like, to pull out of. And I find myself thinking about that a lot, Nick. Like, I do think these schools, and I’m sure Stanford Law and even Michigan, like, there’s a spirit that wants, you know, that pulls something out of you, that elevates you and brings your best, your, your growth mindset out of you. And I think that’s kind of the special part when education is going well. I don’t know if you were looking for a cynical answer, but I’ll give you the, like, hopeful what is, like, education, its best form right now? I think it’s being in an intellectually curious environment that makes you bring your best foot. Like, put your best foot forward.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, I love that answer, and I agree completely. There’s. I forget the dialogue. We’re getting real nerdy now. But there’s a famous Socratic dialogue, actually, where at one point in the conversation, Socrates basically, like, shows. Shows that someone who doesn’t know anything about triangles actually knows something about triangles. The point of it is, like, it’s inside you. Yeah, I’m pointing. That dialogue is that it’s. It’s a philosophical moral statement that inside every human is the capacity of all knowledge and information. Totally, totally statement. And I. I believe it because I agree. In the best format, like, when you’re learning something, it appears in your mind like an aha. Like, “Oh, I knew that. I already knew that.” Somehow when it appears in your mind.
Dan Lerman: Totally. I know that that sounds hippie-dippy, but I totally, 100% agree. I totally, 100% agree.
Nick Halaris: And do you think. So, to maybe get to another side of this question, do you think, like, now that you’ve. You’ve had a chance to look under the hood of these private schools, do you think that they’re doing a good job of creating an educational environment where that kind of learning happens?
Dan Lerman: I think it depends on the school. I have experience at two schools. One was a very buttoned-up, fancy, traditional British school that was started in the 1500s where they called me “Sir,” and then the other was like a very progressive hippie school in Brooklyn where they call me Dan. So, you know, they’re. They’re quite different places. Pluses and minuses to each. Yeah, I think it depends on the school and, like, it’s a wide range. I think generally their intent is in the right place. Can they get a little bit elitist and exclusionary and, you know, venture into areas that are not quite what I would consider education and more politics? Yeah, I think they do that too, but it’s hard to generalize. And, you know, my own experience is also limited, so I don’t know.
Nick Halaris: Got it. Yeah. I’m thinking in my own life, like, my kids go to one of the best elementary schools, private elementary schools in the world, and they actually are doing a great job of that.
Dan Lerman: And what makes you say that?
Nick Halaris: They just have. It’s. It’s one of the focuses of the school. Like, the basic focus of the school is to try to create lifelong learners and readers.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: And they actually kind of live up to the hype. Like, it’s not just like a slogan on the website. Like, their whole program is designed around that. And so they give kids opportunity. Like, there’s some. There is some structure, obviously, because it’s dealing with little elementary students.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: Within that structure, they give kids lots of opportunities to explore on their own and at their own pace. So there’s not like one pace for reading, for example. Kids come to reading when they come to it and are guided along appropriately.
Dan Lerman: Totally. Yeah.
Nick Halaris: Yeah.
Dan Lerman: I mean, that must be magical to see. Like, the school I taught out in Brooklyn, it was just like a culture of learning is cool, growth is cool. They’re reading Shakespeare in third or fourth grade, and I think that that is really special. And does it happen? It didn’t happen in my public school experience. It’s cool to see you acknowledging that that’s happening and creating lifelong curious people who are lifelong readers. I think is really the game. Like, that’s like a key thing I would look for. I have a daughter who’s two and a half years old, and I’ll obviously be talking to you about that school.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, no, it’s.
Dan Lerman: It’s.
Nick Halaris: It’s an amazing place. Yeah. In my own. Just thinking about my own education trajectory. I have a couple of thoughts to share with you. I just want to get. Get your reaction to it.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Nick Halaris: I went to public schools in Michigan, in the suburbs of Detroit, which were. Okay. They weren’t like, ranked the best schools, but they also weren’t like problem schools. Right. And what was interesting about that experience, looking back, is that the quality of the experience as a student was directly related to, like, the teacher you got. Yeah, and so I got, like, in the course of my time, you know, maybe five or six exceptional teachers, and they absolutely made a difference. And then a lot of it was mailing it in, you know, like, “Can you memorize some really basic information, and if the answer is yes, then you get an A+ on the test?” Yeah, for a lot of it. But for the exceptional teachers, there was challenge and. And appropriateness. Are you seeing stuff like that going on, you know, dealing with these kids that you’re meeting with? Is that this the same game, or is it. Is it different now?
Dan Lerman: What do you mean by “stuff like that”? Like, related to quality of teacher or memorization? What do you mean?
Nick Halaris: Yeah, quality of teachers. And just what are they reporting to you about their experience? I guess maybe that’s a better question. Yeah.
Dan Lerman: I think another thing you kind of pay for private schools is the variance is much lower. There aren’t as many, like, whack teachers. There are a couple. But 90% of the teachers at both private schools I’ve been at were the real deal. Like, experts, like, treated it as a craft, really cared. Versus at my high school, maybe. Maybe it was 10%, 15, 20%. So my kids report back the same if they’re in. I work with a lot of private school kids. They generally think their teachers are very good. There are other issues that pop up, but they think their teachers are very good. Weirdly, I don’t think at least until this year, until like ChatGPT became kind of mainstream. I don’t think the process and the memorization and like what was required. Like kids are still writing papers, kids are still taking tests they have to memorize. Like what caused World War I. There isn’t a lot. There hasn’t been a lot of change in terms of what’s expected of them, at least in the classroom.
Nick Halaris: I see. Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions for later, but let’s just do it right now because this is something that just in the last several months I’ve been absolutely fascinated thinking about, which is how does education evolve from here in light of these technologies which are basically already there but are on pace to be there in, in a different way. Like maybe like on your shoulder, like, “Hey, what’s the square?” Like, you know, parrot “$10^2 – 10$.” Like, you just, you just ask your shoulder, get the answer. What’s your take based on, on what we’re seeing? Like, where does education go from here?
Dan Lerman: Yeah. Related to AI in particular. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve had to face this a little head-on with my teaching. So like, I teach this class at Columbia called The Psychology of Thinking. And we have fully integrated AI into the curriculum. Meaning each week we’re creating a new custom like AI chatbot. Like one week we’ll be talking to Freud, one week we’ll be talking to Skinner. And we’re using it, we’re using AI as kind of an exploration. It’s really shifted my role. I’m no longer claiming to be, nor I don’t think I ever was, Nick, the, the like factual expert. I’m more the facilitator and like the conductor of an orchestra. And it’s like, “Hey, go like use ChatGPT to like explain Freud’s psychosexual stages theory,” right? And then they come back, and they could do that in a much more organized and robust manner. So I think it’s also teacher dependent. There’s a big fork in the road right now. Do teachers fully embrace AI and use it to help people grow, or do they outlaw it and say, “No AI. This is a no-AI class”? And I think there’s arguments for both. I’ve obviously done the former, and if you do do the former, which I think is going to be big over the next couple years, I think teachers are going to start to use AI and integrate into the classroom. I think the real currency, which you have plenty of, is curiosity. You take a curious kid in like eighth grade and give them ChatGPT, they’re going to know more about biology than I do by November. Right. Like it won’t take long. I started to see this, it wasn’t quite hyper-speed like this. But when YouTube, when going to YouTube to learn things started to become a thing, which I, I don’t know. When was that? 2012, 2013? Maybe a little bit after that. I was teaching this eighth-grade class in Brooklyn at this private school called Anatomy and Physiology. And it’s a very fact-based class. Like, how do you label parts of the digestive system and that kind of thing. And I noticed on day one that there was a kid in the class, his name was Uday. There’s a kid in the class who knew more than I did. He was in eighth grade. And I like, grabbed, I pulled him aside after class, like, “Dude, how do you know? So how do you know what the integumentary system is?” It’s like, “I’ve been watching YouTube videos till 2:00 AM for the last three years.” Like, and he wasn’t cocky about it, but that was basically his answer. And it was like watching this, he went to Harvard obviously. And I was like watching this supercharged human that I, I didn’t even have the chance to be because that, that information was, was kept behind a gate.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. That’s incredible.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: Part of me thinks I have kind of a radical view, and, and I’d love to get your take on it. Like, my view is essentially that the game of mass education is over. It’s, it’s like the writing is on the wall because just thinking about your, your life experience, right. Like this elite tutoring that you’ve been doing for these standardized tests. Like, like I almost feel like if you could give a small group of kids a tutor like you and all the AI tools that exist today, they could rapidly complete the high school curriculum, for example, or multiple college career, you know, course curriculum. And, and just, they would just know so much because these tools are so much better than the standard model of standing in front of classes and delivering lectures for a semester. What’s your take on that?
Dan Lerman: 100% agree. I think we’re just starting to see like human potential has not fully been tapped because the. Yeah, so we’re going to see kids and probably people that are, that can do things that humans have never in history been able to do before. Small example is my eighth grader who knew what the integumentary system was. But like imagine ChatGPT and AI getting involved. So yes, I think one function that cannot be discounted about mass education and these schools is the social experience. You know, if you think back to what it was like when you were in eighth grade, Nick, I’m sure we were thinking about our classes, but a large part of our cognitive energy is like, like person like me. Am I, am I being appropriate? And I think we still, as social primates, learn best. You know, I have not yet seen an AI that can teach tact and how to like, not be annoying the way a middle school can. So I, I wonder if there’s like a split. Maybe there’s like a social pod and then you handle information and education with AI potentially. I don’t, I don’t see the, the end of schools as we know them anytime in the next decade.
Nick Halaris: Okay. Yeah. I had a guest on the podcast recently, a really fascinating individual, Anand Sanwal, who’s a founder of a really cool AI data company, but is getting interested in education and getting interested in particular in using entrepreneurship to accelerate the education of young people.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: And his sort of thesis is that you could take care of the, the basics of education with all these tools and small groups and tutors and stuff, and then give the kids real stuff to do, like help them start a business or whatever. It goes beyond entrepreneurship, but his particular focus is entrepreneurship. But you could also have kids do things like try to build a car from scratch or whatever. Like, you could come up with all kinds of interesting experiential models where they have to go through that social stuff that we went through and sitting in a classroom, looking around, bored, you know, trying to cause trouble with our neighbors.
Dan Lerman: Right.
Nick Halaris: They could have that, but in a different way and be learning at the same time is thesis, which I think is kind of fascinating.
Dan Lerman: I love that. And like, what a, like what a rich society that would be if we had kids spending their days, like, solving real problems, building real things. I think that’d be super cool.
Nick Halaris: I do too. I think it would be. Look, I think mass education has been a great democratizing force. If you kind of look, zoom out in a historical standpoint, like, man, what, what a luxury, right? Like even just a couple hundred years ago, right? Like people like President Lincoln were struggling to get a decent education. And if you fast-forward the clock, like, man, imagine what that person would have become if he had access to the stuff that exists today. Right. Like, what kind of a mind would have emerged? So it’s been an incredible force, but it’s ultimately sort of a blunt tool. Right. If you rewind the clock even, even farther. My famous favorite historical example is like, well, how did Alexander the Great become Alexander the Great? And basically his dad was really smart. His dad was a statesman in his own right. But he was like, “Who’s the smartest person on Planet Earth?” “Oh, it’s Aristotle.” And he hired him to be a private tutor to Alexander.
Dan Lerman: Dude, I love that. Tutoring is so interesting in that way. And I’m glad you see it that way. I obviously am biased, but I see it that way too. Like, it’s a great investment. The reason people like me exist, whether you like them or not, is that there’s a market out there for sharp minds and exposing them to your kids. And good things kind of start to happen. Marcus Aurelius wrote a very famous book called Meditations. You know that book?
Nick Halaris: Yeah.
Dan Lerman: I want to just get this quote right. It’s from like the, like page one of the book. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Private tutors. Okay, you ready for this?
Nick Halaris: Yeah.
Dan Lerman: From the book: “Avoid the public schools, hire good private teachers, and accept the resulting costs.”
Nick Halaris: Love it. They were onto it, like now they had, they had all kinds of class issues in their society. And so, like, only very few people. It’s kind of similar, I guess, to today. Only very people do it. But I do think the ancients figured out like, that is actually a really effective way to transmit the learning process, no doubt, from one, one generation to the next. Fascinating stuff. Well, I want to. I want to cover two more topics, and I just want to be mindful of time. So the first one is there’s been all kinds of stories recently. And actually you and I traded an article back and forth just recently about like, “Man, what? There’s some kind of quality issue with young people.” And there’s articles suggesting that young people are graduating that are functionally illiterate. You shared the example earlier. Graduating high school with an eighth-grade writing level, not knowing how to do basic arithmetic. What do you think of these exposes? Is it true? Are these just like people picking out little things, or is it a general trend?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, I think it’s a general trend. I think the top kids are still really good and smart and well-rounded. What I’m seeing much, much, much more of, Nick, is the family that calls me. And they seemingly did everything right and sent their kids to the right schools and supported them with love and the yum. And the kid is massively, massively anxious and getting C’s and on the verge of dropping out. And it’s like, I had never seen this type of situation before. It was like, “What is happening?” And across the board, that kid. I. I’ve dealt with it probably a dozen times now. That kid is addicted to their phone to the point where I can’t, like, even having this type of Zoom conversation. If there’s a lull in the conversation, I have, I record all of my tutoring sessions, so I have video footage of this. There’s a lull in the conversation. If I take a pause to collect my thoughts, like that long, they look down at their phone and they’re like, on TikTok. And I have to, like, address it and be like, “Are you talk right now? Get your phone out of here.” So I think. I don’t know if this was a leading question or not, but I am seeing a very clear mental health issue around middle school to high school kids that’s dramatically affecting their performance. And I’m seeing it more than I’ve ever seen before.
Nick Halaris: Okay, interesting. And are you seeing. I mean, you probably don’t. Just because of the nature of the work you’re doing, you probably don’t run across kids who can’t read. Right? Right. Or do you?
Dan Lerman: Once, maybe once a year, I’ll get a kid who is dyslexic. Been told since, you know, they were eight years old that they’re not able to read. And they also have to get the ACT done. And so I do start. That takes a year plus to get them to the level that they want. And it starts with getting them to read out loud. Very often they’re incredibly uncomfortable and they cry when I ask them to read out loud. So I do get that. Not often.
Nick Halaris: Okay, interesting. Yeah. The article that we traded back and forth was. I forget the author, but he. He was careful to not disclose what school he was talking about. But basically he was saying, like, “I’m at a state school, decent school, not like an elite on the rankings.” And his. His allegations were like, “People can’t read a book, like an adult novel.”
Dan Lerman: I’ll agree with. I agree with that. Most common, like, over half the people I work with are like, well-meaning. They get good grades and their family, they. Like I said before, like, “He’s really smart. He’s just not a good test taker.” And what that truly means. The first question I always ask, like, “Do you read? Do you. Do you read in your spare time?” And a lot of times nowadays, people just start laughing like, “No, like, of course I don’t read.” Like, I. So a lot of these kids were getting straight A’s at top, you know, public or private schools. It doesn’t really matter. They have not read a book that they’ve liked maybe ever in their lives, certainly since, like, fifth grade. And if you handed them something like, what were you read in high school? Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men. They speed through it and they get nothing from it. So I have to go in and do the dirty work, which the public school system’s not capable of. It has nothing to do with teachers. It’s just 20 kids in a room. Most teachers aren’t going to practice. Like, “Okay, what goes through your mind as you read this sentence by J.D. Salinger?” Like, so I come in and I show them how to read pretty quickly. Like, it happens quickly, but that’s the work I’m doing. So I am not surprised. Like, if they don’t get exposed to someone like me or a tutor. There’s a very, very easy pathway to just, you know, get into UCLA based on your grades. They’re test-blind. You don’t even. They won’t even look at your SAT or ACT scores. And I imagine there’s a big chunk of people at UCLA, at the UC schools, have basically no reading comprehension.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. Which is kind of. Which is incredible and kind of frightening.
Dan Lerman: If you think about it.
Nick Halaris: Yeah.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: What do you think, since you mentioned it, about the. The idea of being test-blind? Like, do you think that’s a good policy for a college or not?
Dan Lerman: If they don’t care if their students can read or not or have a work ethic or not? Like, I basically, I think that’s a bad. I think it’s an overcorrection for some valid criticism of these tests. There are elements of these tests that are related to socioeconomic status. There are elements of these tests that are not 100% fair. I think completely ignoring them doesn’t solve the funneling problem, which is if you have five qualified applicants for every seat and all of them are genuinely qualified, it’s not like they’re not all five are qualified. How do you start to pick one of the five? Well, does it make sense to look at other aspects of their life, or is it valuable to know whether or not they’re a good reader and then get rid of three of them because they’re not? I think that’s the right way to approach it. But I know that there are people who don’t agree with me. I think generally the elite schools in this country are starting to swing back towards agreeing with me. Maybe they agreed with me the whole time and they took a pause during COVID for logistical reasons. But it’s really the. The kind of miraculous thing around the SAT and intelligence testing, which started like in the army, to solve a funneling problem. There’s the kind of interesting history of these. Is that it. In a very quick amount of time, Nick, you can make meaningful deductions to solve a funneling problem. If you have too many people, how do you pick the right ones? That’s a tricky question.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. Reminds me, I think it was Andreessen. He was on a podcast. This is a while ago. This might be completely wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s Andreessen and famous venture capital investor. And he was saying that in his view, the entire edifice of the tests and the schools and the rankings and all this stuff that occupies the minds of young people was about that funnel. It’s essentially like companies are not able to effectively evaluate the intelligence of their first hire. Like, it’s. It’s just logistically impossible. So they’ve outsourced that to the schools and it’s.
Dan Lerman: Right.
Nick Halaris: Testing agencies, and it’s created this. The system where. That’s the gating. Right. Like, the gate is how good can you do on the SAT or ACT? And what school did you get into? And then that kind of determines a set of opportunities that you’re going to have when you’re 22, when you graduate.
Dan Lerman: That’s really well put. I think that’s a wise comment.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. I want to talk. I want to finish this conversation by talking a little bit about this sort of meta issue around all this that is controversial. And maybe not controversial, but it’s on everybody’s mind. You know, my niece just went through the college applications. Our good friend’s son just went through it. Like, man, this is an incredibly competitive world that kids are facing, much more so than you and I face, you know, a generation ago.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: And I’m curious, you know, you. You work at a school, so maybe you can’t speak super candidly or openly about it, but, like, do the college admissions people know how crazy this is?
Dan Lerman: They do. They do. Yeah. They know there are people kind of like us, and they’re aware. Like, yeah, they’re not ostriches with their head and heads in the sand. It’s an easy. The whole process is very easy to criticize and hard to fix because, like, what, you know, I don’t know about the alternative. Like, if I think they’re aware of it, they’re like, “This is crazy.” And then they say, like, “Try to get your kid to calm down,” is generally what their advice is.
Nick Halaris: Right. Like, “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Nick Halaris: And maybe the, the anxiety that you referenced earlier and you see in some of these kids is it’s about social media, obviously, but it’s also about this competitiveness and like the people trying to like rank themselves against their friend. Like, “Oh, I got, I got into Stanford, and so-and-so didn’t.” You know that? Like, that kind of.
Dan Lerman: Totally. Yeah. And I think it’s a human desire to want to be special, to want to be the superhero, to want to be excellent, to want to be told you you are great. And that drive isn’t going away anytime soon, Nick. It’s hardwired into us. So I don’t. Yeah, I don’t know that the, the issue is going to change very much in the next. Yeah. Again, in the next decade. Who knows what happens after that.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. One of my closest friends here, he’s an MIT grad, and one of the things he does is he does interviews. So he, he’s like one of the parts of the admissions process. And what he says he’s been doing interviews for like 10 years, and he says he interviews the most incredible people. Like their resumes are stacked, they have perfect everything. They’re like violin experts or chess expert, whatever. Not a single person he’s interviewed in Southern California.
Dan Lerman: Just doesn’t happen. Yeah, I interviewed for Duke, and I see the same thing. You know, there’s this one last nugget I’ll drop on you, which I think is kind of interesting. There’s this idea in psychology called the Flynn effect. Have you heard of it?
Nick Halaris: No.
Dan Lerman: Okay. The Flynn effect. James Flynn, American psychologist who lives in New Zealand. He studies IQ tests for a living. That’s what he does or did. I think he’s retired. And what he noticed, very data-driven observation, that generation by generation people are getting smarter. You could dive into exactly how, but I think it’s something like 10 IQ points per generation. It goes up and up and up. And the IQ test is re-normed. So everyone has an. The average IQ is always 100. It gets re-normed. But if you have an IQ of 100 today, that’s like an IQ of 140 a couple generations ago. And you know, the media doesn’t report this because it’s not sexy or scary, but it is a nice thing to remind ourselves we’re all as a, as a species, getting smarter. And I think your friend’s realization of like, “Man, these kids are amazing and they’re not getting into an idiot.” I think that’s another thing that’s in line with the Flynn effect. People are getting smarter, their resources are getting more available. And I think it’s going to continue to happen. The human species is going to continue to level up cognitively. I know we don’t feel this way. I know the movie Idiocracy came out. Like, it feels like people are getting dumber. The data says differently. At least until recently. I’ve been reading some stuff, stuff that during COVID we kind of stalled or like reading levels dropped a little bit for obvious reasons. But up until then, like we were getting smarter as a species for as long as IQ tests have existed.
Nick Halaris: Well, that’s fascinating. And it’s kind of a more uplifting story because like the, the flip side, the sort of popular narrative is that this is a manifestation of a. Of a society that’s becoming more and more corrupt, more and more elitist, more and more inside, outside. Like, half you make it into this elite world, then it’s great. But if you don’t, then your opportunities are lower. And Operation Varsity Blues, like, didn’t help the conversation because powerful people got caught up breaking the law to get their kids into school. And that really woke people up to like, “Oh, wow, this really is competitive.”
Dan Lerman: Totally. I mean, it could be both, right? It could be everyone’s getting smarter, but the rich, like, could be getting, like, it could be different rates.
Nick Halaris: So.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, and. And I’m aware of the PR crisis around private, you know, counselors and tutors and all that. Like a lot of it. Varsity Blues related.
Nick Halaris: Exactly. Yeah. Like there was recent, not recently, it’s been a while. I think there was a New Yorker article about your industry, basically, so describing some of the activities where like ultra-high-net-worth families were flying these tutors around the world and sequestering them so that other kids couldn’t use their services.
Dan Lerman: Oh, wow. Didn’t know that was going down.
Nick Halaris: Yeah, but it makes sense, right? Like if there. It’s a zero, it’s kind of a zero-sum game. Like there’s only a certain amount of spots at Harvard. And so if you’re trying to help your kid, like, and you have the financial resources, maybe, maybe that’s a rational thing to do.
Dan Lerman: You say maybe that’s a rational thing to do, to lock it. Lock your tutor in a shed. Yeah, I agree. Not a gig that I’m signing up for anytime soon.
Nick Halaris: Yeah. Well, look, man, this has been a fascinating conversation. I love what you do, and I love getting your perspective. And I look forward to kind of tracking this development because I feel like the work you’re doing in your job as well as at Columbia, like teaching tutoring. I really feel like there’s an incredible positive opportunity and people may have tutors. Like, part of me is thinking, like, people are going to have tutors at many points in their life because the economy is going to be so dynamic. It’s going to be like, “Okay, well, I need a tutor to do well on these tests.” But I also needed a tutor to learn how to be an investor, or I need a tutor to learn how to be an entrepreneur. This is like incredible open space in my view.
Dan Lerman: Yeah. Can I make a 30-second plug about that? Please do so. Yeah. If you want to become a tutor, Nick, it’s a weird, outdated apprenticeship model. Like, you have to find like, you’re either out there on your own or you find someone to mentor you, which I was lucky enough to do. And they teach you how to be good. You can’t go to Harvard or Stanford or anywhere and be trained on being a good tutor. That doesn’t exist. So I noticed that. I pitched Columbia on creating the first ever tutoring class, which I taught this past winter. It was called Advanced Tutoring Techniques. We are rolling that into a certificate program which is going to launch in 2026, again at Teachers College, Columbia. And it’s going to be the first of its kind where if you want to tutor, if you want to take your brain and turn that into a business, learn how to use that to spread what you know. That’s what the program is going to teach you how to do.
Nick Halaris: Very cool. Yeah, yeah, it sounds awesome. Sounds like a huge opportunity for a lot of people.
Dan Lerman: Thanks. Appreciate it. It.
Nick Halaris: Well, thanks for being here, Dan. Look forward to doing this again sometime.
Dan Lerman: My absolute pleasure.