Episode

733. SPONSOR SPOTLIGHT: The Gauntlet

Podcast
Tests and the Rest: College Admissions Podcast
Published
Jun 12, 2026
Duration seconds
1063
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Summary

The Gauntlet: Harder Questions, Higher Scores What are five things you will learn in this episode? What's the story behind The Gauntlet, and what problem inspired it? How does The Gauntlet solve the challenge of managing prep material and what's actually in the library? How does the new tutor dashboard streamline day-to-day student management? What is The Gauntlet's pricing model, and how does it alleviate changes in student utilization. For tutors who are already invested in different resources, what makes The Gauntlet worth trying? ABOUT THE GAUNTLET From the very first student he tutored, John McDowell has been on a single mission: get his students the highest scores possible. That obsession exposed a problem he couldn't ignore—free and official prep materials simply weren't hard enough. A student returning from test day complaining that the test was "much harder than the practice tests" isn't just a letdown; it's a bad rap for a tutor. So he built the answer himself: The Gauntlet Today, The Gauntlet offers the most rigorous SAT prep in existence, anchored by The Gauntlet book series on Amazon: a Math Challenge, a Verbal Challenge, and now a Vocabulary Challenge built from the most frequently repeated SAT words. Built on a proprietary pedagogy that has delivered an average gain of over 70 points from a baseline SAT Reading and Writing score of 660, the platform delivers the 300 hardest SAT verbal and math questions available anywhere, full-length and section-only mock tests, Mr. John's famous high-frequency vocab and must-know math flashcards, and 3,000+ categorized drill questions—every one written and vetted by six published content experts, not AI, with new content added each week. Now Mr. John's Test Prep is opening The Gauntlet to private tutors and agencies wi…