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BE Brian Eufinger On ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast

“I will never make more money per hour, ever, ever, ever, than I did studying for this test in high school. … I quit tennis. And in those 60 or 70 hours I worked on this stuff, I paid for 140 grand of Wash U.”

ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast · Money & Markets · November 2026

“I will never make more money per hour, ever, ever, ever, than I did studying for this test in high school. … I quit tennis. And in those 60 or 70 hours I worked on this stuff, I paid for 140 grand of Wash U.” — Brian Eufinger, ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast

Context

Asked what families should know about the SAT and ACT today, the test-prep company founder explains why he thinks scores are worth the study time, using his own merit-aid story.

Transcript

ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast Around 39:32 into the episode
Brian Eufinger

…today. So it'll probably hang around just due to nostalgia or other things, but you can't hang your hat on it, certainly. And GPA mattering from day one of high school needs to be the first and second and third point since even a few oopses on the GPA front can derail the rest of the application.

Brad Barrett

…What do people have to know today? Is there new things on the horizon? When should families start taking these tests seriously? I know literally as we're recording this, my daughter is taking the, I think it's the PSAT 9 or something like that. Talk us through the landscape of what's going on.

Brian Eufinger

…just be whatever. So it's not an IQ test. It's very coachable stuff. But you need to, as a family, help your student understand where they're going to set aside some time to study for it. Because as I always say, I will never make more money per hour ever, ever, ever, than I did studying for this test in high school. And that was back when college was literally one-third the cost that it is now. I quit tennis. And in those 60 or 70 hours I worked on this stuff, I paid for 140 grand of Wash U. Regrettably, I do not make like $2,000 an hour. And so the dollars are real, even more so if you happen to be in a state like Florida where there's bright futures or other things. It's not just any given school.

Brad Barrett

Right. So there is a very quantifiable return on SAT and ACT improvement in certain instances.

Brian Eufinger

Yeah, my favorite client last year, she sells a lot of really high-end homes to like Falcons and Brave Players. She's a great lady. Her son is a bro. She would not be mad at me saying that on the podcast. Her son, he's very smart, but he's very lazy. He's probably internationally ranked in Call of…

Brad Barrett

I love that. Okay. So you've said multiple tests a couple of times. So two questions, but they're going to be tied together. So is there any detriment to taking any of these tests, AC, the SAT? Let's just say SAT for now, to taking it repeatedly.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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