#426 – Pathways to Successful Career and Test Prep, with Stephen Johnson

Stephen Johnson, educator, author, and founder of AptivPrep™, shares his inspiring journey from growing up in inner-city Los Angeles to building an AI-powered platform that helps students reach top-tier SAT® and ACT® scores. With the mantra “Better scores lead to more open doors,” Stephen explains how early preparation, access to free resources, and intentional mindset shifts can transform college and career opportunities for students, especially those facing systemic barriers.

The conversation dives into his philosophy of service, how technology can scale impact without losing the human touch, and practical strategies that educators can use to demystify standardized testing for their students. Throughout the episode, Stephen offers encouraging reminders that persistence, preparation, and the right tools can change life trajectories.

. . . the things we seek to avoid are more than likely the very things we need to grow, develop, and attain genuine happiness, and, most of all, to truly honor the dream for our life.

Stephen Johnson, in the preface to his book, Small Beginnings Require Bigger Dreams

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• AI in the K–12 Classroom (article collection)
• Academic Integrity in the Age of AI (podcast episode)
• Supporting Students With the College Application Process, with Sally Fouché (podcast episode)
• Educator Voices: Paving the Way to Personal, Academic, and Career Success (podcast episode)
• Open Doors to Hopes and Dreams With FAFSA® and Financial Aid (article collection)

Better Scores Open Doors

Stephen Johnson believes that higher test scores aren’t just numbers; they’re keys that can unlock life-changing opportunities. His central message, “Better scores lead to more open doors,” challenges educators to see standardized testing not as a barrier but as a potential lever for increased opportunity. Drawing from his own experience as a first-generation college student, Stephen understands both the academic and emotional challenges that students face when preparing for the SAT or ACT. That empathy fuels his mission to make elite-level test prep accessible to all.

He stresses that preparation should begin early, with students gaining familiarity through practice tests long before their junior year. By using free resources, embracing AI-driven personalized learning, and viewing testing as a skill to build proficiency and competency in, students can increase their options for higher education. For Stephen, the goal isn’t just better scores; it’s empowering students to decide which doors they want to walk through. And for educators, that means fostering a mindset of resilience, growth, and intentional use of the tools available today to build the futures that students deserve. The following are highlights from this episode.

• About Our Guest: Stephen Johnson is an educator, author, and founder of the test prep company AptivPrep.
• Humble Beginnings: Stephen grew up in the inner city of Los Angeles and was raised by his mother and grandmother. He describes the area where he lived as “a neighborhood where there weren’t a lot of academics.” However, he was a bright student, and his mother and grandmother valued education.
• No Breadcrumbs: Because there were few well-educated role models in his community, Stephen says that there were no “breadcrumbs,” no “blueprint” to show him how to pursue an advanced education.
• Determination: Despite the challenges, Stephen was determined to get an education and “make it.” He describes his mindset as, “I’ll be the one to do it, and not only will I be the one to do it, but I’ll also turn around at some point and be an example and be a role model for others.” He adds, “Everything that I’ve done comes from that place in my life.”
• An Early Passion for Teaching: While Stephen has taught in the classroom, his teaching experience began in high school. In fact, he graduated from high school when he was 16 years old. At that time, his mother started a home school with about 20 students who gathered in their home to learn. Stephen says, “I was teaching high school kids at the age of 16 to 17 years old in math and science at our school. So that’s when teaching started for me.”
• Front Side of the Mountain: Stephen says, “There’s the front side of the mountain conversation of never, never give up. Never quit. Stay persistent. Drive forward. And those are all the messages that I got from my mom and my grandmother.”
• Back Side of the Mountain: Stephen adds to his mountain analogy, saying, “And then there’s the other side of it.” As a student at UCLA, he recalls that other students were visited by parents who understood the college experience. He didn’t have that, not because his mother didn’t care, but because she was working and couldn’t come to visit. Stephen explains, “I realized in that moment, no one who’s the closest to me even knows what I’m going through.”
• Added Empathy: Because of his experiences, Stephen says, “I think it gives me a lot of empathy for other first-generation students.” He believes that he “can relate at a level where maybe another person cannot.”
• Service-Driven: Stephen says, “I’ve always wanted to serve other people, and when you get very good at serving other people, I think you just get addicted to it. I wanted to serve more people.”
• A Technology Solution: Stephen’s growing desire to serve others led him to realize that he didn’t have the capacity to serve as many people as he wanted to. To solve that problem, he turned to technology, especially artificial intelligence, which has allowed him to scale up his test prep services.
• Infusing Good: While there are concerns with AI, Stephen focuses on the potential good. He says, “I think there’s a lot of reason to be excited about how a person like myself, a person like you all, can take all of the good within yourself and infuse it into a technology like artificial intelligence, and replicate some of the good that you’re doing in the world beyond what you could ever do yourself, and then, therefore, serve humanity at a much farther scale than you could ever have done yourself.”
• Better Scores Open Doors: Stephen recognizes that to be accepted at elite schools, students needed to score really well on entrance exams. That led to his mantra: “Better scores lead to more open doors.” He adds, “If you can increase your scores on these tests, that leads to better opportunities for you in college.” About his life’s mission, he says, “This is my small way in which I’m changing the world.”
• Better Schools, Better Opportunities: Stephen points out that by attending a top college, students are surrounded with more opportunities. They are around others with high ambitions and connections. The school environment changes “who they’re socializing with, changes who their friends are, changes the types of job opportunities they have post-college.”
• Available Resources: Stephen points out that there are lots of college prep resources freely available online through sites like the College Board. Anyone seeking to perform better on a test should seek these out, and he emphasizes that they don’t need to wait until their junior year to do so. They can start preparing early, take practice tests, and learn what kinds of questions appear on those tests. He adds that it’s not about the scores that students receive on those practice tests. It’s about familiarity and identifying areas where they need to grow while they still have time to study up in those areas.
• The Reality of Tests: While some people think that too much emphasis is placed on college entrance tests, Stephen reminds us that they are a reality regardless of how we feel about them.
• Stephen’s Tool: Stephen’s company, AptivPrep, offers AI-powered practice tests and test support. He explains, “There’s 15 practice tests on that platform, and what I love about it is it removes the need for a tutor to come in and explain what you’ve missed and how you missed it. As soon as you take the practice test, you get feedback.” He adds, students “can spend time within the system and learn from their mistakes prior to taking another practice test.”
• The Future: In the future, Stephen believes that tests will become more adaptive in order to get a truer sense of what students really know. He adds, “In terms of test prep, I think we have to then focus on core skills. And I think those core skills will need to be integrated more into core curriculum across all state lines.”
• Two Paths: Stephen acknowledges, “Artificial intelligence has the power to make humans superhuman, but it also has the power to make us the dumbest generation ever.” He adds that the old paradigm of teaching is “dead,” and we need to adapt to the impacts of new technology like AI. He’s hopeful we can do it in a positive way.
• Social Media Connections: People can follow Stephen on social media channels like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram by following his account, @TheSATGuy1600.
• One Thing: For his one thing, Stephen offers, “I always love to go to mindset. To me, that’s the core of everything.” He adds, “It all comes down to never being satisfied with yesterday, and continuing to grow personally, and . . . as you grow personally, wanting to share what you learn with others. So as a teacher, as a dad, as a husband, as a community member, as much as we can, I think that we should all be striving to do that: to learn ourselves and to share what we learned with as many people as we can.”