Smart Money : Ex-Academic Decathlon Champs Cashing In on Practice Exams

While most college-bound high school grads would be content to pick up a few extra tuition dollars by working as office clerks or store cashiers, two former Taft High School Academic Decathlon champions have parlayed their renowned high school experience into cash.

Daniel Berdichevsky and Andrew Salter, wunderkinder of academia, have ventured from the esoteric domain of the ivory tower into the nuts-and-bolts world of business with their own start-up company that sells practice exams to decathlon teams around the nation.

The enterprise, named DemiDec--an abbreviation of academic decathlon --has garnered the two 18-year-olds $20,000 since August.

“Our coach at Taft was always preaching theories of economic freedom to us,” said Berdichevsky.

“We’ve taken it from theory into reality,” added Salter.

The Academic Decathlon is a national high school competition that tests students in subjects including math, science and fine arts. Speech, interview and essay contests round out the competition along with the Super Quiz, a raucous, open-to-the-public exam in which decathletes are queried on current topics.

Recently, John Marshall High School in Los Feliz won the city championship over the popular Taft and is headed for the state finals.

Berdichevsky and Salter have a sterling reputation in decathlon circles. Both of them were members of the Taft High team that shattered city and state decathlon records on its way to the 1993 national championship. Berdichevsky was the highest individual scorer at the city, state and national competitions, followed closely each time by Salter.

When Berdichevsky and Salter are together, they bounce around the room.

“When we talk decath, we get kind of . . . ,” begins Berdichevsky

“Hyper?” suggests Salter.

“Hyper,” Berdichevsky agrees.

And now that Berdichevsky and Salter are freshman at two of the most prestigious universities in the nation--Harvard and Stanford, respectively--they have transformed their decathlon title into a calling card for their fledgling business.

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Last June the two champions found themselves short of pocket change after each being fined $27 for jaywalking across Winnetka Avenue to get to a bagel shop near Taft. In the midst of courthouse grumbling about the fines, they came up with the DemiDec idea.

Excited about their new endeavor, they decided to seek the approval of their coach, Taft instructor Arthur Berchin.

“My first reaction when I found out they were doing this was, ‘You’re going to be selling this to all of my competitors and make things tougher for me,’ ” said Berchin. “But there was nothing I could do to stop them.”

Armed with laptop computers, the two spent all summer sequestered in local libraries. The result was a thick stack of tests, study notes and a copy of the pair’s award-winning decathlon speeches. Touting the kit as a “Passport to Chicago,” site of the 1995 decathlon championships, they have sold about 200 of the $189 packages to schools across the nation.

Start-up costs were minimal. After all, they didn’t pay themselves wages, and it costs only about $14 to print each 700-page package.

They mailed out query letters urging decathlon coaches to buy DemiDec to help their students “focus on victory,” with insider hints from two former national champs.

Practice tests are a common part of training for decathletes, and a small number of companies, most founded by former coaches and testing professionals, have specialized in selling them to schools. Academic Decathlon officials do not endorse any particular company, instead offering their own set of study materials, said Judy Combs of the California Academic Decathlon.

One sample of a DemiDec impromptu speech topic asks: “Has George Bush’s professed dislike for broccoli done harm to the public opinion of the vegetable?”

“We had fun with those,” said Berdichevsky.

A question for the Super Quiz that probably wasn’t as much fun:

Genetic engineering consists of carrying the gene of interest into the target cell by first incorporating it into a: a) restriction endonuclease; b) enzyme-substrate complex; c) bacterium; d) plasmid; e) methylase.

Answer: d) plasmid.

Berdichevsky and Salter’s popularity persuaded many coaches who had met them at national and state competitions to buy the package sight unseen.

“We were happy to see them and their entrepreneurial spirit,” said George Floratos, who has led Torrance’s West High to five consecutive county championships. “We purchased it primarily to help them out. We knew that to produce these tests was a monumental task.”

But first-year jitters have led to accuracy problems in the tests, according to many of the coaches who bought the DemiDec packages.

In an early snafu, Salter and Berdichevsky had to mail out revised answer keys to their science test because none of the correct answers matched the questions.

“We found several errors, but we find errors in all testing materials,” Floratos said. “But I’m sure their product will get better as they age and have more time to commit.”

Others, however, were not so generous.

“We bought their tests because they were very personable and they had the aura of Taft’s victory, but our team members were really thoroughly disgusted,” said Chatsworth coach Nina Hackett, whose students sold candy to be able to afford the tests. “There were so many mistakes. After a while we found we just couldn’t use them.”

Salter, who had been unaware of the criticism, said it will be “extremely important to us to remedy those mistakes.”

Berdichevsky said he and Salter plan to spend next summer creating new tests, taking extra time to ensure that there are no further problems.

In the competitive decathlon testing business, where only a handful of companies compete for scarce school district funds, a reputation for sloppiness could hurt the two.

Meanwhile, orders keep trickling in at the rate of about five a week, said Berdichevsky. Typical freshmen, the two are unsure of their plans. Salter can’t decide whether to major in business or economics. Berdichevsky said he wants to be a writer, but frets because he, too, has not selected a major.

“Friends from the decathlon team are calling me a dilettante because I refuse to focus on one thing,” Berdichevsky said. “But I have to pick a major next month. The pressure is mounting.”