Neal Kamsler has worked in New York City independent schools for 35 years, including 21 years as Head of Upper School at Allen-Stevenson School. He also serves as Senior Director of Placement at Oliver Scholars, an educational access organization based in Manhattan. Test Innovators’ CEO, Edan Shahar, sits down with Neal to discuss independent school admissions: choosing the right school for your child, misconceptions about boarding school, and how admissions departments decide who to accept.
The first step in your SSAT prep is to take a full-length practice test. The initial practice test serves as a benchmark, or diagnostic test, and is the jumping-off point of the preparation process. We generally recommend taking this test as early as possible, but it is never too late.
You’ve completed the ISEE—congratulations! After breathing a sigh of relief, you may wonder, “When will I get my scores?” Well, it depends on how you took the test.
The saying “practice as you’d like to perform” is applicable to so many things, especially test preparation. Practice tests are the foundation of preparation for this very reason. Practice tests help simulate test day and expose you to the content and structure of the test.
But taking a practice test is...
In this series of posts, we will explore some of our practice questions that have stumped a remarkable number of students. We hope to highlight some common mistakes and how to avoid them on the official test.
As a general rule, we recommend starting your SSAT prep six to four months before your test date.
So if you are planning to take the test in November, then you should take a diagnostic practice test sometime between May and July.
After families take the ISEE test, we often receive questions from confused test-takers and parents. Here are the answers to some of the most common questions we’re asked about ISEE score reports.
The Character Skills Snapshot (CSS) is a tool developed by The Enrollment Management Association, the same company that creates the SSAT. Students in grades 6 through 12 take the CSS for admission to participating independent schools. Check with your prospective schools to see if they require the CSS.
We are pleased to introduce Esther, one of our 2024 scholars. Through hard work and dedication, Esther increased her ISEE score by over 26 percentile points!
Families across the nation have become familiar with mandatory state achievement tests.
While some private school students remain fairly inexperienced with standardized testing, the majority of students, and certainly those in public schools, are all too acquainted with various achievement test acronyms.
