What is the most important ISEE section?

Parents often ask us which ISEE section is the most important to a competitive application. It’s also a question we like to discuss with our internal team and with our network of tutors and school administrators. And as with everything else, we’ve analyzed our data to find the answer to this question.

We’ve heard a variety of hypotheses about section difficulties and importances. Some parents and tutors believe that the Reading Comprehension section is the most important, because reading is a prerequisite for most other knowledge. If a student knows how to read well, they should be able to learn just about anything else. Others hold the view that—especially for students applying to the most competitive schools—the Quantitative Reasoning is the most important because it best reflects the student’s innate ability.

Which section do you think is the most important?

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While all of these theories are nice—and even believable—the truth is much more Jedi than that. Here’s what it comes down to: The most important section is your weakest section.

Yes, this sounds like a Yoda quotation, but our data supports this as well. At the end of the day, students complete the ISEE to gain admission into their schools of choice. And so it makes sense to take the perspective of an admissions department.

Suppose you’re an admissions director and you see the following two students’ stanine scores:



Scores tell a story. Student 2 is much more middle of the pack, and the 6s and 7s are very solid scores. He or she is above the mean in every single category. As an admissions director, we see a student who can land and be ready on day one in all subjects.

Whereas for Student 1, we are left with a very different story. The student is clearly brilliant in math, earning some of the highest scores possible for these subjects, but there is something deeply and fundamentally wrong. On day one of class, this student will be significantly behind in reading, which likely means that a lot of remedial help will necessary. Very competitive schools simply don’t allocate resources for students who are way far behind, and therefore rarely accept students who need major catch-up work.

Our data supports this tale of two students. Kids with one or two areas of significant weakness—even with very high scores in the other sections—often struggle to be admitted to their top-choice schools. On the flipside, students with consistently solid scores in all sections tend to perform better when it comes to admission into top schools.

So what can you do? The first step is to diagnose and discover those areas of weakness prior to the official ISEE. We often find that a low score may just reflect a student’s lack of familiarity with a section or question type, rather than a lack of knowledge or ability.

The best first step is to take a full-length practice test discover where you are at the beginning of the prep process. Once you have done that, you can craft an informed preparation strategy based on your personal areas of weakness.

Remember, the key to ISEE success is to diagnose, review, learn, and practice.

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You can find all of our ISEE practice tests and diagnostics at ISEEpracticetest.com!