What’s the Difference? State Achievement Exams vs. the ISEE
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.
As you start learning about the ISEE, you may find yourself wondering how the ISEE differs from state achievement tests?
First and foremost, families should understand that state achievement tests are taken by all students in participating schools, whereas the ISEE is only taken by self-selected students applying to independent and private schools.
As a result, a student accustomed to scoring in the 90th percentile on required school tests may find, especially without preparation, that they end up scoring closer to the 50th percentile on the ISEE. This potential difference in performance is based on the fact that ISEE test-takers tend to be a high performing group of students.
However, this isn’t the only reason the ISEE is known to be challenging—the content is difficult! When a student takes a test in school, the content is likely to be based on curriculum that has already been taught. On the ISEE, however, it’s possible that there is content that a student hasn’t been taught yet. For example, the two reasoning sections (Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning) are designed to test a student’s ability to use reasoning and logic.
Furthermore, the ISEE is intended to create a distribution of scores among the most competitive students in the nation; from the perspective of the test writers, very few to no students should get every question right. Therefore, the ISEE also features concepts that students within a given grade level are not expected to have learned.
To exacerbate this, each level of ISEE is taken by more than one grade: Students applying to the 5th and 6th grade take the Lower Level, students applying to 7th and 8th grade take the Middle Level, and students applying to grades 9 through 11 take the Upper Level. These levels mean that many students who take the ISEE are taking a test that is designed to challenge students 1 to 3 grades higher than them.
For all these reasons, the ISEE can seem particularly challenging. If you’re taking the ISEE, becoming familiar with the test’s content is only the first step. Students also need to learn test-taking strategies to make sure that they perform their best under timed, high-pressure conditions.
To help prepare students for challenging nature of the ISEE, we recommend stressing the following points:
- This test is different from the tests you take in school.
- You may not, until now, have had the opportunity to learn some of what is on the ISEE.
- Don’t worry. You are not expected to already know everything.
- The test is designed so that very few students get every question right.
- The test is taken by students in multiple grades, which means that 8th graders are taking the same test that is supposed to challenge 11th graders!
In addition to understanding how demanding the ISEE may be, it is important to impart to students that preparation can drastically improve their scores. We know from working with over half a million students that it is possible to improve through proper prep.
Preparation allows students to:
- Gain confidence through familiarity with the test
- Learn new math concepts
- Enlargen their vocabulary
- Read more efficiently
- Write in a timed setting
- Improve pacing
- Feel confident about their performance
While vocabulary is best built over a period of at least 6 months, and students benefit most from 3+ months of ISEE preparation, it’s never too late to start preparing. Parents who are reading this with only a week or two before an unmovable test date should know that especially motivated students with stellar resources CAN significantly raise their scores. We see it happen. Creating a test prep study plan is a great place to start and keep yourself on track.
While most students find the ISEE to be harder than state achievement tests, these challenges can be alleviated through proper practice. Like most things in life, understanding present challenges opens avenues to future success.
Take a full-length practice test to see where you stand and start your preparation for the ISEE today.
Originally posted on April 3, 2015. Updated on January 23, 2025.
