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.

How does the ISEE differ from mandatory achievement tests?

First, it is important for families to remember: while mandatory achievement tests are taken by all students in participating schools, the ISEE is only taken by self-selected students applying to private schools. As a result, a student accustomed to scoring in the 90th percentile on required school tests, may easily find that that, especially without preparation, they score closer to the 50th percentile on the ISEE or SSAT. It is important for families to realize how much this apparent change in performance is based on the population to whom their child is compared.

However, this is not the only reason that the ISEE is known to be challenging – it is just plain hard! When a student takes a test in school, the content is likely to be curriculum that has been taught. However, student education, fortunately, is not usually catered to entrance exams like the ISEE. Since the ISEE is intended to create a distribution of scores among the most competitive students in the nation, then, from the perspective of the test writers, very few or no students should get every question right. So the content of the ISEE includes concepts or vocabulary that we do not expect students of those grade levels to have learned.

To exacerbate this, each level of ISEE is taken by more than one grade: 4th and 5th graders take the Lower Level, 6th and 7th graders take the Middle Level, and 8th – 11th graders take the Upper Level. Therefore, many students who take the ISEE, and the vast majority of students who take the Upper Level ISEE, are taking a test that is designed to significantly challenge students 1-3 grades older.

For this reason, the ISEE can be daunting. Most students need not only to become familiar with the test’s sections, but to be assured that they can perform well even in the face of not having any idea how to approach half the math problems!

Therefore, ISEE tutors regularly begin talking to students about the ISEE by first communicating that: “this test is NOT like tests you take in school.” Tutors tell students:

“You may not, until now, have ever had the opportunity to learn some of what is on the ISEE. Don’t worry. You are not expected to already know everything. Before even looking at a practice test together, I want you to know that the test is designed so that very few students can get every question right. The official test is given to multiple grades of students – so imagine, 8th graders are taking a test that is supposed to challenge competitive 11th graders!”

This preliminary talk between a tutor and student (or parent and student) is vitally important to preparing kids to confidently face pages upon pages of unfamiliar and/or very challenging math and verbal problems.

In addition to understanding how demanding the ISEE may be, it is import to impart to students that preparation can drastically improve their scores. We know from our data, and tutors know from their experiences, that it is possible to advance multiple quartiles through prep.

Prepared students:

• Gain confidence through familiarity with the test
• Learn new math concepts
• Enlarge vocabulary
• Master sentence completions
• Apply reading comprehension strategies
• Conquer the 30 minute essay
• Improve pacing
• Feel good about their performance

While vocabulary is best built over a period of at least 6 months and most students benefit most from 3 or more months of ISEE preparation, 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.

While the ISEE is a harder test than mandatory achievement tests, it can be tamed. Like most things in life, understanding present challenges opens avenues to success. The best way to understand the challenges the ISEE offers is to take a full-length practice test.