Teacher/tutor helping students study

ISEE (commonly pronounced “i-see”) is an acronym that stands for the Independent School Entrance Exam, which is commonly taken by students applying to private schools in the United States. This peer-normed, standardized test is commonly taken by students applying to middle school (grades 5/6-8) and high school (grades 9-12). Students can also take the test to get into earlier grades, but it is less common.

As an educator or parent, you might be anxious about how to tutor the ISEE if you’ve never been asked to do it before. But if you can tutor Algebra I or To Kill a Mockingbird, you can tutor all levels of the ISEE. We’ll show you how!

Remote Tutoring Tips

In this post-pandemic age, there’s a good chance you might have to do your tutoring remotely. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered there too!

Click here to read our remote tutoring tips including software and hardware suggestions.

In addition to an overview of the exam, this extensive guide on tutoring the ISEE covers:

ISEE Overview

Before you learn how to tutor the ISEE, you must understand what this exam is. The ISEE comes in four levels depending on the grade the student is applying to:

The Upper Level is the most popular, followed by the Lower Level.

There are five sections to the ISEE:

  1. Verbal Reasoning: synonyms and sentence completions
  2. Quantitative Reasoning: quantitative comparisons and word problems
  3. Reading Comprehension: reading passages with questions
  4. Mathematics Achievement: word problems
  5. Essay: 1 prompt, 2-pages (unscored)

Depending on the level of the test, each section is between 25 and 47 questions and students subject to normal timing will have between 2.5 and 3-hours to complete the entire test, including two, 5-minute breaks.

Similar to the ACT or SAT, the ISEE is both an achievement test and a reasoning test. Students will have to apply what they have learned in school (achievement) to questions which present the learned material in new and novel ways (reasoning).

To this extent, most students find the Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning tests to be the most difficult. Conversely, the more traditional Reading Comprehension test is generally easier for students but also more competitive—students cannot miss many questions in this section and still score highly.

The ISEE is a peer-normed test, and students receive a score “stanine” from 1 to 9, where 1 represents the bottom 3% of test takers, and a 9 represents the top 4% of test takers. You can visualize these stanines by taking a bell-curve and simply dividing it into nine sections. The peer group is composed of students from the previous 3 years; students in the current year are not scored against each other.

Learn more about the basics of the ISEE:

How to Get Comfortable with the ISEE

You probably remember agonizing over and taking the ACT or SAT to get into college, but you probably never took or don’t remember taking the ISEE. The first step to being able to tutor this exam is getting acquainted with it—before tutoring session #1, take these steps to familiarize yourself with the ISEE.

Understand the ISEE by Taking a Test

To effectively teach a student how to approach an exam, you need experience taking that exam.

  1. Take the ERB’s only official test or a full-length ISEE practice test for the level you need to tutor. (Note that the ERB official test is missing the “experimental questions” which all standardized tests require students to answer but neither call-out nor score.)
  2. Score it and ensure that you understand:
    1. How to assign your score a stanine value
    2. Why you got any questions wrong

You Must Be Able to Explain a Stanine Score

er Level Stanine Scoring MethodologyYou have to be able to explain a stanine score. Parents will quickly lose confidence in you if you cannot explain how a stanine score is derived.

Click here to learn more about a stanine, normal curve, and peer group.

Get Even More Comfortable by Writing Questions

While working through a full length test will probably be enough to get you started with your first student, you can become even more acquainted with the exam by writing your own practice content!

The best way to teach a student to ace a question is to understand exactly what that question is testing and how it’s doing it, and the fastest way to get to this level of familiarity with the test is to attempt to write your own problems. Use the official ERB test as your template as you try to replicate its content and style with:

Then, compare your questions with the actual test. If you can write reasonable questions here, you can definitely tutor the ISEE well.

When you’re ready to set up your tutoring, the Piqosity question editor is a fantastic resource! Any verified educator can write ISEE questions for their students directly in the app, with the ability to link a question to any ISEE concept. Learn more about our “Bring Your Own Content” capabilities on our educator page.

Getting Started with Your First ISEE Student

So you’ve taken a test and hopefully written some great questions. You’re confident about your skills and ready for your first student, so what do you do?

Give them a diagnostic test. You should start every student by having them take the ERB’s official practice test—cold, without any introduction or tutoring. This preliminary test serves three purposes:

  1. Providing a baseline score from which to measure improvement.
  2. Allowing you to quickly identify a student’s relative strengths and weaknesses.
  3. Give you something to go over during your first meeting with the student

Students Must Take a Diagnostic Test

Most parents will grasp onto the idea of a diagnostic test with gusto. But some parents might push back and insist that you should have an idea simply from the child’s ERB / CTP-V scores taken in school.

Do not relent! The ERB and CTP-V tests are not as difficult as the ISEE, so they should not be considered an accurate diagnostic. You must properly set your family’s expectations (and protect your reputation) by insisting on a legitimate diagnostic test.

Creating Effective ISEE Tutoring Sessions

How you start tutoring the ISEE will influence how the rest of the sessions go. Your goal for session #1 should be to get on the same page with your student when it comes to the exam, including where their strengths/weaknesses lie and their score goals.

During your first 1-hour lesson:

  1. Ask the student what they thought about the diagnostic test. What did they find easiest or hardest and why?
  2. Walk them through a general overview of the ISEE, including:
    • Sections
    • Types of questions
    • Timing, including seconds per question
    • Scoring, including what it means to be “peer normed”
  3. Start doing test corrections on the diagnostic test. As you go through each question:
    • Think: What basic concept is being tested? Has the student learned this topic in school yet? Have they forgotten it? Will I need to teach it to them? Is it worth teaching to them in the time until the actual exam?
    • Consider: How would you have them work the problem if you were teaching the underlying concept in school or had an infinite amount of time?
    • Once you’ve ensured the student grasps the fundamental idea: Are there some steps that could have been skipped to work the problem faster in or under the time allowed?
  4. Build a rapport by asking them what schools they want to apply to and why. Give them some of your insight from your experience with those schools.
  5. Assign homework for your next lesson.
    • 30-minutes worth, or about 10-20 questions in the next test section you want to cover.

Students Should be Given Homework

Homework is very important in standardized test preparation. It’s not enough for students to sit with you and work through problems. Most students will not fully internalize what you taught them without having to sit and do it themselves.

Not doing homework is the number one reason that students working with tutors don’t realize the score improvement they expected.

In Ongoing Lessons:

  1. Start the lesson by going over the homework.
  2. Ensure an understanding of fundamental concepts.
  3. Repeat test taking strategies for the relevant section.
  4. Assign homework before the next lesson.

With Piqosity

  1. Assign practice with due dates in your Tutor account.
  2. Or work through sections of a Full-Length test with students, as sections can be scored individually.
  3. Review the tested material and testing strategies in our “ISEE Prep Guide”.

Taking Practice Tests

  1. Encourage students to regularly take full-length, timed practice tests:
    1. At least twice before taking the actual ISEE.
    2. One test for every 20-hours of tutoring and assigned homework…
    3. …but not more frequently than once a month.

Making an ISEE Prep Schedule

Making a prep schedule can help both you and your student plan out your tutoring and stay on-track for test day. Luckily, we’ve already developed an in-depth guide for creating an ISEE prep timeline. Here are some pointers for creating a study plan for the student you’re tutorintgRead on for more information specifically related to how to tutor the ISEE on a schedule.

Our suggested isee prep timeline, starting in the summer and ending around application season.How much effort a student must spend preparing for the ISEE depends on the competitiveness of the schools to which they’re applying and where they’re starting. For example, it takes a lot more effort to improve from a stanine of 3 to a 7 than a 6 to an 8.

Most students will have the opportunity to take the ISEE twice before their school applications are due: once between August and November, and once between December and March. In Houston, for example, the most popular times to take the ISEE are first in mid-November and second in early January.

Since students have only two real opportunities to test, make sure to encourage them to:

  1. Treat the first official test as a trial run (while still striving to get good scores).
  2. Not submit scores to schools until after the second testing.

Encouraging students to treat the first test as a trial run will help reduce their anxiety.

Must Know vs Nice to Know

The various levels of the ISEE are designed to be used for applying to multiple school grades. As such, most students are likely to encounter concepts, particularly math topics, which they have never seen before. For the majority of students, it is a poor use of time to try to teach them high level concepts, which they will not be able to easily grasp.

For example, the average 8th grade student taking the ISEE Upper Level in the first semester of their 8th grade year is likely to be overwhelmed with the following math topics (*indicates topics that they can typically learn quickly):

Click on the test level to see all tested math concepts on the ISEE Upper Level / Middle Level / Lower Level

Addressing Anxiety and Careless Mistakes

The most common issues that parents will tell you about are “testing anxiety” and “careless mistakes.”

Some students have genuine anxiety issues that only a medical professional can diagnose and treat, but the majority of students just need more assurance that they have the capability to excel. The opposite of anxiety and mistakes are “confidence” and “precision”—your goal should be to develop these traits in your student(s).

To this extent, most anxiety is simply “anticipated misfortune or trouble”, or just a fear of the unknown. You will conquer this fear with your student by showing them how predictable the ISEE (and any standardized test) can be. The more problems they see and work through, the more they will start to see the patterns and understand what is being asked of them.

To the same extent, frequent, reviewed practice will increase the level of ease at which they tackle problems. At first students will be unsure of what’s being asked, what steps to take, and what strategies to implement, but as they work through more practice, they’ll get the hang of it and become quicker and more confident, which will replace their “careless mistakes” with “confident precision.”

Guided and reviewed practice will ease test-taking anxiety, but students may also have anxiety with the whole private school applications process in general.

To help relax students about this process:

  1. Explain that the ISEE is just one part of a holistic application.
  2. Explore which schools they want to attend, also including:
    • Private “safety” schools.
    • Public school options.
  3. Emphasize that they have at least two chances to do well (if applicable).

Ensure that students realize that the “super prestigious school XYZ” is not the only choice in town where they will be happy and succeed in life.

Good vs Bad Practice

There is a real difference between good practice and bad practice. You must be careful that you do not assign too much practice in too short of a time. There must be enough time to:

  1. Review the assigned practice.
  2. Ensure that students understand the tested concepts.
  3. Implement effective strategies to tackle that question type.

There is almost nothing beneficial to simply assigning students to do repetitive practice without going through the steps to ensure students are actually learning from their mistakes. Overworking the student will only breed resentment and increase their test-taking anxiety.

What about the ISEE Essay?

The essay is the fifth and final section of the ISEE. Because the essay is not scored, it can be lower on your priority list but is still worth addressing if time allows.

For the ISEE essay, students will be allotted to two pages (up to about 300 words) in which they’re asked to respond to a personal prompt. Their response is scanned and included with the score report that schools receive.

The main point of the essay is primarily so that:

  1. Schools can examine an unadulterated (literally) student work product.
  2. Students have a chance to make themselves look interesting.

If time allows, you will want to make sure that your student can craft a decent essay for their grade level, meaning:

  1. Their essay has a main idea with clearly supportive elements.
  2. They use personal-experience examples to support their thesis.
  3. Their writing is legible, and grammar and spelling mistakes are minimal.

In practicality as a tutor, you should expect to spend at least a couple of sessions (or hours) reviewing your student’s practice essays:

  1. Discuss the purpose of the ISEE essay with the student.
  2. Walk through how to brainstorm and outline a basic, 5-paragraph essay.
  3. Assign them a practice prompt.
  4. Repeat as necessary or time allows.

Your Next Steps—ISEE Test Prep Materials with Piqosity

Now that you understand the basics of how to tutor the ISEE, it’s time to consider how you’ll aquire the materials for your tutoring. Along with our full-length, online ELA and Math courses for grades 6-11, we offer full ISEE test prep courses for the lower, middle, and upper level ISEE, each of which includes 10 practice exams, dozens of concept lessons, personalized practice software, and more.

Once you create a free Piqosity Educator account, you can create a mock Piqosity student account (and attach it to your Educator account) to see how our software works for tutors. Then, work through the ISEE content to make sure you have a good baseline understanding before your tutoring begins!

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