INDEPENDENT SCHOOL ENTRANCE EXAM (ISEE)

Online Student Guide

Registration Fee

Why Test Early

What do test results mean

Sample Test Questions

The following section was prepared by the Seattle/Tacoma Consortium of Independent Schools for use by its member schools.

The Seattle/Tacoma Consortium of Independent Schools, which includes Annie Wright, Bear Creek, Bellevue Children's Academy, Bush, Charles Wright, Eastside Catholic, Eastside Preparatory, Evergreen, Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, Lakeside, Northwest, Overlake, Seattle Academy, University Prep, Vista Academy at Open Window, and Villa Academy uses the Independent School Entrance Examination (ISEE) for our admission test.

The ISEE ONLINE STUDENT GUIDE is available from any one of the schools requiring the test and from many Seattle area independent elementary schools. This guide includes the form required to register for the test, describes the test in detail, and leads you to the ISEE Web site, which provides more details. If you would prefer to register by mail, please call any of our schools. To see the Student Guide online and for online test registration, visit http://www.iseetest.org 

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The REGISTRATION FEE for the ISEE is $78. If the $78

registration fee is burdensome to you, you may request a fee waiver from the school to which you are applying for admission.

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 TEST EARLY:  We encourage students to take the ISEE on the earliest possible test date.

• ISEE studies reveal that test scores are just as high for students who test in early fall as for those who test in winter.
• Students who test early feel less stress than those who wait.
• Students who become ill during winter flu season may not have time to reschedule. Your child may only take the ISEE once during the admission process.
  

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 REGARDING ISEE TEST RESULTS

We know that test results are often misunderstood and can be a source of anxiety. Test results are just one factor utilized in gaining a clearer picture of each applicant and are, by no means, the sole criterion used. They serve to illuminate the school record and to provide us with a common denominator, given that the students who apply to our schools come from many different backgrounds. As educators, we are quite aware of what multiple-choice tests tell, and of what they don’t tell us, about a student. We know that such qualities as empathy, vision, motivation, resilience, patience, sense of humor, creativity, the ability to work independently, and a whole array of other human qualities are not addressed by any standardized test. A former president of Educational Testing Service, the group that devises and now administers a number of standardized tests, once said, "Tests can't assess the glint in a student's eye." We wholeheartedly agree.

The ISEE measures both ability to learn, through the verbal and quantitative reasoning sections, and achievement (what a student has learned), through the reading comprehension and mathematics achievement sections.

You may be perplexed by the fact that the test scores on the ISEE are lower than that of previous standardized tests your child has taken. In order to understand ability or achievement test scores, you need to be familiar with the group against whom the student is being compared, i.e. the norm group. The norm group in this case is the population nationwide who are applying to independent schools, a highly competitive population. To illustrate the significance of the different norms, a student's reading score at the 87th percentile level on a National Norm might equate to the 50th percentile on the Independent School Norm.

Although test results may be helpful to you, we urge you to use your own best judgment in deciding whether to share these results with your child. Our concern focuses on the educational appropriateness of students discussing their ISEE results with their peers. In a majority of cases, the ISEE results will show a similar pattern as scores on previous CTBS, ERB, or other standardized tests.

Please call any of us with question or concerns. Rest assured, all the schools in this group take many factors besides standardized test results into account in our admission decisions.

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SAMPLE QUESTIONS

ISEE provides a few sample questions  for each level of the test at the links provided below.

• Lower Level Questions (applying for grades 5 & 6)

• Middle Level Questions (applying for grades 7 & 8)

• Upper Level Questions (applying for grades 9-12)

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