Award-Winning ISEE Test Prep in Sacramento, CA

If your student is planning to take the ISEE soon, look into the Sacramento ISEE preparation options provided by Varsity Tutors. We offer two- and four-week classes, private tutoring, or a combination of both-whichever best meets your child's needs. Lessons take place live online, so your student has the benefit of being in a class or a one-to-one tutoring experience with the convenience of attending from wherever they need to be at the time.

The ISEE (Independent School Entrance Exam) is accepted widely to provide accurate and advanced information to guide admissions officials at private and independent schools. There are six different tests, separated by age range, and they assess reading, writing, and math skills. Doing well on the ISEE is not a guarantee that your student will be accepted at the school of their choice, but it can definitely help.

What can Sacramento ISEE prep cover?

As mentioned, the ISEE covers the core academic skills all students must learn. The Upper, Middle, and Lower Level ISEE exams follow a similar format, so let's take a look at them first.

Each of the three tests has a Verbal Reasoning section with 40 questions, and they're allowed 20 minutes to finish them. English skills are tested using questions with synonyms and sentence completion, vocabulary and parts of speech, and discerning the meaning of words using various Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Each level is targeted for the student's particular age and grade level.

Each of the three levels also has a Reading Comprehension section with 36 questions that must be finished in 35 minutes. The focus of this section is understanding what is read. This includes being able to determine the main idea and purpose of a piece, find relevant supporting data and analyze its effectiveness, infer information that's not explicitly stated in the piece, and use the information in a passage to answer questions about the subject.

There are two math sections in each level of test, the Quantitative Reasoning and the Math Achievement sections. The Quantitative Reasoning section asks 37 questions to be answered in 35 minutes and the Math Achievement section has 47 questions and allows 40 minutes to complete them. The difference between the sections is that the Math Achievement section focuses on math operation skills, or doing math problems and solving equations. An example is finding mean, median, and mode in a range. The Quantitative Reasoning section focuses more on mathematical thinking. This can involve word problems, where your student is asked to figure out what mathematical operations need to be used to solve a problem.

Finally, there is the Essay, which involves students responding to a prompt on a topic that's interesting to most students at their grade level. They have 30 minutes to read the prompt, organize their ideas, and write their response using proper English conventions like grammar and punctuation. The piece is read by the schools they apply to in order to get an idea of their personality and creativity in addition to their general written skills.

The Primary Level ISEE is broken into Primary 2, 3, and 4. The numbers match the grade the student is taking the test to enter. These three are similar in the same way the Lower, Middle, and Upper Level ISEE tests are in that they test the same subjects at the student's current grade level. The only difference is the Primary 2 has a short Audio Comprehension section with 6 questions to answer in 7 minutes. Questions are based on fiction and nonfiction passages the students listen to.

Each of the three Primary Level tests includes multiple-choice Reading and Math sections. For reading, they're tested on grade-appropriate comprehension and vocabulary. In math, they're tested in grade-appropriate mathematical capabilities, such as adding and subtracting and other basic math skills.

Students are also asked to create a Writing Sample, which is a response to a visual prompt. Their response is to tell a story about the picture using their best spelling and grammar. At the Primary Level, the Writing Sample is not scored but is still considered to get a feel for a student's creativity, personality, and writing ability.

These are the things your student can expect to review whether they're studying in a Sacramento ISEE prep course or in private tutoring. You can rely on their instructor or tutor to provide comprehensive coverage of all material that's to be tested, as well as other skills important when taking standardized tests, such as time management and reading questions carefully.

How do I decide which Sacramento ISEE prep option to choose for my student?

A few things can determine whether a private tutoring situation or an ISEE prep class is the best choice for your child. First is the one they want. Often, students have a general idea of what will work best for them. But even if they show a clear preference, it may be wise to consider these factors before making a final decision.

Almost all students are better at either English and reading type skills or mathematical type skills. Unless they are markedly different, however, they could receive effective instruction in either an ISEE tutoring or virtual classroom experience. If they tend to struggle a great deal in one area and need no study help in the other, private tutoring may be the way to go. There is much more flexibility and opportunity to customize Sacramento ISEE prep tutoring sessions to revolve around exactly what your child needs. If they get energy from working with peers, but do struggle in one area more than the others, you could enroll them in a prep class and also set them up with occasional or regular ISEE tutoring sessions to provide the most complete ISEE preparation experience.

How do I get my student signed up for one of these Sacramento ISEE prep options?

As convenient as we make the actual preparation scenarios, Varsity Tutors also strives to make signing up easy and convenient. Simply contact us and provide a bit of information about your child's needs, and our educational advisors will enroll them in a Sacramento ISEE prep class or sign them up to start meeting with a Sacramento ISEE tutor as soon as possible.