ISEE tutoring for NYC independent school admissions.

The Test

What does the ISEE test?

The Independent School Entrance Exam is used by most secular private schools and some religious schools in New York for admission to grades 2 through 12. It has four levels, and beyond Primary, each has five sections.

Two sections have the word “Reasoning” in the name. There’s a reason for that. The ISEE is not a test of what a child has been taught. It is a test of how a child thinks.

• Quantitative Reasoning is where families are most often caught off guard. Many of the word problems need little or no calculation. Quantitative Comparisons, at the Middle and Upper Levels, ask whether one quantity is greater, equal, or impossible to determine.
• Mathematics Achievement is the curriculum section, and it reaches above grade level on purpose. A sixth grader on the Middle Level sees seventh- and eighth-grade content. An eighth grader on the Upper Level sees material from courses they have not taken. No calculator on either math section.
• Verbal Reasoning is synonyms and sentence completions, and the vocabulary is advanced. This is the part that takes months.
• Reading Comprehension spans fiction, history, science, and contemporary nonfiction, with inference questions under time pressure.
• The essay is unscored but goes to every school, and admissions readers do look at it.

Scores are reported as percentiles and stanines from 1 to 9, compared with students in the same grade who took the test over the past three years. The most selective schools in the city do not require all 9s, whatever the playground says. Our guide to the ISEE for NYC families explains how to read a score report.

Why It’s Hard

Why do strong students struggle on the ISEE?

Every fall we get a version of the same call. A parent has just watched their child sit down with a practice test and is alarmed. “This is harder than anything she’s doing in school. Is something wrong?” Nothing is wrong. The test is doing what it was designed to do.

Three things catch NYC families off guard:

• CTP scores don’t predict ISEE scores. Many independent schools give the CTP every year, and it comes from ERB, the same organization that makes the ISEE. But the CTP measures achievement against a curriculum, and the ISEE measures reasoning against other applicants. A 99th-percentile CTP student can find Quantitative Reasoning disorienting on first contact.
• Math Achievement and Quantitative Reasoning are two different problems. One asks for content the student hasn’t covered yet. The other asks the student to think in ways school math rarely demands. Good prep treats them separately.
• Vocabulary takes months. The students who do best on Verbal Reasoning have been reading broadly and collecting words since spring. A word list the week before does not work.

Our Approach

How we prepare students for the ISEE

1. A diagnostic under ISEE conditions. Not a CTP score, not a report card. It is the only baseline worth trusting, and it shows where the reasoning gaps and the content gaps are.
2. Content ahead of schedule. We teach the seventh- and eighth-grade math a sixth grader needs for the Middle Level, and the algebra and geometry an eighth grader needs for the Upper Level, in a way a child that age can hold onto.
3. Vocabulary that starts early. Our free ISEE vocabulary lists by level and our ISEE vocabulary workbooks are built for the months before formal prep begins.
4. Strategy matched to age. A ten-year-old and a fourteen-year-old need different pacing, different session lengths, and different ways of handling a hard question. Our tutors have taught every level and know the difference.
5. Practice in the right format. The ISEE is offered on paper at test centers, digitally at test centers, and digitally at home. A student who prepared on paper and meets the digital interface for the first time on test day is at an unnecessary disadvantage.
6. Test-date planning. Students may take the ISEE once per season, up to three times a cycle: fall (August to November), winter (December to March), and spring/summer. Registration opens August 1 and preferred dates fill fast. Most NYC applicants test once in the fall by November 30 and once in early winter. We help families decide, including whether in-school testing dates fit the student’s readiness.
7. Homework families can see. Assignments on a calendar and a written recap after every session in the KFT portal.
8. Guidance through the wider process when needed. Many of our families work with an admissions consultant. We coordinate with them, and we can help with the broader admissions timeline when there isn’t one.

Timing

When should a student start ISEE prep?

Ideally, in the spring or early summer before the admissions cycle begins. That leaves time to learn above-grade-level math without cramming, build vocabulary gradually, and prepare for a fall test with a winter retake still available.

We have also prepared students in four weeks when that was the time available. It can work, especially at the Lower Level, but it is not what we recommend, and the students who do best on the ISEE are the ones who had a runway. The ISEE is hard at every level, and that is also why the work pays off. Students who go through it tend to arrive at their new school less shocked by hard and better at managing their own learning. Many of them come back to us two years later for the SAT.

Results

Where our ISEE students have been admitted

For the 2026 to 2027 school year, KFT students were admitted to Horace Mann, Spence, Friends Seminary, Grace Church, Packer Collegiate, Riverdale, Berkeley Carroll, Calhoun, Fieldston, Léman, Trinity, Birch Wathen Lenox, Brearley, Collegiate, Columbia Grammar, Dalton, Dwight, Nightingale-Bamford, Rye Country Day, and Trevor Day, along with Groton, Andover, and Exeter. Earlier years are on our results page.

The Admissions Plan, an independent school admissions consultancy in the city, has referred families to us for ISEE and SSAT prep for years. If your family is weighing the SSAT instead, or as well, see our SSAT tutoring page.