ISEE Practice: Free Practice Questions and a Free Trial Test

What free practice is available

This section answers what a family can use today without paying. There are two parts: six short lessons with one interactive question each, and a free trial account with a full-length practice test. Each lesson teaches a method in three steps, then asks the student to answer one original question and shows why every answer choice is right or wrong.

The lessons below are written at the Middle Level, which serves applicants to grades 7–8. The reasoning behind each skill carries to neighboring levels, and the sections pages show how the sections differ in length and difficulty from the Lower Level to the Upper Level.

Lesson	Section	Skill it builds	Written for
Synonyms	Verbal Reasoning	Choosing the closest meaning by defining the word first	Middle Level; section applies at Lower, Middle and Upper
Sentence completion	Verbal Reasoning	Predicting the missing word from connectors and context	Middle Level; section applies at Lower, Middle and Upper
Main idea	Reading Comprehension	Telling the main idea from details and from answers that are too broad or too narrow	Middle Level; skill applies at Lower, Middle and Upper
Inference	Reading Comprehension	Choosing the smallest conclusion that the passage supports	Middle Level; skill applies at Lower, Middle and Upper
Ratios and percentages	Mathematics Achievement	Moving between ratios, fractions and percentages, and solving one problem two ways	Middle Level
Math vocabulary	Mathematics Achievement	Reading the language of word problems, such as “fewer than” and “altogether”	Middle Level; wording also appears at the Lower Level

Essay and Quantitative Reasoning have their own pages for now: the essay page and the Quantitative Reasoning page each include original examples and a method for practice.

The free trial account

This section answers how a family can try a full-length practice test at no charge. The trial account is set up for the ISEE level that matches the grade the student is applying to enter, and it carries no purchase obligation. The steps are the same for every family.

1. Submit the trial form with the grade the student is applying to and the email that should receive the account.
2. An advisor confirms the ISEE level for that grade and emails the trial account with login instructions within one business day.
3. The student completes one full-length practice test at that level; the system reports section scores and an error report by email.
4. The advisor follows up once with a short reading of the report and the next step, with no obligation.

Scores inside the trial are estimates produced by the practice system. They describe how the student performed on that test, and they are not ISEE scores. The online learning system page describes what the paid plans add, and the trial page is where the request is made.

How to practice so that it works

This section answers how to turn a set of questions into progress. Most of the gain from practice comes from the review, not from the number of questions answered. The method below suits the lessons and any other practice a student does.

Step 1: Answer one question without a timer. The first goal is to find the reasoning, not to be fast. Students read the question, decide on an answer, and commit to it before looking at any explanation. Timing is added later, once the method is reliable.

Step 2: Read why every choice is right or wrong. A correct answer reached for the wrong reason will fail on the next question. Reading the reason for each wrong choice shows the kinds of traps the section uses, such as a choice that is too broad, an opposite, or a statement that is true but does not answer the question.

Step 3: Label each miss with its cause. Every wrong answer gets one of three labels: did not know, misread, or ran out of time. A “did not know” miss points to content, such as a word or a rule. A “misread” miss points to habits, such as skipping the word “not” or answering a different question. A “ran out of time” miss points to pace. Each label calls for a different fix, so a list of labels is more useful than a score.

Step 4: Repeat the weakest label. After a week, count the labels. If most misses are “misread”, slower reading of the question stem will help more than extra content review. If most are “did not know”, a vocabulary log and targeted review come first. The study plans page shows how these checks fit into a weekly schedule.

What these questions are, and what they are not

This section answers how far a family can rely on the practice material. The questions on ISEEPrep are original items written by the ISEEPrep teaching team. They illustrate the format and the reasoning that each section calls for, and they are not questions from the actual ISEE.

Short practice is also not a score. One question or one short set cannot be converted into an ISEE score or a percentile, because scoring depends on the full test and on the group of students at the same level. The results are best read as signals about skills: which kinds of questions a student answers reliably and which kinds need more work.

E3n (formerly ERB), the organization that administers the ISEE, provides its own practice materials, including the What to Expect resources. These are a separate kind of resource, and the study plans page explains how they can be used for a baseline before other practice begins. Families can check admission.org for the current versions. ISEEPrep has no formal relationship with E3n or with any school.

Where to go next

Students who are unsure where to begin can start with the lesson for the section that feels least secure, then request the trial account for a full-length baseline. Families still deciding on the level can use the levels overview, which explains how the application grade sets the level, and the sections overview for counts and timing by level. The online learning system is the next step for students who want regular timed practice with error analysis.