<p>I love the ISEE and despise the SSAT. I honestly believe that the ISEE organization has as its objective to do a fair evaluation of the student’s abilities. The SSAT people, on the other hand . . . well, look at it this way, the more times a student retests, the more money they make. (And the more test prep materials they sell!) So, the more times a student has a bad SSAT result, and decides to take the test again, the better for SSAT! (ISEE, in contrast, only permits one test a year - so the result they get had better be accurate.)</p>
<p>Objective differences:</p>
<p>SSAT has analogies. ISEE has sentence completions.</p>
<p>Math - No trick questions on the ISEE. Wish I could say the same for the SSAT.</p>
<p>In doing practice tests at home, my son always scored higher on the ISEE tests. And when we looked at the SSAT math questions that he got wrong, it was often a question of having misunderstood the question. (He also ended up scoring significantly higher on the actual test.)</p>
<p>So, in my opinion, for the kid who tends to get nervous on tests and perhaps not focus as well, the ISEE provides a more accurate reading of the kid’s actual math ability. I think it tends, as much as possible, to remove test anxiety from the equation.</p>