<p>My son took the ISEE ERB in Feb. 2014 for entrance into an independent 6th grade. I don't know much about these things and as far as I was concerned, it was just another step in the admissions process. We woke up the morning of the test, handed him a pencil and a lunch and said: "See you in a couple of hours." He asked: "Why do I need a pencil, I thought this was a field trip?" I didn't want to stress him and get him tied up in knots over a 2-hour test, so I hadn't told him. When we got his results, we were stumped. He got a 98% on Verbal and a 49% on the Math portion. He usually scores very high on standardized tests, so we were shocked to see such a low math score. According to what is written on the ISEE Individual Student Report, it says the Percentile Ranks and Stanines are derived from norms for applicants to independent schools. Is this an easier version - and hence the 98% verbal, or a more difficult version and hence the 49% Math score? Then I find out that people actually invest in prep courses or something ... whaaaa? If anyone has any input as to how there is such a variance and whether this is a really bad thing for him in terms of the math, I would be grateful. My two children take standardized tests in their Catholic school all the time and are always at 98 or 99% on the Terra Nova, it didn't occur to me that people would try to give their kids a leg up by having them actually be prepped for these tests ... if so, does the test score even reflect their actual general knowledge, or do these people not care, and only care about the result?</p>
<p>I don’t know about the ISEE, but I was told by an admissions officer at an elite boarding school that the upper percentiles on the Math tests are dominated by international students. At the time, my son’s verbal scores were in the 95+ percentile, and his Math was 55th percentile. The officer said that was typical for American public school students.
p.s. this probably should be moved to the “Pre-College” section.</p>