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The Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE) is the latest thing on every New York parent’s mind. What does it take in order to get your child into one of the best schools in the city? Well, the test is not easy. And its makers designed it to represent a student’s cumulative knowledge on a topic. That makes it difficult to coach for in the weeks leading up to test time. But, like any standardized exam, the right prep and a test taking training can most certainly lead to a higher ISEE score for your child. Here are few tips to help your child hit the ground running.
Don’t Skip Questions
You may recall from years ago when you had to take the SAT for college. Your test prep tutor probably told you that if you have a certain level of doubt about a question, or if you’re concerned that answering it correctly may occupy too much of your allotted time, that you should skip it. That’s because in the SAT, a skipped answer results in nothing, whereas an incorrect answer means negative points.
That is not the case for the ISEE, which is why it’s in your child’s best interest to answer every question to the best of his or her ability. Even if your child has no clue the answer, it is in his or her best interest to guess than to leave it blank. If the clock starts winding down, then it would be wise to get as many answers down as possible before closing the book. After all, with four options per question, guessing has a 25% chance of being correct.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up
It’s important that your child goes into this exam with his or her chin up high, and that your child recognizes that it is very unlikely that he or she will get every question right. Basically, the test is very long, with lots of reading, because its maker do not expect test takers to have the reading, nor the test taking abilities to ace it. School exams are supposed to test an individual on a his or her knowledge of a section of a curriculum that the teacher had taught to him or her over the past several weeks to months.
The ISEE is supposed to give a snapshot of what the student has learned over a cumulative period of time of several years. So if your child gets a few, or many questions wrong, understand that this is not the end of the world. There’s a good chance that your child is in the same ballpark as his or her peers.
Find The Answers Rather Than Letting Them Come To You
After reading the question, a good strategy is to ponder what the answer is before looking at the options. If you wait for the choices to reveal the answer to you before you’d thought critically about it then you’re more likely to get tripped up over the answer. That’s because the creators of the test designed it to fool students who do not have a full grasp on what they are reading. But if they can develop their critical thinking skills, finding the right answer will be far easier.
To learn more about how Big Apple Tutoring’s private tutoring NYC services can help increase your child’s ISEE score, give us a call at 212-479-0830.
