ISEE Quantitative Reasoning:
what Column A really asks

Quantitative Reasoning is the ISEE section most often prepared for wrongly, because families treat it as a second mathematics paper. It is not. It asks whether you can see a relationship without doing the arithmetic.

Two different sections wearing one name

At Middle and Upper Level, 17 of the 37 questions are quantitative comparison: a quantity in Column A, a quantity in Column B, and four fixed choices — A is greater, B is greater, they are equal, or it cannot be determined. At Lower Level there are none. Zero of the 78 Lower Level items in our bank mention Column A, because the real Lower Level does not use the format.

Why students lose marks on it

Almost never because the arithmetic defeats them. They compute both columns in full, which takes four times as long as the question was designed to take, and then run out of clock in the back half of the section. The intended move is to strip anything the two columns share and compare what is left.

The fourth option is a real answer

"It cannot be determined" is correct often enough to matter, and students who have decided it is a trick option have thrown away a quarter of their guessing odds before they start. If a variable could be negative, or zero, or a fraction, test those cases before deciding one column always wins.

The word problems

The rest of the section is conventional: rates, averages, probability, reading a chart. At Lower Level that is the whole section, which makes Lower Level Quantitative Reasoning much closer to Mathematics Achievement than the two names suggest.

Where to practice it

Our ISEE practice exams cover the four scored sections at all three levels, two forms each, with no questions shared between the forms. Every wrong option carries an explanation of why a student would have picked it. The real ISEE also opens with an unscored essay that is sent to schools; we do not set one, so that part needs practicing elsewhere.