ISEE Reading Comprehension:
five or six passages

Reading Comprehension is the third section, sat after an hour of testing, and fatigue does more damage here than difficulty does.

The shape of it

Lower Level is 5 passages carrying 25 questions in 25 minutes. Middle and Upper are 6 passages carrying 36 questions in 35 minutes. Either way a passage runs a few hundred words and brings five or six questions with it, so the reading itself is a small part of the time.

What the questions ask for

Main idea, supporting detail, vocabulary in context, the author's tone, and what can be inferred without being stated. The inference questions are where marks go, and they go because students choose an answer that is true about the world instead of one the passage supports. Every correct answer here can be pointed at in the text.

Read the passage first

The advice to skim the questions before the passage comes from other exams and does not transfer well to a passage this short. Reading it once, properly, then answering from memory and checking back is faster than five separate hunts through the same few paragraphs.

Subject matter

Passages are drawn from science, history, biography and the arts, and no outside knowledge is needed for any of them. A student who knows the topic should be more careful, not less: prior knowledge is the commonest route to an answer that is correct in general and wrong here.

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.