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Free ISEE Upper Level Practice Test: 10 Questions

The Upper Level ISEE is for students applying to grades 9 through 12 at independent schools. These ten questions span all four multiple-choice sections and come from our full-length Upper Level exams.

Take these as an interactive quiz The full ISEE Upper Level exams

Read this, then answer the questions about it.

For most of human history, clouds had no names. They were described as one might describe a mood (heavy, threatening, fine) and every description belonged to the person who gave it. A shepherd in Yorkshire and a sailor off Lisbon could watch the same weather arrive and have no words in common for it.

In 1802 a London pharmacist named Luke Howard proposed a fix. Clouds, he argued, were not shapeless. They came in a small number of forms, and those forms could be named in Latin so that anyone, anywhere, would mean the same thing: cirrus for the wispy ones high up, cumulus for the heaped ones, stratus for the flat layers. What made the system work was not the names themselves but a claim buried inside them, that a cloud's shape is produced by what the air is doing, and that a shape seen in England is produced by the same physics as the identical shape seen in Portugal.

Howard's contemporaries found this unlikely. Clouds were the very image of impermanence; naming them seemed like naming waves. One critic complained that the scheme gave a false solidity to something that changed while you looked at it. The objection was fair and beside the point. Howard was not claiming a cloud would keep its shape. He was claiming that the shapes themselves were finite, and that a cloud passing from one form to another was doing something regular enough to be described.

The test came from an unexpected direction. Painters and poets took up the names almost immediately, Goethe wrote verses on them, and John Constable filled notebooks with dated, timed cloud studies annotated in Howard's terms. Constable was not doing science, but his notebooks did something science needed: they showed that two people looking at different skies on different days could use the same word and be understood.

Within thirty years the names were in textbooks. Within a century they were the backbone of the international weather service, which could not have existed at all without a vocabulary that survived translation. Howard had not discovered a new fact about the atmosphere. He had done something less glamorous and more useful: he had made it possible for observations made by strangers to be added together.

Question 1

The passage is primarily concerned with
  1. A. the scientific errors in Luke Howard's classification of clouds
  2. B. how a shared vocabulary made scattered observations useful
  3. C. the influence of Howard's names on nineteenth-century painting
  4. D. the difficulty of predicting weather before the twentieth century
Show the answer

The answer is B. How a shared vocabulary made scattered observations useful is right. The closing sentence states it directly: Howard made it possible for observations by strangers to be added together.

  • A is wrong: Scientific errors misreads the passage — the objection raised against Howard is described as fair but beside the point, and no error of his is identified.
  • C is wrong: Influence on painting is one paragraph used as evidence, not the subject of the whole passage.
  • D is wrong: Predicting weather appears only in the final paragraph, and the passage is about naming rather than forecasting.

Question 2

According to the passage, before Howard's system, descriptions of clouds
  1. A. were recorded in Latin by the specialists
  2. B. belonged only to the person who gave them
  3. C. were forbidden in scientific writing
  4. D. differed a good deal between painters and sailors
Show the answer

The answer is B. Belonged only to the person who gave them is right. The first paragraph says exactly this, and gives the shepherd and the sailor as the example.

  • A is wrong: Recorded in Latin reverses the passage: Latin was Howard's innovation, not what came before.
  • C is wrong: Forbidden in scientific writing is never suggested anywhere in the passage.
  • D is wrong: Differed between painters and sailors borrows two groups the passage does mention, but it contrasts a shepherd with a sailor, and the point is about individuals rather than professions.

Question 3

The passage suggests that the critic who objected to Howard's scheme
  1. A. misunderstood what Howard was claiming
  2. B. was jealous
  3. C. later changed his position
  4. D. had not read Howard's work
Show the answer

The answer is A. Misunderstood what Howard was claiming is right. The passage calls the objection fair but beside the point, then explains that Howard never claimed a cloud would keep its shape.

  • B is wrong: Jealousy introduces a motive the passage does not mention.
  • C is wrong: Later changed his position is not stated, and the passage moves on to Goethe and Constable instead.
  • D is wrong: Had not read Howard's work is never implied; the critic engages with the scheme's content.

Question 4

PRUDENT
  1. A. wealthy
  2. B. timid
  3. C. careful
  4. D. stubborn
Show the answer

The answer is C. Careful is right. Prudent describes someone who thinks ahead and avoids needless risk.

  • A is wrong: Wealthy confuses prudent with the money a prudent person may end up with. The word describes judgment, not means.
  • B is wrong: Timid is fear of acting at all. A prudent person does act — after weighing the risk.
  • D is wrong: Stubborn is refusing to change course. Prudence often means changing course when the evidence does.

Question 5

ABRIDGE
  1. A. correct
  2. B. connect
  3. C. strengthen
  4. D. shorten
Show the answer

The answer is D. Shorten is right. To abridge a text is to cut it down while keeping its sense.

  • A is wrong: Correct describes fixing errors. An abridgement can be shortened without a single error being touched.
  • B is wrong: Connect comes from hearing bridge inside the word. The root is unrelated — abridge is about cutting, not joining.
  • C is wrong: Strengthen reverses it. An abridged version has less in it, not more.

Question 6

A recipe uses 3 cups of flour for every 2 cups of sugar. If a baker uses 12 cups of flour, how many cups of sugar are needed?
  1. A. 8
  2. B. 7
  3. C. 6
  4. D. 9
Show the answer

The answer is A. 8 is right. 12 cups of flour is 4 times the 3 in the ratio, so the sugar is 4 times 2, which is 8.

  • B is wrong: 7 comes from adding 4 to the original 3 rather than multiplying.
  • C is wrong: 6 halves the flour instead of applying the ratio. That would be right only if the recipe were 2 parts flour to 1 part sugar.
  • D is wrong: 9 applies the multiplier to the wrong number, tripling 3 instead of quadrupling 2.

Question 7

A jacket priced at $80 is marked down 25%, and the sale price is then reduced by another 10%. What is the final price?
  1. A. $54.00
  2. B. $52.00
  3. C. $56.00
  4. D. $60.00
Show the answer

The answer is A. $54.00 is right. 25% off 80 leaves 60; 10% off 60 leaves 54.

  • B is wrong: $52.00 adds the two discounts to 35% and takes that off 80 in one step. Successive discounts do not add, because the second applies to the reduced price.
  • C is wrong: $56.00 takes 30% off 80, which is neither discount nor their combination.
  • D is wrong: $60.00 stops after the first markdown and never applies the second.

Question 8

What is the value of 8 + 3 x (10 - 6)?
  1. A. 20
  2. B. 26
  3. C. 44
  4. D. 48
Show the answer

The answer is A. 20 is right. Work inside the parentheses first: 10 - 6 = 4. Then 3 x 4 = 12, and 8 + 12 = 20.

  • B is wrong: 26 multiplies 3 by 6 before subtracting, ignoring the parentheses.
  • C is wrong: 44 adds 8 and 3 first, then multiplies 11 by 4. Multiplication comes before addition.
  • D is wrong: 48 multiplies by the 4 twice: 3 x 4 = 12, then 12 x 4 = 48. The parentheses give 4, and it is used once - 3 x 4 = 12 - then 8 is added.

Question 9

What is 5/6 - 1/4?
  1. A. 4/24
  2. B. 7/12
  3. C. 4/10
  4. D. 1/2
Show the answer

The answer is B. 7/12 is right. Using twelfths, 5/6 = 10/12 and 1/4 = 3/12, so the difference is 7/12.

  • A is wrong: 4/24 subtracts the numerators and multiplies the denominators. Fractions are not subtracted that way.
  • C is wrong: 4/10 subtracts the numerators but adds the denominators. The denominators must be made the same first, and then only the numerators are subtracted.
  • D is wrong: 1/2 comes from rounding both fractions before subtracting.

Question 10

What is 15% of 240?
  1. A. 16
  2. B. 36
  3. C. 24
  4. D. 48
Show the answer

The answer is B. 36 is right. 10% of 240 is 24, and 5% is 12, so 15% is 36.

  • A is wrong: 16 divides 240 by 15 instead of taking 15 percent of it.
  • C is wrong: 24 is 10% of 240 and stops there.
  • D is wrong: 48 is 20% of 240.
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