Most families in Hampstead preparing for the Independent School Entrance Examination understand that practice matters. What gets less attention is what happens after a practice test is finished. A student takes a full-length practice test, a parent checks the score, the number goes in a spreadsheet, and everyone moves on to the next one. The score gets recorded and the information inside it gets thrown away.
That is the single biggest waste in ISEE preparation, and it is easy to fix. A completed practice test contains a detailed account of how a student thinks under pressure. Which types of questions they rush. Where they second-guess a correct answer into a wrong one. Whether they lost points at the start of a section or the end. None of that appears in the score.
Not all wrong answers are the same, and treating them as one category is a common mistake. A student who has never been taught a concept needs teaching. A student who knows it but misread the question needs slower reading. A student who knew it perfectly well and ran out of time needs pacing work, not more content. Three identical marks on a score report, three completely different problems.
This is well established in the wider learning research. Edutopia’s summary of the evidence on how mistakes help students learn makes the point that errors improve retention specifically when feedback follows them, and that a near miss teaches more than a wild guess. Without the feedback step, the mistake is just a mistake.
So sessions spend real time on review. Kelly Clement of MindMine Education works through answer explanations with students rather than handing them over, which sounds like a small distinction and is not. A student who explains why they picked the wrong answer choice remembers the correction. A student who reads an explanation nods and forgets it by Thursday.
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Once the pattern is clear, preparation gets much more efficient. A student who loses most of their points to pacing in the verbal sections does not need a prep book. They need to practice at speed. A student whose reading comprehension errors cluster on main ideas rather than detail questions needs a different kind of work than one with the reverse pattern. Naming the problem precisely is most of the solution.
Kelly builds the plan around whatever the review actually found, across verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, reading comprehension, and mathematics achievement. The work varies by test level. Younger students sitting the ISEE Primary or Lower Level need shorter sessions and more of them. Students facing Upper Level ISEE exams can handle longer stretches and more independent practice problems between sessions. Middle Level sits somewhere in between, and where exactly depends on the student rather than the label.
Two things tend to come up regardless of level. Time management is the first, and full-length practice tests are the only way to build the test-taking stamina it depends on. Problem-solving skills are the second: the ISEE rewards students who can find a route through an unfamiliar problem rather than recall a memorized procedure, which is a habit that develops with practice and cannot be crammed.
Sessions run 1:1 and online, which suits Hampstead families well. There is no journey involved, evenings and weekends both work, and the choice of tutor is not limited to who happens to be nearby. Group ISEE prep courses, on-site group courses, and self-paced options all have their place for a student who mainly needs structure, but the review process described above is difficult to do well in a room with fifteen other students, because the whole point is that each student’s mistakes are their own.
Additional resources for practice between sessions, including 16 Timed Sets for the Lower Level ISEE and Watermelon Math, are in the shop.
West Hampstead and Hampstead are neighbors but not the same place. If you are down the hill, there is a separate page for West Hampstead ISEE test prep. Families to the south can also read about Swiss Cottage ISEE test prep.
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My daughter thoroughly enjoyed Kelly’s rapport and style. The idea of a “tutoring session” sometimes is not very appealing to an adolescent. However my daughter always ended her sessions feeling relieved and positive about her progress”.
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