If your family lives on the Upper East Side, the ISEE is probably already on your radar. The Independent School Entrance Examination is the admissions test used by many of New York City’s most selective schools, including Trinity School, Horace Mann, and Riverdale Country School. For Manhattan families navigating private school admissions, strong ISEE scores are one of the most important pieces of the application, right alongside grades, interviews, and the writing sample that goes to admissions offices.
Kelly Clement, the tutor behind MindMine Education, brings extensive experience helping students prepare for the ISEE exam at every grade level, from the Primary Level through the Upper Level ISEE. Her comprehensive approach treats test preparation like getting good at a game: shift habits, build skills, develop a winning mindset.
Sessions do more than drill practice problems. Students build vocabulary, strengthen reading comprehension, and learn how each part of the test works, from verbal reasoning to the quantitative reasoning section to mathematics achievement. They practice unfamiliar question types, use context clues to work through tough vocabulary words, and learn to eliminate answer choices efficiently. And because the ISEE does not deduct points for wrong answers, students learn when a smart guess beats a blank.
A common mistake in ISEE preparation is treating every section the same way. The math sections reward different strategies than reading comprehension, and the mandatory essay is unscored but still lands on the desk of every admissions office your child applies to. Kelly tailors every tutoring session to how your child actually learns, whether they are a seventh grader eyeing an elite private middle school or heading into high school applications.
All tutoring is 1:1 and online, which works beautifully for busy families on the Upper East Side, from Yorkville to Carnegie Hill, the Upper West Side, Park Slope, and across New York City.
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The best way to walk into test day feeling calm is to make the real test feel familiar. That is why practice tests are at the heart of Kelly’s method. Students take full-length practice tests under realistic conditions, then review their results together with clear answer explanations, so every wrong answer becomes a lesson instead of a mystery.
ISEE score reports can be confusing for parents. The Educational Records Bureau reports results as scaled scores, percentile ranks, and stanine scores, and what counts as “strong scores” depends entirely on the schools on your list. Kelly helps families understand what their student’s scores actually mean, how top schools read them, and where focused practice will move the needle most before the next testing window.
Test prep also means logistics. Kelly helps families plan around popular test dates in the fall admissions season, understand testing windows and retake rules, and navigate accommodations such as extended time when applicable.
Families who want structured practice at home can also pick up MindMine’s own resources, including 16 Timed Sets for the Lower Level ISEE and Watermelon Math, in the shop.
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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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