SEE Results
Background
We have two children, a girl who is currently a sophomore and a boy just beginning his freshman year.
They are both now attending one of the most prestigious private schools in California. Our oldest has always been a very serious and dedicated student with a solid academic background. Our son, well, not so much. He is a bright boy, with an artistic nature, but he prefers fun and relaxation to work and study. So we have two different students, two different personalities, and two different academic profiles.
We were confident that our daughter had what is took to move from public middle school to this incredible independent school, but with the fierce competition for just a few seats, you never know. We had several inside connections and this I think was valuable, though it does not play a major role in the decision. Our daughter played 2 sports so we had befriended two of the coaches (We got better at this when it was time for my son to apply). We also befriended a staffer in the admissions office. Again, this was valuable, but not enough to sway the decision.
The most valuable advice that we received from all 3 of our inside contacts was to make sure you’re your 
child “Scores high on the ISEE.” Each one said that it would make their job of recommending the student so much easier if they scored 8’s and 9’s on the ISEE. So that was our mission. Get our kids prepped and ready to score high on the ISEE.
For our oldest, we bought 2 ISEE test prep books, hired a tutor, and bought 2 products that we found online (More about those later). The books were about $40 and the information that we purchased online was about $90. The most reasonable tutoring company that we could find charged $65 per hour and their sessions were 1 ½ hours, so $97.50 per session. We order six lessons, so the total cost of ISEE test prep for my daughter was about $725. Expensive, we thought, but we really wanted her to get into this school. We later found out that other students had been tutored for months and months and spent thousands of dollars for ISEE test prep.
My son’s road to prestigious private school was different. After spending 25k for my daughters 1st year in school, we honestly could not afford and extra $600, so we asked around for less expensive options. We contacted a professional Private School admission coach who recommended an online program at IntensiveTestPrep.com. She is also a private ISEE tutor ($125 hour) and said that she had recommended it to many families in addition to, and sometimes in lieu of her private tutoring services. We went to the website and saw all that they offered for only $99 and thought that this may just be perfect for our son.
Bennie, our son, is a visual learner, and prefers to work and play on the computer, rather than read a book or use a workbook. So the program at IntensiveTestPrep.com was perfect for him. There are a lot of video tutoring sessions that he spent dozens of hours watching several times. He also really enjoyed doing the online practice questions that were moderated and graded. So, after he completed a question, he could hear an explanation and review the correct answer and how to get it. He did these over and over until he got everyone of the right. We never had to tell his to study, or practice, he would just go to the computer and login on his own.
Since we still had the test prep books from my daughter, he confidently took the sample tests in the test prep books and he did very well on those tests as well. When it was time for him to take his exam, he walked in smiling and walked out smiling. He did far better than we expected, and as a result, we now have two kids in the most prestigious school in our area.
So the resources that were successful for us and that we highly recommend are:
My son used:
IntensiveTestPrep.com online ISEE test prep and interactive practice tests – was only $99. My son loved this program and he was on it all the time. He did all the practice questions several times until he could get 100% on all the lessons. He watched the videos instead of television and the program easily kept his attention. I think there are about 400 or 500 test prep questions and videos on every subject. He did a lot better than we expected on the ISEE test and we were elated (and a little surprised) that he got into the same prestigious school as his brainy sister. So we were quite pleased with ISEE Test course by IntensiveTestPrep.com
My daughter used:
Princeton Review ISEE Prep Book
A local tutoring company
Our Daughter excelled on the ISEE test, but we wish we would have know about IntensiveTestPrep.com a year earlier; she may have gotten a perfect score. Anyway, she only missed a few questions. We got some valuable tips from Heather Spiegel, the tutor on Intensivetestprep.com that I am sure raised her score some. The flashcards we kept in the car and she studied vocabulary and math from the flashcards whenever we went anywhere. Often, she would ask me to define words while I was driving. This was a fun way for her to learn as it took the pressure off of her, and she got a kick out of it when I struggled with a work. She used the test prep books regularly, though I could not get my son to open them when I wasn’t there standing over him.