Here are a couple of examples of problems you might see in the lower level ISEE along with their solutions.
VERBAL
IMPOVERISHED
(A) miniature
(b) poor
(C) hard
(D) ambitious
This synonym problem asks students to identify which answer choice means more of the same thing as the given word. This type of problem is mainly a vocabulary test.
If a student knows the definition of impoverished, then the problem is quite simple. Impoverished means poor, which is answer option (B). However, if the student does not know the definition, then the problem becomes much more difficult. We can see that the word impoverished contains “pover”, which is very similar to the word “poverty”. Lo and behold, both words come from the Latin word “pauper”, which means poor (the English word “pauper” means someone who is poor). Knowing the definition of the word poverty (or even destitute, possibly) can help you discover the meaning of the word “impoverished.” “Im-” is a prefix that means the same as “in-“, which means “in”. Therefore, “impoverished” can be considered as “in a state of poverty”.
MATH
Emily has $100.00. Emily buys as many books as she can for $7.00 each. How much money does Emily have left after buying the books?
This question is a restated division problem and can be translated to “what is the remainder when Emily divides $7 into $100?” How do we know this? The key word in this problem is “each”. We know that each book costs $7.00, so if we buy three books, we multiply $7.00 by three to find the total price; if we buy four books, we multiply $7.00 by four to find the total price; etc. Emily has a limit of $100.00, so we need to find what number we multiply $7.00 by to get to $100.00. In other words,
$7.00 times what number of books equals $100.00?
7x = 100 (x is a variable that represents the number of books)
To solve this algebra equation, we divide both sides by 7 to isolate the variable, and we see that
x = 100/7
When 100 is divided by 7, the quotient is 14 and the remainder is 2. So Emily will spend $98.00 ($7.00 times 14) and have $2.00 left after she buys the books.