After a second, 5 to 10-minute break, the last section of the ISEE is the personal Essay. Students are presented with 1 prompt and are given 30 minutes to organize their thoughts and write them out. The prompt is usually personal in nature meaning that students will not be required, for example, to have outside knowledge of current events or facts and figures. The essay is not scored by the ERB. Instead, schools receive a copy of the student’s maximum 2-page essay and are allowed to draw their own conclusions. Students should strive to logically and concisely address the given prompt. Schools will primarily want to see how students express their ideas in writing under pressure and without the benefit of third party editing. Since it’s a personal essay, the schools also want to see if the student can understand how topics relate to them and how they’ve learned from their experiences. This translates well to how they’ll perform in humanities courses and on science papers.