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.

You will have 30 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic printed on the other side of this page. Do not write on another topic. An essay on another topic is not acceptable. The essay is designed to give you an opportunity to show how well you can write. You should try to express your thoughts clearly. How well you write is much more important than how much you write, but you need to say enough for a reader to understand what you mean. You will probably want to write more than a short paragraph. You should also be aware that a copy of your essay will be sent to each school that will be receiving your test results.