ISEE practice, Grade 9

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Scholar Tests · Set 2

ISEE practice test, Grade 9

Name ______________________ Date ____________

Verbal Reasoning

Circle the letter of the best answer. About 5 minutes.

  1. 1.

    The coach praised the rookie's ______, noting that she never missed a single practice.

    Which word best completes the sentence?

    1. Alaziness
    2. Btalent
    3. Cdiligence
    4. Dheight
  2. 2.

    WANE

    Which word means most nearly the same as the word in capital letters?

    1. Adecrease
    2. Bshout
    3. Cpolish
    4. Dgrow
  3. 3.

    The reporter was praised for her ______, refusing to print any claim she could not ______.

    Which pair of words best completes the sentence?

    1. Acarelessness . . . exaggerate
    2. Baccuracy . . . invent
    3. Caccuracy . . . verify
    4. Dcarelessness . . . verify
  4. 4.

    TACIT

    Which word means most nearly the same as the word in capital letters?

    1. Anoisy
    2. Bancient
    3. Cunspoken
    4. Dtactful
  5. 5.

    FASTIDIOUS

    Which word means most nearly the same as the word in capital letters?

    1. Ahungry
    2. Bcareless
    3. Cfast
    4. Dfussy
  6. 6.

    Far from ______ the problem, the new law has actually ______ it.

    Which pair of words best completes the sentence?

    1. Asolving . . . eased
    2. Bsolving . . . worsened
    3. Cstudying . . . named
    4. Dcausing . . . fixed
  7. 7.

    The novel's ending is deliberately ______, leaving readers to decide what really happened.

    Which word best completes the sentence?

    1. Acheerful
    2. Bexplicit
    3. Cambiguous
    4. Dobvious
  8. 8.

    Although the hikers were ______ by the storm, they reached the summit the following day.

    Which word best completes the sentence?

    1. Ahelped
    2. Bhurried
    3. Cdelayed
    4. Dencouraged
  9. 9.

    EQUIVOCAL

    Which word means most nearly the same as the word in capital letters?

    1. Agenerous
    2. Bambiguous
    3. Cequal
    4. Danxious
  10. 10.

    PAUCITY

    Which word means most nearly the same as the word in capital letters?

    1. Apatience
    2. Bpause
    3. Cscarcity
    4. Dabundance

Quantitative Reasoning

Circle the letter of the best answer. About 9 minutes.

  1. 1.

    A deli sells coffee beans for $4 per pound. How much do 36 ounces of coffee beans cost? (1 pound = 16 ounces)

    1. A$9.00
    2. B$14.40
    3. C$144.00
    4. D$12.00
  2. 2.

    Is the relationship between x and y in the table proportional? Choose the answer with the correct reason.

    1. ANo, because the table does not show x = 0.
    2. BYes, because y is always more than x.
    3. CNo, because y ÷ x is not the same for every pair.
    4. DYes, because y ÷ x is 6 for every pair.
  3. 3.

    In which situation do the two changes combine to make 0?

    1. AA football team loses 30 yards, then loses 30 yards.
    2. BA shop owner puts $16 into a bank account, then takes $18 out of the account.
    3. CAn elevator goes down 4 floors, then goes up 4 floors.
    4. DThe temperature outside rises 7 degrees, then drops 3 degrees.
  4. 4.

    When a number is multiplied by 9, the answer is the same as multiplying that number by 5 and then adding 56. What is the number?

    1. A14
    2. B6
    3. C11
    4. D4
  5. 5.

    A right triangle has legs of length 7 and 24.
    Column A: The length of the hypotenuse
    Column B: 26

    Compare the quantity in Column A with the quantity in Column B.

    1. AColumn A is greater.
    2. BColumn B is greater.
    3. CThe two quantities are equal.
    4. DIt cannot be decided from the information given.
  6. 6.

    A bag holds 9 red marbles and 7 blue marbles. One marble is taken at random.
    Column A: The probability that the marble is red
    Column B: 2/5

    Compare the quantity in Column A with the quantity in Column B.

    1. AColumn A is greater.
    2. BColumn B is greater.
    3. CThe two quantities are equal.
    4. DIt cannot be decided from the information given.
  7. 7.

    Column A: |2 − 7|
    Column B: |2| − |7|

    Compare the quantity in Column A with the quantity in Column B.

    1. AColumn A is greater.
    2. BColumn B is greater.
    3. CThe two quantities are equal.
    4. DIt cannot be decided from the information given.
  8. 8.

    A right triangle has legs of length 7 and 24.
    Column A: The length of the hypotenuse
    Column B: 24

    Compare the quantity in Column A with the quantity in Column B.

    1. AColumn A is greater.
    2. BColumn B is greater.
    3. CThe two quantities are equal.
    4. DIt cannot be decided from the information given.
  9. 9.

    A tent costs $480. Its price is raised by 25% and the new price is then reduced by 20%. What is the final price?

    1. A$504
    2. B$485
    3. C$480
    4. D$600
  10. 10.

    A group of 238 people is made up of adults, teenagers and children. There are twice as many teenagers as adults. The number of children is 14 more than twice the number of teenagers. How many teenagers are there?

    1. A72
    2. B68
    3. C32
    4. D64

Reading Comprehension

Circle the letter of the best answer. About 10 minutes.

  1. Looking Back in Time

    On a clear night, the stars seem to hang in a single moment, as if the sky were a photograph taken just now. In fact, it is something stranger: a collage assembled from many different pasts. Every point of light you see left its source long ago, and each has been traveling for a different length of time.

    The reason is that light, though astonishingly fast, is not instantaneous. In empty space it covers about 186,000 miles every second. That speed is so great that for much of history people assumed light arrived the instant it was given off. One of the first serious challenges to that idea came in the 1670s, when the Danish astronomer Ole Romer noticed that the eclipses of Jupiter's moon Io came earlier or later than predicted, depending on whether Earth was moving toward Jupiter or away from it. The most reasonable explanation was that light needed extra time to cross the extra distance. Light, in other words, had a finite speed, and that speed could be measured.

    Once that was established, distance and time became two ways of describing the same thing. Sunlight takes a little more than eight minutes to reach Earth, so we always see the Sun as it was about eight minutes earlier. For greater distances, astronomers use the light-year, a unit that sounds like a measure of time but is actually a measure of length: the distance light travels in one year, nearly six trillion miles.

    Finding out how far away a particular star is proved far harder. The method that finally worked is called parallax. Hold a finger at arm's length and look at it first with one eye and then with the other; the finger appears to jump against the background. Astronomers do the same thing on an enormous scale, observing a nearby star from opposite sides of Earth's orbit, six months apart, and measuring how much it seems to shift against far more distant stars. The shift is tiny, much smaller than the unaided eye can detect, and it was not measured successfully until 1838, when Friedrich Bessel reported the distance to a star called 61 Cygni.

    The results were humbling. The nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is a little more than four light-years away, so its light is over four years old when it arrives. The Andromeda Galaxy, often described as the most distant object visible without a telescope, is about 2.5 million light-years away. The faint smudge it makes on a dark autumn night is light that set out before modern humans existed.

    This delay is not merely a curiosity; it is one of astronomy's most powerful tools. Because light from remote objects is old, telescopes that gather extremely faint light are, in effect, looking into the past. By studying galaxies at greater and greater distances, astronomers can observe the universe at earlier stages of its history, much as a geologist reads older rock in deeper layers. The night sky, it turns out, is less a picture than an archive.

    1.

    Which best states the main idea of the passage?

    1. ABecause Jupiter's moons move quickly, their eclipses are the best way to measure any distance.
    2. BBecause light travels at a finite speed, starlight shows the past, which lets astronomers study cosmic history.
    3. CBecause stars are so remote, astronomers have largely given up on measuring how far away they are.
    4. DBecause parallax is so difficult, the distances to most nearby stars are still unknown to science.
  2. 2.

    According to the passage, what did Ole Romer notice?

    1. ASunlight took a little more than eight minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth.
    2. BJupiter's moon Io disappeared whenever Earth was on the far side of the Sun.
    3. CThe Andromeda Galaxy was much farther away than any star in our own galaxy.
    4. DThe timing of Io's eclipses depended on whether Earth was moving toward or away from Jupiter.
  3. 3.

    Which conclusion is best supported by the passage?

    1. AAstronomers in the 1600s already knew how far away Proxima Centauri was.
    2. BLight slows down noticeably whenever it passes close to a planet.
    3. CA star seen tonight might have changed greatly since its light first set out.
    4. DParallax can be used to measure the distance to Andromeda directly.
  4. 4.

    As it is used in the passage, the word "observing" most nearly means

    1. Acelebrating a festival
    2. Bwatching carefully
    3. Chonoring the memory of
    4. Dobeying the rules of
  5. 5.

    Why does the author describe holding a finger at arm's length?

    1. ATo illustrate the principle behind parallax with a familiar experience
    2. BTo prove that the Sun is closer to Earth than any other star
    3. CTo show that human eyesight is too weak to see distant stars
    4. DTo explain why Romer's measurements of Io were inaccurate
  6. 6.

    How does the final paragraph relate to the rest of the passage?

    1. AIt questions whether light really travels at a speed that can be measured.
    2. BIt restates Bessel's method of measuring parallax in more technical language.
    3. CIt moves from explaining the delay of starlight to showing why that delay is valuable to science.
    4. DIt introduces a new claim that contradicts the explanations given earlier in the passage.

  7. The Library Is Not Obsolete

    Every few years, someone announces that the public library has outlived its purpose. The argument usually runs like this: nearly everything a person might want to read or learn can now be found online, often for free, so why should a town keep paying for a building full of books that fewer people borrow? It is a fair question, and it deserves a serious answer rather than a sentimental one. That answer is that the critics have misunderstood what a library is for.

    Begin with the strongest version of their case. It is true that a student with a fast connection and a good device can find a great deal of information without leaving home. It is also true that some libraries lend fewer printed books than they once did. If a library were nothing more than a warehouse for paper, these facts would settle the matter.

    But a library has never been only a warehouse. Its central purpose is access: the principle that the ability to learn should not depend on the size of a person's bank account. The phrase "everything is online" quietly assumes that everyone has a reliable computer, a fast internet plan and the know-how to tell a trustworthy source from a polished fraud. Many people have none of these. For a job seeker filling out applications, a retiree learning to video-call distant grandchildren, or a teenager whose family shares a single phone, the library is not a luxury that the internet has replaced. It is the place where the internet becomes usable.

    The critics also overlook the people behind the desk. A search engine returns millions of results in a fraction of a second, but it cannot sit down with a confused reader and ask what she is really trying to find. Librarians are trained to do exactly that, and in an age of overwhelming information, the skill of finding the right thing is worth more, not less, than it used to be. Abundance, it turns out, creates its own kind of scarcity: a scarcity of attention and judgment.

    Finally, there is the building itself. A library is one of the few indoor places left where a person can stay for hours without being expected to buy anything. It hosts story times, tax-help sessions and quiet study tables. It is cool in summer and warm in winter. That kind of shared, unconditional space is easy to undervalue until it disappears.

    None of this means libraries should stand still. They should lend laptops and internet hotspots, teach people how to judge online sources and adjust their hours to the lives of the people they serve. But adapting a library is very different from abandoning it. A town that closes its library to save money will discover, too late, that it has saved very little and lost a great deal.

    7.

    Which statement best expresses the author's main claim?

    1. APublic libraries are less useful than the internet but should be kept for sentimental reasons.
    2. BPublic libraries should begin charging fees so that they can afford to buy new technology.
    3. CPublic libraries matter mainly because printed books are more reliable than any website.
    4. DPublic libraries remain essential because they offer access, expert help and shared space the internet cannot.
  8. 8.

    According to the author, what does the phrase "everything is online" quietly assume?

    1. AThat everyone has a reliable device, a fast connection and the skill to judge sources
    2. BThat most people would rather read at home than in a public building
    3. CThat librarians are no longer trained to help readers who are confused
    4. DThat libraries already lend laptops and hotspots to everyone who asks
  9. 9.

    The author would most likely agree with which statement?

    1. AA library that lends hotspots and teaches people to judge sources is fulfilling its purpose.
    2. BA library's value is best measured by how many printed books it lends each year.
    3. CA town should close its library once most residents have internet access.
    4. DA search engine can replace a librarian for most readers who need help.
  10. 10.

    As it is used in the passage, the word "runs" most nearly means

    1. Agoes or is expressed
    2. Bflows as a liquid
    3. Coperates a machine
    4. Dcompetes in an election

Mathematics Achievement

Circle the letter of the best answer. About 9 minutes.

  1. 1.

    Which expression is equivalent to 7⁸ ÷ 7⁻⁵?

    1. A7³
    2. B1¹³
    3. C7⁻¹³
    4. D7¹³
  2. 2.

    A bag holds 2 red and 3 blue marbles. Two marbles are picked without looking, one after the other, and the first is not put back. What is the probability that both are red?

    1. A1/10
    2. B2/5
    3. C1/4
    4. D4/25
  3. 3.

    If x/6 + x/8 = 28, what is the value of x?

    1. A14
    2. B392
    3. C1,344
    4. D96
  4. 4.

    A triangle has vertices at (−8, −4), (0, −4), and (−8, 5). What is the area of the triangle, in square units?

    1. A32
    2. B72
    3. C17
    4. D36
  5. 5.

    A sprinkler waters a quarter circle of lawn with a radius of 4 feet. What is the area of the watered lawn, in square feet?

    1. A8π
    2. B2π
    3. C4π
    4. D16π
  6. 6.

    Some people were asked, "Do you ride a bike to work or school?" The two-way table shows the results. Is there an association between which town a person lives in and riding a bike?

    1. AYes, because 50% of the people in Millbrook said yes but only 20% of the people in Riverton did.
    2. BNo, because 40 people in Millbrook and 10 people in Riverton said yes.
    3. CYes, because more people answered no than yes.
    4. DNo, because the two groups are not the same size.
  7. 7.

    Each list shows the points of a function. Which function is linear?

    1. A(0, 2), (1, 3), (2, 6), (3, 11)
    2. B(0, 2), (1, −1), (2, −4), (3, −7)
    3. C(0, 2), (1, 0), (2, 4), (3, 2)
    4. D(0, 3), (1, 4), (2, 6), (3, 10)
  8. 8.

    When 3/7 is written as a decimal, what is the 60th digit after the decimal point?

    1. A7
    2. B5
    3. C1
    4. D4
  9. 9.

    Which rule maps triangle ABC onto triangle A′B′C′?

    1. A(x, y) → (−x, −y)
    2. B(x, y) → (x + 2, y − 3)
    3. C(x, y) → (y, −x)
    4. D(x, y) → (y, x)
  10. 10.

    Lucy puts $500 in an account that earns 3% simple interest each year. How many years will it take for the account to earn $105 in interest?

    1. A21
    2. B4 16/21
    3. C35
    4. D7

Written by Scholar Tests in the style of the published ISEE question types. Not a real ISEE test, and a practice score is not a real score.