EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SHSAT

The SHSAT is the Specialized High School Admissions Test! Take the SHSAT if you're looking to gain admission to one of New York City's nine specialized high schools. Everyone is eligible to take this test! Here are the nine schools:

• The Bronx High School of Science (Location)
• The Brooklyn Latin School (Location)
• Brooklyn Technical High School (Location) 
• High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College of New York (Location)
• High School of American Studies at Lehman College (Location)
• Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (Location)
• Staten Island Technical High School (Location)
• Stuyvesant High School (Location)
• Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (Location)

The earlier the better but seventh grade is a great time to start studying for the SHSAT. 

The SHSAT will now be given in December 2021. Students take it at the beginning of their eighth grade year. The test results are sent to students the following March.

You can also take the SHSAT in ninth grade. But it's a different test and much more competitive. There are a very limited number of 10th grade seats so only 50-60 ninth graders will get in out about 3000. Ninth grade sample questions are at the very end of the SHSAT handbooks linked below.

Register for the SHSAT here!

• Click "Get Started" and create a MySchools account or  log in using an existing account.
• Click the "SHSAT" tab and list your specialized high schools in order of your preference! This is important because your child will be considered for schools in the order you list.
• Submit your registration and wait for your test ticket. SHSAT registration will open in mid-October this year, so get a jump on this process early!

* The LaGuardia registration process is different! Read on!

LaGuardia requires an audition so the registration process is a little different! Register here and follow the steps below:

• Click "Get Started" and create a MySchools account or  log in using an existing account.
• Click the “LaGuardia” tab and select the program(s) you wants to audition for. There are six programs and you can audition to one, several, or all of them!
• Here are all of the audition requirements!

Test scores land somewhere between 200 and 700.  It's a scaled score, which means the test is scored relative to the pool of students taking the test that year. For this reason, scores can't be directly compared across years. The cutoff scores for each school are also different each year. 

It's completely normal. In 11 years, I haven't worked with a single student who is totally comfortable with this test. Not even the ones that get into Stuyvesant. It's important to remember that even the highest scorers only get around 70% right on each section. So don't freak out at all. They make this test really hard on purpose. You won't know everything -- and that's okay!

There are no hard cutoff scores for the schools since the test is scaled and the numbers are different every year. Here are the cutoff scores for 2021:

• Stuyvesant High Schools: 560
• The Bronx High School of Science: 517 
• The Brooklyn Latin School: 481 
• Brooklyn Technical High School: 492 
• High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College of New York: 515
• High School of American Studies at Lehman College: 488
• Queens High School for the Sciences at York College: 481 
• Staten Island Technical High School: 525 

The test is 180 minutes long. A good rule of thumb is to spend 90 minutes on math and 90 minutes on English but you can split up this time however you want! You can even take the test backwards (math first). 

No calculator! It's a good idea to start practicing scratch paper arithmetic before the test: long division, adding and subtracting fractions, working with decimals, converting between fractions and decimals, taking percentages. Things like that. And brush up on your times tables!  

Yes, guess away! There is no penalty for guessing.

The official practice tests are in the SHSAT handbooks (linked below). Each handbooks contain two practice tests: Form A and Form B. There are also detailed answers explanations at the end of each test. Between the practice tests and the explanations, these free handbooks contain everything you need to prepare for the SHSAT.

The SHSAT is a pencil-and-paper test!

You can't...really. The official scores are scaled relative to the pool of test-takers. The DOE also uses a score-conversion formula they sadly don't share with the public. A lot of websites have SHSAT score conversion tables but they're not completely accurate. Instead I'm aim for around 75%+  on each section. 

Just don't use this score converter. It's crap.