SHSAT Prep: Practice Tests
Find the missing points.
Then go get them.
SHSAT prep for iPhone and iPad that starts with a 30-minute diagnostic — a map, not a score — and builds a day-by-day study plan to your test date. 1,232 questions, every one reviewed and signed off by a person, and every one with a worked explanation. And the full-length Adaptive Practice Test now adjusts as your child answers, the way the real exam does.
Why a Stuyvesant alum built this app
I took the SHSAT as an eighth grader in New York. It went well — I got into Stuyvesant, and those four years changed the direction of my life. What I remember about preparing, though, is how blunt the tools were: a thick book, an answer key, and no idea where I actually stood until test day.
My family lives in Massachusetts now, so my sons won't sit the SHSAT themselves. But they grew up on my Stuyvesant stories, and they wanted to know: could they clear that bar if they chose to? So I built the tool I wish I'd had — something that first finds out exactly where a student stands, then spends every session where the points actually are. My kids became the beta testers, working through the question bank all summer to push themselves (and, conveniently, sharpening up for the exams they will take here). The app got better; so did they. Yours gets the polished version.
How it works
1. A diagnostic that's a map, not a score
Twenty-four questions, about half an hour, across math, reading, and revising & editing. It doesn't hand back a number and a shrug — it shows which specific skills are solid and which ones are leaking points.
2. A plan built to your test date
Tell the app which test your child is sitting and roughly when. It builds a day-by-day plan that fits the time remaining — and rebalances as your child's accuracy changes.
3. Worked explanations, not answer keys
Every question — 1,232 for the Grade 8 test and 1,350 counting the Grade 9 material, each one reviewed, worked, and signed off by a person before it ships — comes with a step-by-step explanation. The error journal quietly tracks what your child misses and brings it back at the right moment, because review is where scores move.
4. Real, timed digital practice
Full-length practice tests run on-screen the way the actual exam now works: 100 questions, three hours, no calculator, and the real player's navigation rules — forward-only through math and standalone questions, but free movement and a Review panel within a passage set, the way the DOE's own guide describes it. The on-screen tools are there to rehearse with too — highlight a passage, cross out a choice you've ruled out, line numbers to point at. Every sitting draws a fresh set of questions to the same blueprint, so a test is worth sitting more than once. On iPad there's a scratch pad that preserves the student's handwritten work with each question. Both Grade 8 and Grade 9 versions are included.
5. A full-length test that adapts, like the real one
The Adaptive Practice Test chooses what to ask next from how the sitting is going — answer one correctly and the next is harder, miss it and the next is easier — and afterwards it reports the difficulty level your child was working at in each section, on a scale of 1 to 5, sitting by sitting. On a test that works this way, that level is the number to watch: a raw count of right answers isn't comparable between two sittings, because the questions weren't the same difficulty.
To be exact about what adapts and what doesn't: the Adaptive Practice Test does. The other full-length tests are linear — the whole paper is drawn before your child starts and doesn't change with their answers, which is how the DOE's own published practice tests work, and it's still the right way to sit a rehearsal end to end. The drills and the question bank don't adapt either; your child picks those.
One page your child can send you
Most prep apps build the parent dashboard and hide it from the student. This one goes the other way: your child makes the report and decides to send it. It covers the last two weeks on a single page — days practiced, questions answered, accuracy, where the practice actually went, which topics are going well and which are worth a look next — and it says plainly, on the page, that this is practice performance and not a predicted score. Nothing is uploaded to produce it: the report is assembled on the device and shared the same way your child shares anything else.
Great on iPad — scratch paper included
On iPad, every question gets a scratch pad: students work the problem in their own handwriting, right next to the question, with Apple Pencil or a finger. The work is saved with the question, so when the error journal brings a missed problem back, the original working comes back with it — and you can see exactly where the thinking went sideways. It's the paper part of paper tests, kept, on the digital format the real exam now uses.
Built for the digital SHSAT
The SHSAT moved on-screen in 2025, and the fall 2026 test is computer-adaptive. Practicing on paper for an on-screen exam gives away points to friction. SHSAT Prep's practice has been digital and timed from day one, and it now includes a full-length Adaptive Practice Test that serves questions the way the new exam does — so the rehearsal matches the thing being rehearsed.
Priced like a book, not a tutor
Free, permanently: the 24-question diagnostic and the plan it builds, the error journal and progress, unlimited redo of anything already answered, and ten new questions a day up to 150 in all. One single payment — no subscription, no auto-renewal, nothing to cancel — unlocks the full question bank, all 76 lessons, and the full-length practice tests for a year. Progress is never locked away, with or without the pass. Tutoring in NYC runs $100–300 an hour; we think the software part of prep should cost less than one of those hours.
Radically private, on purpose
Most of the people using this app are thirteen. So it collects nothing: no accounts, no ads, no analytics, no tracking — in fact, the app contains no networking code at all. Your child's answers, plan, and scratch work stay on the device (and in your own private iCloud, if you sync). Read the full privacy policy — it's short and in plain English, because there's nothing to hide.