SHSAT Guides
The SHSAT, explained for NYC families
The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is the single factor that decides admission to Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and five other schools — and this fall it becomes a computer-adaptive test for the first time. These guides are written in plain English by a Stuyvesant alum who took the test himself.
What the SHSAT actually is
The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is a single exam, taken once a year, that is the only criterion for admission to eight New York City public high schools. Grades, attendance, essays, interviews and teacher recommendations play no part. A student sits one test, receives one composite score, and that score against a school’s cutoff decides the outcome.
Any NYC resident in 8th grade may take it for 9th-grade admission the following September, whether they attend a public, charter, private or home school. Current 9th graders can test for the small number of 10th-grade seats. The test is free.
That single-number structure is why families find it stressful, and also why it is unusually possible to prepare for: there is exactly one thing being measured.
The eight schools
All eight admit solely on SHSAT score, and each sets its own cutoff — the score of the last student offered a seat. Cutoffs are not announced in advance; they emerge from each year’s results. For the most recent admissions cycle they ranged from 495 at Brooklyn Latin to 561 at Stuyvesant.
- Stuyvesant High School
- Bronx High School of Science
- Brooklyn Technical High School
- High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College
- Queens High School for the Sciences at York College
- Staten Island Technical High School
- High School of American Studies at Lehman College
- The Brooklyn Latin School
The gap between the highest and lowest cutoff is around 66 points, which is wide enough that a score well short of Stuyvesant can still be comfortably above several other schools. Ranking schools thoughtfully on the application matters as much as the score itself. The cutoff scores guide has every school’s recent numbers and how much they move year to year.
The computer-adaptive SHSAT
The test went digital in 2025 and becomes adaptive in fall 2026. What that actually means, what stays the same, and how to practice for it.
Read the guide →
Cutoff scores, all 8 schools
The latest cutoff for every specialized high school, how cutoffs actually get set, and how much they move year to year.
See the scores →
Score calculator
Turn a practice-test raw score into an estimated scaled score, and see how it compares to every school's cutoff.
Estimate a score →
SHSAT prep apps, compared
The three apps actually aimed at this exam, how they charge, and when you should pick one that isn’t ours.
Read the comparison →
Dates & registration
When the fall 2026 test happens, how registration works through MySchools, and the deadlines that catch families out.
Check the dates →
How the scoring works
Students answer English Language Arts and Math questions. Each section is converted to a scaled score, and the two are added into a single composite. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a blank is strictly worse than a guess.
The conversion from raw questions-correct to scaled score is not published by the DOE, and it is recalibrated each year. Any chart claiming to give you an exact conversion — including ours — is an estimate. Our score calculator is explicit about that, and exists to turn a practice-test result into a rough position relative to each school’s cutoff rather than a prediction.
The year, step by step
The sequence is the same every year, and the deadlines are the part that catches families out.
- Autumn of 8th grade — registration opens through MySchools and closes a few weeks later. Missing this window means waiting a full year.
- Test day — one sitting, no retakes within the cycle.
- Spring — results and offers arrive together. Cutoffs for that year become known only at this point.
Exact dates for the current cycle, including what the DOE has and has not yet confirmed, are in the dates and registration guide.