SHSAT cutoff scores for all 8 specialized high schools

Updated August 20, 2026 · By Christopher Lara, Stuyvesant ’00

For fall 2026 admission — the most recent published outcomes — SHSAT cutoff scores ranged from 495 (Brooklyn Latin) to 561 (Stuyvesant). A cutoff is simply the score of the last student offered a seat at that school, which means cutoffs aren't announced in advance; they emerge from each year's results. Here is every school's most recent cutoff, and what the numbers actually mean.

Cutoff scores by school (fall 2026 admission)

Test taken October/November 2025 · composite scores, ELA + Math combined · published by the NYC DOE

School	Cutoff	Prior year	Change
Stuyvesant	561	556	+5
HS for Math, Science & Engineering (CCNY)	539	526	+13
Queens HS for the Sciences (York)	531	518	+13
Bronx Science	525	518	+7
Staten Island Tech	517	527	−10
HS of American Studies (Lehman)	507	504	+3
Brooklyn Tech	506	505	+1
Brooklyn Latin	495	496	−1

A note on year labels. Different sites label the same numbers differently. We label cutoffs by admission year: "fall 2026 admission" means the test was taken in fall 2025 and students started high school in September 2026. Students testing in fall 2026 are competing for fall 2027 seats, and their cutoffs won't exist until offers go out.

How much cutoffs actually moved this year

The table above carries both years, which makes the movement visible. Across the eight schools the change from the prior admission year ranged from −10 to +13 points:

School	Change
HS for Math, Science & Engineering (CCNY)	+13
Queens HS for the Sciences (York)	+13
Bronx Science	+7
Stuyvesant	+5
HS of American Studies (Lehman)	+3
Brooklyn Tech	+1
Brooklyn Latin	−1
Staten Island Tech	−10

Six of eight rose and two fell, so there is no single direction to plan around. The practical lesson is in the spread rather than the average: a school can move by more than ten points in a single year, in either direction, which is why aiming at last year’s cutoff is a poor target and aiming twenty to thirty points above it is not paranoid.

Staten Island Tech is the clearest illustration. It fell ten points this year after rising the year before — a student who had treated the earlier figure as a fixed bar would have misjudged it in both directions.

One caution on reading any of this as a trend: two years is two data points, not a pattern. Cutoffs are a by-product of how many students applied, how they ranked schools, and how that year’s test scaled — none of which is announced in advance.

How cutoff scores actually work

There is no passing score and no preset bar. The process is mechanical:

Every student's ELA and Math scaled scores are combined into a composite.
All testers citywide are ranked by composite score, highest first.
Going down the ranking, each student is offered a seat at the highest school on their own preference list that still has seats.
When a school runs out of seats, the composite of its last admitted student becomes that year's "cutoff."

Two things follow from this. First, cutoffs move every year — usually by a few points, though Math/Science/Engineering and Queens Sciences each jumped 13 points in the most recent cycle while Staten Island Tech fell 10 — because the applicant pool and seat counts change. Second, your child's school ranking order matters: a student who clears the Bronx Science cutoff but listed Stuyvesant first and missed it will still get the Bronx Science seat, but a student who didn't list a school at all can't be offered it, no matter their score.

What score should your child aim for?

Treat the latest cutoff as a floor, not a target. Cutoffs drift, and a practice score sitting exactly at last year's line is a coin flip. A sensible margin is 20–30 points above the most recent cutoff for your child's first-choice school. You can check a practice score against every school's line with our score calculator.

One thing the cutoff column can't show you: the small schools are brutal on seats. HSMSE, Queens Sciences, and American Studies each admit roughly 100–140 students citywide. In the most recent cycle for which the DOE published applicant and seat counts — fall 2025 admission — that worked out to 140–160 applicants per seat. Their cutoffs sit below Stuyvesant's, but they are not "safety schools" — they're lotteries with a high floor.

Does the adaptive test change cutoffs?

The mechanics stay the same: rank all testers, fill seats in preference order, and the last seat's score is the cutoff. The fall 2026 test is computer-adaptive, so the scaled scores come from an ability estimate rather than a fixed answer key — but scores will still be reported on a scale the DOE uses to rank all students, and the cutoff logic doesn't change.

Know the number, now close the gap. SHSAT Prep: Practice Tests turns "20–30 points above the cutoff" into a specific list of what to fix: a 30-minute diagnostic finds the gaps, then a day-by-day study plan works back from your test date. Its 1,232 questions are human-reviewed with worked explanations, and a full-length Adaptive Practice Test rehearses the fall 2026 format itself. No accounts, no ads, nothing leaves the device.

Frequently asked questions

What score do you need for Stuyvesant?

The most recent published cutoff is 561 (fall 2026 admission). It has the highest cutoff of all eight schools every year, so aim comfortably above it.

Is there a minimum passing score?

No. Admission is rank-based. The "cutoff" is just where the seats ran out that year.

Why do cutoffs change every year?

Because they're outcomes, not thresholds — they depend on that year's testers, scores, preferences, and seats. Most years they move a handful of points; the most recent cycle included swings of 13.

Which school has the lowest cutoff?

Usually Brooklyn Latin (495 most recently). It's still a highly selective score — and in the last cycle with published counts, 82 students listed it per available seat.