SHSAT

Overview

The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) is the exam New York City's Department of Education (NYC DOE) uses to decide admission to eight of the city's nine specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. The ninth specialized school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, admits students through an audition instead of the SHSAT. For the 2026 cycle, the SHSAT moved to a fully digital, computer-adaptive format, replacing the paper-based test used in earlier years.

Who can apply

Any New York City resident currently in 8th grade, or a first-time 9th grader, who wants to apply to a specialized high school must take the SHSAT — whether the student attends a NYC public, private, or parochial school. An 8th grader who takes the SHSAT is applying for a 9th-grade seat; a first-time 9th grader takes it to apply for a 10th-grade seat. Students already enrolled at a specialized high school do not retake the test.

Exam pattern

The SHSAT has two sections, English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics, each with 50 questions, for 100 questions in total. Students get 180 minutes and may divide the time between the two sections as they choose. Students with approved testing accommodations, including English Language Learners, receive extended time.

The ELA section tests reading comprehension and revising-and-editing skills; the Mathematics section is made up of word problems and computational questions. Both sections mix multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, and technology-enhanced item types, since the test is taken on computer. From the 2026 administration onward, the SHSAT is computer-adaptive: the questions a student sees next depend on how they answered earlier questions in that section.

Math content differs slightly by grade level of the test form: the Grade 8 form draws on material through Grade 7 of the NYC curriculum, while the Grade 9 form draws on material through Grade 8, including introductory algebra.

Marking and results

Each section's raw score (the number of questions answered correctly) is converted to a scaled score, and the two scaled scores are added together into a single composite score. There is no fixed passing score. Instead, the DOE ranks every test-taker by composite score each year and fills each specialized high school's seats from the top scorer down, in order of the schools each student ranked as preferences. Because of this, the score a student needs for an offer (commonly called the "cutoff") is different for every school and changes from year to year, depending on how many students apply and how they score.

Important dates

The SHSAT is administered in the fall, with results and any admission offer released by the DOE the following spring, alongside the rest of the NYC high school admissions results. Registration happens through a student's MySchools account within a registration window the DOE announces ahead of each cycle. Exact registration and test dates for a given year are set by the DOE and published on the official SHSAT page closer to the cycle.

Fees

There is no fee to register for or take the SHSAT. It is free for every eligible NYC resident student, whether they attend a public, private, or parochial school.

How to apply

Eligible students register for the SHSAT through their MySchools account during the DOE's registration window. NYC public school students are generally registered through their current school; other eligible NYC residents, such as private or parochial school students and homeschooled students, register independently through MySchools. As part of registration, students rank the specialized high schools they want to be considered for, in order of preference. This preference order, together with the composite score, decides which single offer, if any, a student receives.

After the exam

Results and any offer appear in the student's MySchools account, typically in the spring. A student can receive at most one specialized high school offer, for their highest-ranked school where their score met that school's cutoff that year. A student who scores just below a school's cutoff, and who meets DOE economic-need and school-diversity criteria, may receive a conditional offer through the Discovery Program: completing a free summer program at that school before 9th grade confirms the offer.

Preparation tips

Since the ELA and Mathematics sections carry equal weight (50 questions each) and students can split the 180 minutes between them as they wish, practising full-length timed sections helps with pacing on test day. NYC DOE runs two free preparation pathways for eligible public school students: the DREAM-SHSI program, which prepares qualifying 7th graders across the year before they sit the SHSAT in 8th grade, and the Discovery Program described above. Students can check their eligibility for either through their current school or their MySchools account.