Grade 9 SHSAT Cutoff Scores for 2024

The following table shows the lowest SHSAT score that resulted in a 10th grade offer at NYC’s most sought after Specialized High Schools over the course of the past 5 years. Use this table as a tool to prepare your 9th grader for the SHSAT.

School DBN	School Name	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020
02M475	Stuyvesant High School	572	575	591	590	624
13K430	The Bronx High School of Science	650	530	612	508	563
28Q687	Queens High School for the Sciences at York college	523	544	545	459	493
05M692	High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at City College	523	540	547	481	515
31R605	Staten Island Technical High School	524	522	524	481	553
10X696	High School of American Studies at Lehman College	510	518	505	495	484
13K430	Broolyn Technical High School	543	553	546	494	516
14K449	The Brooklyn Latin School	490	521	530	461	490

Limited Specialized High School Seats Available for 9th Grade

The Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) is offered in 8th grade and in 9th grade. We strongly encourage parents to focus on the 8th grade exam because there are far fewer seats available for your child to gain admission into one of the Specialized High Schools as a 9th grader. For your convenience, we have prepared this table to show you the difference in available seats for students taking the 8th grade exam versus students taking the 9th grade exam. It is pretty clear that your child’s best opportunity to land a seat in a Specialized High School is in 8th grade for 9th grade entry.

Need more tips on boosting your SHSAT score? Check out our guide on SHSAT prep strategies for 9th grade.

SHSAT Results by Race - 2018 vs. 2017

In 2017, only 3.8 percent of offers to attend eight specialized high schools went to black students and 6.5 percent went to Hispanic students, according to data released by Chalkbeat, though those populations comprise almost 70 percent of students in the NYC public school system. The vast majority of eighth graders who received offers were white or Asian.

The 2018 SHSAT results closely mirrored the 2017 results, despite efforts by the Department of Education to change the exam to make it more fair. In 2018, 3.6 percent of offers to attend the city's eight Specialized High Schools went to black students and 4.9 percent went to Hispanic students. The numbers actually went down for these students. 

We believe that this target population has the ability to gain admission into these highly sought after high schools as long as a concerted effort is made to:

1. Close the information gap causing students from this population to miss out on the opportunity to attend a Specialized High School

2. Provide high-quality test prep to as many highly motivated, deserving students as possible starting from 3rd grade

Believe it or not, there are many parents, guidance counselors, teachers, youth ministry leaders, family members, etc. in black and brown communities that know very little about the city's Specialized High Schools and what it really takes to get in. More importantly, they oftentimes cannot see themselves in these schools because of the current demographic breakdown at the schools or the lack of an immediate connection to someone who has attended one of the schools. By addressing these two critical factors, NYC stands to gain access to a talent pipeline that has been overlooked for the past two decades. With increased awareness, academic enrichment, and long-term support, these students can secure a seat on the Education to Wealth Pipeline. 

We still have more work to do!

Source: Chalkbeat

New Bill Will Expand Gifted & Talented Programs Citywide

Breaking News: State Senator Tony Avella is having a press conference today, Tuesday, July 31st at 1pm at City Hall to announce a new bill to require:

1) an honors class in every grade, in every school with 4 or more classes per grade from K-8 (no admission exam required)

2) at least one Gifted and Talented Program in every school district

Many believe that the SHSAT is the reason why so few Black and Hispanic students gain admission into NYC's highly sought after Specialized High Schools. This conclusion fails to explore the grave disparities in educational quality in districts across NYC. There are 32 school districts in NYC. Most students attending Specialized High Schools come from 10 high-performing districts. However, it is equally important to note that about 10 school districts send almost no children to Specialized High Schools. It is a known fact that high-performing districts tend to service white/asian students. While, low-performing districts tend to service black and hispanic students. Addressing the inconsistencies in educational quality at the K-8 level is a step in the right direction.

A key challenge facing student coming from underperforming school districts is the absence of gifted & talented programs and/or honors classes. Senator Tony Avella's new bill aims to address this very problem. Once every school has an honors class that will challenge students at a higher level, more students will have access to the accelerated material needed to compete on the SHSAT. We encourage you to support this new bill by writing letters and calling your state representatives to express your thoughts. You can also, show up and support this bill today at 1PM! This bill will ensure ALL students have access to a high quality education!

2018 Changes to the SHSAT

The SHSAT is changing, again, and this time, students will need to be prepared for a much longer reading comprehension section. The SHSAT is the exam students take in October of their 8th grade year to gain admission into one of NYC's eight schools requiring the SHSAT for admission. These schools include: Stuyvesant, Staten Island Tech, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Brooklyn Latin, HSMSE, American Studies and Queens Science. The new changes aim to strengthen the SHSAT’s alignment to state learning standards in English Language Arts. 

In 2017, after over 20 years of consistently using the same exam, the Department of Education decided to change the SHSAT. Some of the major changes included the following:

1. The 2017 exam increased from 100 questions to 114 questions
2. The 2017 exam included 20 field test questions that would randomly be selected for omission from the students' score (10 ELA and 10 Math)
3. The Verbal section had a name change to ELA to mirror what children experience in school
4. The Math section included 5 grid response questions to test students' accuracy
5. Two components of the ELA section, scrambled paragraphs and logical reasoning, were replaced with 20 grammar and revising/editing based questions   
6. The reading comprehension component of the ELA section included 5 non-fiction passages

The 2018 SHSAT has changed to include an expanded reading comprehension component:

1. There will be 9 – 11 Grammar and Revising/Editing questions, down from 20.
2. There will be 46 – 48 Reading Comprehension questions, up from 37.
3. Unlike previous years’ SHSAT exams, where the Reading Comprehension texts were all non-fiction, informational texts, the 2018 revised SHSAT will include the following types of material, with each text having 6 – 10 associated questions:
   • 3 – 4 informational texts, some accompanied by visual or quantitative graphics, relating to material that students should have been exposed to in middle school, such as exposition, arguments, and functional texts;
   • 1 – 2 literary prose texts, such as adventure stories, historical fiction, and myths, which students should be familiarized with in middle school;
   • 1 poem.

For more about NYC’s specialized high schools and Fall 2018’s test dates, visit the NYC DOE website.