SHSAT practice / Scores

SHSAT scores and cutoffs, explained

An SHSAT score is not the number of questions answered correctly. It is a scaled score for English and one for math, added together into a composite, and the composite decides who is offered a seat at each school. Here is how each step works on the computer test.

How the computer test is scored

Every question has a difficulty

Each question on the computer test has a known difficulty, and all of them sit on one scale. That is what lets an adaptive test compare students who answered different questions.

The estimate moves with each answer

After each answer, or after each reading passage, the test updates its estimate of how the student is doing. A right answer on a hard question raises it more than a right answer on an easy one.

Each subject gets a scaled score

When the test ends, the estimate for English and the estimate for math are each turned into a scaled score. New York City Public Schools says the scaled scores are reported the same way as in earlier years.

The two are added together

The English and math scaled scores are added to make the composite score. The composite is the only number used to decide offers.

Why one more right answer is not one more point

The scale is not a straight line. When the test counted right answers, New York City Public Schools explained that one more right answer in the middle of the range was worth only a few scaled points, while near the top or the bottom it could be worth ten or more. Each subject has usually topped out around 350, and the composite around 700. Scores are rescaled every year, so a score from one year cannot be compared with another year's.

How the cutoffs are set

There is no pass mark. Offers go down the list of composite scores from the top: each student is offered the highest school on their own list that still has a seat, until every school is full. A school's cutoff is simply the lowest composite score that was offered a seat there that year.

So a cutoff is known only after the test, and it moves with the number of seats and the scores of everyone who sat. In recent years the eight schools' cutoffs have been in the high 400s and the 500s, with Stuyvesant's the highest. New York City Public Schools publishes each school's figure every year, after offers go out.

Students from low-income families and schools who score just below a cutoff may be offered a place through the Discovery program, a summer program that leads to a seat.

Why there is no SHSAT score calculator here

A calculator would have to turn a practice result into a scaled score. On the computer test that depends on which questions a student was given and how hard each one is, and New York City Public Schools does not publish that. Any calculator, ours included, would be guessing, and a guessed score can make a family worry, or relax, for no reason. So we never print a predicted score, a composite or a cutoff verdict.

What our practice report shows instead is a Level for each topic: our own scale, which says what grade of questions your child is working at. Level 22 means questions from the start of Grade 7, for example. It shows what to practice next, which is what a practice test is for.

Where the official figures are

New York City Public Schools explains its scoring on its SHSAT page, and lists each school's lowest qualifying score on its specialized high schools page. Scores and offers for each fall's test come out in early spring.

The SHSAT is given by New York City Public Schools. Scholar Tests is not affiliated with or endorsed by New York City Public Schools, Pearson or any of the specialized high schools. Our practice questions and passages are written by us in the style of the published question types; they are not real SHSAT questions, and a practice result is not an SHSAT score.