SHSAT Is the Golden Ticket

When students and parents think of standardized entrance exams, the SAT and ACT immediately come to mind. Like it or not, they are a major factor in determining the undergraduate future of college-bound students -- the prestige of the colleges to which they are accepted, the amount of financial aid they will be awarded, and the quality of other students comprising their collegiate social milieu. However, for many students in New York City, the less well-known high school exam, the SHSAT (Specialized High School Admissions Test) may be the most important standardized test of their academic careers.

The SHSAT is similar to the SAT and ACT; it is multiple-choice and divided into two main sections, Verbal and Mathematics. For each of the two main sections, students receive a scaled score of 200 to 800 and, in addition, a composite-scaled score, which is the sum of the two sections. What makes this test so crucial and applicants so fiercely competitive is that the score is the sole criterion for admission to these specialized schools. Students select in order of preference up to eight schools and are assigned to their first-choice down to their last-choice, in rank-order of their scores until all available places in each of those schools are filled. The absolute score is not significant as long as it is higher than the cut-off score for any of the eight schools, which is determined by the results of all the students taking the test that year and their school preferences.

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