English Language Arts (ELA)

The English Language Arts (ELA) section of the SHSAT lasts 90 minutes and consists of 57 multiple-choice questions - 47 are scored questions, and 10 are unscored field test items. You will NOT know which questions are scored and which are field test items, so you should answer all questions in this section.

There are two parts to the ELA section: Revising/Editing and Reading Comprehension.

The Revising/Editing section assesses students' ability to recognize and correct language errors and to improve the overall quality of a piece of writing. This section may have up to 20 total questions and is divided into Parts A and B.

Part A includes up to eight questions, each based on its sentence or paragraph.

Part B includes questions based on one or two passages.

The Reading Comprehension section requires students to read five or six passages, each of which is followed by up to ten questions assessing students' ability to understand, analyze, and interpret what they have read.

Math Section of the SHSAT

The Math section of the SHSAT lasts 90 minutes and consists of word problems and computational questions in either a multiple-choice or grid-in format. There are five grid-in Math items and 52 multiple-choice items. Each multiple-choice question has four answers to select from. Only 47 questions are scored - the remaining 10 are unscored field test items. You will NOT know which questions are scored and which are field test items, so you should answer all questions in this section.

The Mathematics section asks students to solve word and computational problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Some word and computational problems will also include working with fractions, decimals, and statistics. Various mathematical topics tested include Basic math, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Factoring, Substitution, Geometry (9th grade), Basic Coordinate Graphing (8th grade), Logic, and Word Problems (cover all topics).

SHSAT Cutoff Scores

Students are notified of their scores in February and earn a “raw score” based on the number of questions they get right. There are no penalties for wrong answers, so students receive one raw point per correct answer - note that only 47 questions in each section are scored, with the other ten serving as experimental questions. You will not be able to distinguish between these. This raw score is converted into a “scaled score” for each section of the test and a “composite score” for the entire test. The highest possible composite score is 700.

The cut-off scores for each school vary yearly, determined by the number of open places in each school and how the candidates score. Students are notified of their scores in February. Although the NYC Department of Education does not release official cutoff scores, the estimated cut-off / high scores during 2019 were:

i. Stuyvesant - 560 / 665

ii. Staten Island Tech - 527 / 688

iii. Bronx Science - 525 / 696

iv. HSAS @ Lehman - 524 / 617

v. HSMSE @ CCNY - 519 / 620

vi. Queens Science @ York College - 514 / 524

vii. Brooklyn Technical - 498 /631

viii. Brooklyn Latin - 488 / 505