What’s on the 2026 SHSAT: 100 questions, 180 minutes, adaptive

Updated October 6, 2026. Checked against NYC Public Schools’ SHSAT page and the NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2027 Admissions (PDF).

Is the SHSAT now 100 questions? Yes. Starting with the fall 2026 test, the SHSAT has 100 questions: 50 English Language Arts (ELA) and 50 math, in 180 minutes. It is a computer-adaptive test (CAT), so the questions adjust to your child’s answers. The fall 2025 test had 114 questions (57 per section) on a computer-based fixed form, with the same questions for everyone.

How many questions are on the SHSAT?

100 on the fall 2026 test. The format has changed three times since 2016, so check the year on any practice book before your child uses it.

Sources: fall 2026, the NYC SHSAT page; fall 2025, the NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2026 Admissions (PDF); fall 2017–2024, the NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2024 Admissions (PDF, for the paper test given in fall 2023); through 2016, the NYC student handbooks of those years and WNYC’s September 2016 report on the redesign. A practice book with scrambled paragraphs or logical reasoning questions predates 2017.

What is the SHSAT?

The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) is the only factor NYC uses to admit students to 8 of its 9 specialized high schools. The ninth, LaGuardia High School, admits by audition. The test is open to NYC residents who are current 8th graders or first-time (not repeating) 9th graders, and students take it in the fall before the school year they want to enter (NYC SHSAT page).

The 8 schools are Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Brooklyn Latin, the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College (HSMSE), the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, and Staten Island Tech. Offers go in score order: each student, from the highest score down, gets the highest-ranked school on their list that still has seats (NYC admissions page). See the lowest score admitted at each school, 2022–2026.

Fall 2026 dates. Registration closes Friday, October 30. The School Day test is Wednesday, November 18, at students’ own schools. Weekend tests are Saturday, November 14, Sunday, November 15 and Saturday, November 21; NYC will name weekend sites for charter, private and homeschooled students later this fall. Confirm your child’s date on their test ticket and in MySchools (NYC admissions page).

What’s in each section

Both sections mix multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions with technology-enhanced items. NYC’s sample sheet of item types (PDF) shows formats such as drag and drop, multiple response, inline choice (drop-down menus) and hot text. Sources: NYC SHSAT page; 2027 Guide, pages 7–8, 13, 16 and 20–21. Practice by topic with SHSAT practice questions with explanations.

How does the adaptive SHSAT work?

Each test starts with a question or passage set of average difficulty. After each answer, the testing system re-estimates your child’s score from all of their answers so far. A correct answer raises the estimate, and the next question may be harder. A wrong answer lowers it, and the next question may be easier. Every student answers the same number of questions (50 per subject) on the same grade-level standards, content areas and item types (NYC SHSAT page, “Adaptive Item Selection”).

• No skipping. Your child must answer each question before moving on.
• ELA passage sets: your child can go back and change answers inside the set until it is submitted. After that, the set is locked.
• Math and stand-alone ELA questions lock as soon as your child moves to the next question.
• Subject order: your child chooses ELA or math first. Once a subject is submitted, they cannot return to it.

Rules: calculators, formulas and wrong answers

• No calculator. Calculators are on the 2027 Guide’s “Not Permitted” list, along with smart watches and phones. Scrap paper is provided and collected at the end (pages 28–29).
• Formulas are not provided. Students need to know formulas such as perimeter, area, volume and surface area by heart (page 21).
• No penalty for wrong answers. NYC’s guide for the fall 2025 test says so (page 4), and the 2027 Guide tells students to make their best guess and move on when unsure (page 6). On the adaptive test, every question needs an answer anyway.
• Extended time. Eligible English language learners and students with approved extended time get 360 minutes, with a break after 180 minutes and another 90 minutes later (2027 Guide, pages 3 and 29).

How is the SHSAT scored?

Each question has a set difficulty on a common scale. Your child’s score comes from their pattern of right and wrong answers compared with each question’s difficulty, and it updates after every answer or passage set. At the end, NYC converts that performance into the reported score. Performance on each subtest is converted to a scaled score through a standardization process; the two scaled scores are added to make the composite score used for rank ordering. NYC does not publish raw-to-scaled conversion tables or a fixed score range. (NYC SHSAT page, “How will the test be scored?”)

The composite is what decides offers. PrepCAT’s practice score is our own estimate on our own scale, not an NYC score; here is how the PrepCAT estimate works. To see what a score means school by school, use the SHSAT score calculator.

Is the SHSAT just an IQ test?

No. The SHSAT is an achievement test of school skills. NYC lists revising, editing and reading comprehension for ELA, and ratios, the number system, expressions, equations, inequalities, statistics, probability and geometry for math, all tied to New York State grade-level standards (math through grade 7 for 8th graders). These skills improve with practice, and NYC publishes four free practice tests.

Sources: NYC SHSAT page (content and item types); 2027 Guide, pages 7 and 20; NYC SHSAT Portal practice tests.

Is the SHSAT hard?

Yes, mostly because it is competitive. The content is middle-school reading, writing and math, but students answer 100 questions in 180 minutes (about 1.8 minutes each) without a calculator, and seats are limited. For fall 2026 entry (the fall 2025 test), 26,123 students took the SHSAT and 4,023 received an offer, about 15%.

Sources: NYC Public Schools InfoHub, Admissions Outcomes, “2026 Admissions: SHSAT Offers by Ethnicity and School” (spreadsheet, Total Testers and Total Offer rows); NYC SHSAT page.

How to prepare for the adaptive test

1. Every answer counts. NYC re-estimates the score after each answer from all answers so far, so stay careful from the first question to the last.
2. Make a best attempt, then move on. Your child can’t skip. Cross out choices that are clearly wrong, pick the best remaining answer, and don’t spend more than a couple of minutes on any one question. The average pace is about 1.8 minutes per question.
3. Don’t rush-guess at the end. NYC advises a best attempt on each remaining question rather than rapid guessing to finish (NYC SHSAT page).
4. Finish a passage set before leaving it. Use the bookmark tool to mark questions inside the set; once the set is submitted, it is locked.
5. Plan the subject order and the time split. The 2027 Guide suggests deciding in advance which subject comes first and how much time each gets, counting time to read passages (page 6). Practice both orders.
6. A hard question can be good news. Harder questions may follow correct answers, so feeling challenged is normal.
7. Learn the tools before test day. NYC’s Student Readiness Tool walks through every tool and question type, and the four official practice tests mirror the real exam in form and content.

Then practice in the new format: PrepCAT’s free adaptive SHSAT practice test takes 40 minutes and needs no sign-up, the official SHSAT practice tests and PDFs are listed in one place, and the SHSAT study plan lays out the weeks to test day.

Sources

Checked October 6, 2026. PrepCAT is not affiliated with NYC Public Schools or Pearson.

• NYC Public Schools, Specialized High Schools Admissions Test
• NYC Public Schools, NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2027 Admissions (PDF)
• NYC Public Schools, NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2026 Admissions (PDF, fall 2025 test)
• NYC Public Schools, NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2024 Admissions (PDF, fall 2023 paper test)
• NYC Public Schools, Technology-Enhanced Item Types (PDF)
• NYC Public Schools, Specialized High Schools admissions (fall 2026 dates, eligibility, how offers work)
• NYC Public Schools InfoHub, Admissions Outcomes (2026 SHSAT testers and offers)
• WNYC, “Changes Are Coming to the City’s Specialized High Schools Test”, September 21, 2016