Structure of the SHSAT The Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) is an exam designed for students in the 8th and 9th grade years. Participants take the test to see if they are eligible to attend one of the elite high schools in New York City. There are over 400 public schools in New York and nine of them are considered to be specialized schools. They are free to attend as far as tuition is concerned, but students must take the SHSAT to be eligible to attend. Admission into these specialized schools depends solely on the student’s scores on the SHSAT. This can put a lot of pressure on students who want to do well so they can qualify for the school of their choice. Many students purchase SHSAT tutoring services so they will do well on the test. In order to perform well, it is important to know how the test is laid out. Structure of the SHSAT Students are allowed only 2 hours and 30 minutes to complete the SHSAT. The questions are primarily multiple choice and there are two main sections on the test: Verbal and Math. The verbal section contains three parts and the math portion contains only one section. Math Section of the SHSAT While students are participating in SHSAT test prep activities, they will find that there is only one section to the Math portion of the test. However, it covers the broad spectrum of mathematical knowledge. The test contains questions involving operations and problems in basic math computations, geometry, algebra, statistics, and probability. For the 9th grade version of the test, the math section will also cover some trigonometry. Basically, the math portion of the test covers the concepts that are covered in the core curriculum used by the state of New York. However, there is always the possibility that there will be some math problems that were not covered in a student’s classes. This is why it can be a very good idea to obtain private tutoring in NYC. Verbal Section of the SHSAT The verbal portion of the SHSAT has three separate sections: scrambled paragraphs, logical reasoning, and reading comprehension. The scrambled paragraphs section contains 5 questions in which students are given six sentences. They are given which one
is to be first but they must then figure out the order of the other five sentences in order to form a proper paragraph. The purpose of this activity is to assess the student’s ability to organize written information into a logical order. The questions contained in this section are worth twice as much as all the other questions. The logical reasoning section contains 10 questions. These questions are designed to assess the student’s ability to reason as well as draw reasonable conclusions based on the information that is provided. The various types of questions contained in this portion of the SHSAT include: solving codes, identifying right assumptions, and determining the relative position of both people and things. The reading comprehension section of the verbal portion of the test contains 30 questions. There are five reading passages which also contain six questions designed to determine the student’s ability to understand what they are reading. The passages typically range somewhere between 350 and 450 words and include a variety of styles such as biographies, human interest stories, persuasive essays or topics in particular subjects like science, music or art. These passages are always nonfiction. Of the six questions for each passage one usually asks the student to determine the main idea of the passage. Other questions will assess the student’s understanding of facts as well as their ability to be able to make inferences which are not directly stated. SHSAT scoring The first thing a SHSAT tutor is likely to tell a student is that there aren’t any penalties if you answer a question wrong. The final score is based only on the number of answers that are correct. This simply means that a question should never be left blank because wrong answers are not going to be counted against you. A random guess is better than a skipped question. To determine the test score, the total number of correct answers is combined with the level of difficulty of the questions. This sum will give a scaled score for each section. When these scores are put together, it will be the composite score. Students with the highest composite score will be placed in the schools of their choice until the available slots are filled. Then they will be assigned to their next choice of school. Once a school has filled all the empty slots, it will be closed to any more admissions.