SHSAT cutoff scores for 2027 admissions do not exist yet
That is not a gap in this site's data — it is how the system works. A cutoff is discovered after offers go out, not set in advance. This page explains the naming that trips almost every family, what the published numbers actually are, and what to use while your child prepares.
The year system in one sentence
An admissions year names the September the student starts high school — and the test happens the fall before. So the cutoffs labelled one year were produced by the exam sat the previous autumn, and a student testing this autumn belongs to the next admissions year, whose cutoffs cannot exist until that cycle finishes.
| Cycle | Exam sat | Cutoffs |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 Admissions | Fall 2025 | Published — history of a finished cycle |
| 2027 Admissions | Fall 2026 | Do not exist yet — this is your child's cycle |
Example, correctly labelled: Stuyvesant — 561, 2026 Admissions (Fall 2025 sitting), per NYC Public Schools.
Why next year's cutoff cannot be known in advance
- A cutoff is not a bar anyone sets. Offers are made in score order, following each student's ranked school preferences, until each school's seats run out — the cutoff is simply what the last admitted student happened to score.
- That makes it an output of one year's pool: how many students sat, how they scored, and which schools they ranked. Change any of those and the number moves — which is why it moves every year.
- This cycle adds one more reason for humility: the exam format itself changed to computer-adaptive. Carrying an old number forward across a format change is a heavier assumption than usual.
What the published numbers are still good for
Calibration. The most recent published cutoffs tell you the neighbourhood each school's line has been in — and for that job they are excellent, as long as they are read with their year attached.
Because the line moves and next year's is unknowable, the goal that survives all of it is margin: prepare to score comfortably above the most recent line, not to land on it. A gap that would clear last cycle's cutoff with room to spare is robust to the year-to-year drift; a plan aimed at the exact number is a coin flip on which way it drifts.
All eight published cutoffs, with source →
When the next cutoffs will exist
Only after this cycle's offers are released — scheduled for March 3, 2027. Offers are assigned, the seats fill, and the last admitted score at each school becomes that school's 2027 Admissions cutoff. Until then, any "2027 cutoff" you see quoted is last cycle's number wearing next cycle's label.
The full admissions timeline →
Checked against the sources on: · NYC Public Schools