The eight specialized high schools, compared honestly
Eight NYC public high schools admit by one exam — the SHSAT — and nothing else. They are not eight copies of the same school: they run from a six-thousand-student engineering giant to a four-hundred-student humanities seminar, and ranking them well matters as much as scoring well.
A ninth specialized school — LaGuardia — admits by audition and portfolio, not the SHSAT. Its application runs on the same calendar; everything below is about the eight exam schools.
One exam, one ranked list, at most one offer
Every test-taker ranks the eight schools in their own order of preference. Offers are made by walking the citywide score list from the top: each student gets the highest school on their own list that still has a seat. That is why a cutoff is a result, not a target — and why ranking a school lower 'to be safe' can only lose you a seat you would have won.
The cutoffs below are 2026 Admissions — the exam sat in Fall 2025, final and published by NYC Public Schools. The Fall 2026 exam decides 2027 Admissions, whose cutoffs do not exist yet. Read them as last year's water line, not this year's bar.
| School | Known for | 2026 cutoff |
|---|---|---|
| StuyvesantManhattan | The highest cutoff of the eight, and the deepest math and science bench. | 561 |
| HSMSEManhattan | A small engineering school on a college campus, with CCNY courses in reach. | 539 |
| Queens ScienceQueens | The only specialized school in Queens — small, science-led, on a college campus. | 531 |
| Bronx ScienceBronx | A research-science tradition with eight Nobel laureates among its alumni. | 525 |
| Staten Island TechStaten Island | A tech-and-engineering school with a strong community identity on the island. | 517 |
| HS American StudiesBronx | The humanities specialized school — American history, writing and debate. | 507 |
| Brooklyn TechBrooklyn | An engineering school at university scale, organised around chosen majors. | 506 |
| Brooklyn LatinBrooklyn | The only specialized school running the full IB Diploma, with Latin for all. | 495 |
Source: NYC Public Schools, checked 2026-08-17 · NYC Public Schools ↗ · How cutoffs actually work →
The two dates that matter more than any ranking
Registration for the Fall 2026 exam closes weeks before the test and is not automatic for anyone. The deadline, the test-day status and the three ways to register are kept current on the test-date page.
Registration deadline and dates →
The official Fall 2026 SHSAT will be computer-adaptive. SHSATus currently provides fixed-form digital practice based on DOE-published content areas and question types. It does not reproduce the DOE's adaptive item-selection or scoring algorithm.
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