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High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at CCNY
A small engineering school on a college campus, with CCNY courses in reach.
Where it is
Hamilton Heights, Manhattan — inside Baskerville Hall on the City College campus.
How big it is
About 600 students — one of the smallest of the eight, with class sizes to match.
HSMSE is the small-school answer to the engineering question: a focused mathematics-science-engineering programme where the college campus is not a metaphor — students walk the same grounds as CCNY undergraduates and can reach college coursework while still enrolled. The scale means teachers track individual students in a way the giants cannot.
Choose it for the ratio of attention to student, not for breadth: with a few hundred students there are fewer teams, fewer electives and fewer clubs than at a school ten times the size. The families it fits are the ones who read that trade and see the small classes as the headline, not the footnote.
The cutoff, with its year attached
"2026 Admissions" means the exam sat in Fall 2025 — a finished cycle, published by NYC Public Schools. The Fall 2026 exam decides 2027 Admissions, and its cutoffs do not exist yet. A cutoff is the score of the LAST student admitted — an output of one year's applicants and seats, not a pass mark anyone set.
Lowest qualifying score, 2026 Admissions (8th grade)
539
Source: NYC Public Schools, checked 2026-08-17 · NYC Public Schools ↗ · How cutoffs actually work →
How a seat here is actually won
- One exam, nothing else. No grades, essays, interviews or attendance records — admission to this school is decided by the SHSAT alone, for 8th graders and first-time 9th graders who live in NYC.
- Rank by real preference. Offers walk down the citywide score list, each student getting the highest school on their OWN ranked list with a seat left — putting this school lower 'to be safe' can only cost you a seat you would have won.
- Registration closes weeks before the test and is not automatic. The dates, and the three ways to register, are on the test-date page.
Registration deadline and dates →Sit a free full-length practice test →
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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