How to use SHSAT practice tests

The most realistic practice comes from the official digital practice tests and Student Readiness Tool on the NYC SHSAT Portal (nycshsat.myassessmentsupport.com), published for NYC Public Schools. Use these as benchmarks rather than everyday practice, because there are only a limited number of them.

Supplement with high-quality practice sets for skill building, such as our SHSAT Math and SHSAT ELA practice questions, and save the official exams for checkpoints at the start, middle, and end of preparation.

A practice test only tells you something useful if it is taken under real conditions.

• One uninterrupted 180-minute sitting, timed by a parent or a clock.
• No calculator, phone, or notes.
• A quiet table, scratch paper, and pencils.
• Practice on a computer when possible, since the Fall 2026 SHSAT is computer-adaptive.
• The student chooses subject order and pacing, just as on test day.
• Answer every question before moving on, and do not go back to Math or standalone ELA questions.

Plan to spend at least as long reviewing a practice test as taking it. For every missed or guessed question, the student should identify why it went wrong and what they will do differently next time.

• Content gap: the student did not know the concept.
• Careless error: misread the question or made an arithmetic slip.
• Timing: ran out of time or rushed at the end.
• Strategy: spent too long on one question or did not eliminate answer choices.

Early in preparation, one full-length test every few weeks is enough; the rest of the time belongs to targeted practice. As test day approaches, weekly full-length tests help build stamina and confirm pacing. Taking tests back to back without review rarely produces improvement.

Keep a simple log of each test: the raw number correct per section, time remaining, and the top three error types. Patterns across several tests are far more informative than any single score.