The NYC Department of Education releases two official digital SHSAT practice tests for students preparing for the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Most families know they exist. Far fewer have actually looked closely at what's inside them.
We did.
SHSATlab analyzed every single question across both tests — Digital Practice Test A and Digital Practice Test B — 114 questions per test, 228 questions total. The goal was straightforward: figure out exactly which skills the SHSAT tests, how often, and what that means for how students should prepare.
The result is the 30-topic system behind every SHSATlab practice session. Here's what we found.
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Why both tests matter
The SHSAT is not the same test every year. The NYC DOE rotates question types and topic emphasis between administrations, which is exactly why they release two distinct practice forms. Digital Practice Test A and Digital Practice Test B are not variations of the same test — they have meaningfully different topic distributions in certain areas.
If you prepare using only one of them, you're only seeing one version of what the test can look like.
That variability is the reason we built SHSATlab's topic system by looking at *both* tests together. The 30 topics we practice represent every skill that appears across either form — and the question volume for each topic reflects how frequently it shows up when you look at both exams combined.
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ELA: 16 topics, two skill types
The ELA section has 57 questions divided between two distinct skill types: Reading Comprehension (RC) and Revising/Editing (R/E). These require completely different approaches, and students who treat them the same way prepare for neither correctly.
Reading Comprehension: 8 topics
RC questions test how well students can read and analyze a passage. Both digital practice tests use the same eight Reading Comprehension skills — and the frequency is strikingly consistent across both forms:
Central Idea & Theme is the single highest-frequency RC skill. Digital Practice Test A has 10 questions in this category; Digital Practice Test B has 9. Nearly one in six RC questions is asking the student to identify or describe the main point of a passage or paragraph. Students who can't identify a central idea quickly are leaving points on the table on almost every passage.
Evidence & Support is the second most common skill — 8 questions in each test. These questions ask students to identify which detail, quotation, or fact from the passage best supports a given claim. The trap in these questions is almost always a piece of text that sounds related but addresses a slightly different idea than the one the question is asking about.
Author's Point of View appears 6 times in each test — 12 questions across both forms. These questions ask students to identify the author's attitude, perspective, or purpose. In informational texts, that means understanding whether the author is arguing, reporting, cautioning, or persuading. In fiction, it means reading character relationships and narrative framing.
Word & Phrase Meaning is close behind at 5 questions in Test A and 6 in Test B. The SHSAT doesn't test vocabulary through definitions. It tests whether students can use surrounding context to determine what a word or phrase means *in this specific passage*. The answer is almost never the most common definition of the word.
Text Structure, Figurative Language & Imagery, Tone & Mood, and Inference round out the remaining Reading Comprehension skills, each appearing 3–6 times across both tests. None of them can be skipped.
Revising/Editing: 8 topics
R/E questions present a paragraph or passage with grammatical problems and ask students to identify or correct errors. Both digital tests use the same eight grammar skill categories:
Sentence Structure and Topic & Transitions are the most common, each appearing 3–4 times per test. Sentence structure questions test run-ons, fragments, and parallel construction. Transitions questions test whether students can identify the right logical connector between two ideas.
Relevance & Conclusion, Modifiers, Punctuation, Verbs, Word Choice & Precision, and Pronouns each appear 2–3 times per test. These cover the full range of grammar skills that appear on the SHSAT — subject-verb agreement, dangling modifiers, comma rules, pronoun-antecedent agreement, and precise word choice.
One thing worth noting about R/E: the questions are faster to answer than RC questions. A student who builds solid grammar instincts across these eight categories can move through R/E efficiently and bank time for the longer RC passages. That pacing advantage compounds.
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Math: 14 topics, clear frequency patterns
The math section shows more variation between the two practice tests than ELA does — which makes the combined-test analysis especially important. Here's what the data shows across all 114 math questions (57 per test):
The dominant topic: Ratios, Proportions & Unit Rates
Ratios and proportional reasoning is the highest-frequency math topic on the SHSAT, and it's not close. Digital Practice Test A and Digital Practice Test B each contain roughly 11 questions in the combined Ratios/Unit Rates category — about 19% of all math questions.
We track this across two distinct topic units in SHSATlab:
Ratios, Proportions & Rates covers ratio chains, proportional reasoning, and scale problems. In Digital Practice Test B, one of the hardest math questions involves chaining five different unit relationships together to determine which of five tokens is most valuable — a pure proportional reasoning problem that rewards students who have drilled ratio chains until the process is automatic.
Unit Rates & Conversions covers problems that require converting between units — speed, scale, currency. A representative question from Digital Practice Test A: "A car is traveling 60 miles per hour. Which calculation gives its speed in feet per second?" Students who have never practiced dimensional analysis will guess at the setup. Students who have drilled it will identify it in under 30 seconds.
Together, these two topic areas account for roughly one in five math points on the exam. There is no higher-leverage math skill to develop.
Probability: the most variable topic
Probability shows the largest gap between the two practice tests of any math topic. Digital Practice Test A has 4 probability questions. Digital Practice Test B has 11 — more than any other single math topic in that form.
That variance isn't an anomaly. It's a signal that the SHSAT can weight probability heavily on any given administration. A student who skips probability because "it wasn't worth much on Practice Test A" is exposed to significant point loss if their actual exam looks more like Practice Test B.
SHSATlab's Probability & Counting unit covers the full range: single-event probability, compound events with and without replacement, combinations, and expected value. These are not advanced topics — they are standard 7th-grade probability applied under time pressure. Most NYC students haven't drilled them enough to be fast.
Algebraic reasoning: three connected topic areas
The SHSAT tests algebraic reasoning across three topic areas that each require a slightly different approach:
Algebraic Expressions (5 questions in Practice Test A, 4 in Practice Test B) tests simplification, substitution, and evaluating expressions. These are often TEI questions on the digital test — drag-and-drop problems where students categorize expressions or select multiple correct values.
Linear Equations (One Variable) appears 4–5 times per test, including grid-in questions where students type their own numeric answer. Students who have only practiced circling answer choices are slower on these.
Word Problems & Modeling — which includes two-variable systems, age problems, rate-time-distance, and mixture problems — is one of the highest-frequency topics: 6 questions in Practice Test A and 8 across the combined analysis. These are the questions that require students to translate language into equations before doing any arithmetic, which is the step most students skip or rush.
Geometry
Geometry questions are distributed across four topic areas, each testing a distinct skill set:
Area, Perimeter & Circles: Low in Practice Test A (1 question) but strong in Practice Test B (5 questions). Combined, this is one of the highest-frequency geometry categories. Students who deprioritize it based on Practice Test A alone are taking a risk.
Lines, Angles & Triangles: 1 question in Practice Test A, 3 in Practice Test B. Angle sum rules, parallel line properties, and quadrilateral angle relationships appear here.
Inequalities: 2 questions in Practice Test A, 4 in Practice Test B — and these frequently appear as TEI number-line questions on the digital exam, where students drag a ray to represent a solution set rather than selecting from multiple choice.
Coordinate Plane & Number Lines: 3–4 questions per test, including number-line placement TEI items.
Surface Area & Volume: 1–2 questions per test. Low frequency, but consistent enough across both forms that it can't be ignored entirely.
Number sense
Number Theory (factors, multiples, GCF, LCM, primes, even/odd) appears 3–4 times per test. These questions are often disguised — a question about divisibility or prime factorization won't always use those words.
Fractions, Decimals & Mixed Numbers (which includes percent problems in SHSATlab's taxonomy) appears 3–4 times per test in various forms.
Data interpretation
Charts, Tables & Data Interpretation (which includes mean, median, mode, and range in SHSATlab's taxonomy) appears 3–6 times per test depending on the form. These questions always pair a data table or graph with a calculation, which means students need to read the visual correctly before doing any math.
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Why 30 topics — not 20, not 50
After analyzing both official digital practice tests, we identified 30 topic areas that together account for every question across both exams. We also identified topics that appeared so rarely across both forms that they didn't warrant their own practice units — those skills were merged into their nearest neighbor and are covered within the broader unit.
The result is a system where every hour a student spends practicing in SHSATlab is spent on a skill that the test actually rewards — at a volume that reflects how often that skill appears on the real exam.
That's a different design philosophy than "cover everything." It's also a different design philosophy than "focus only on the hardest topics." It's practice distribution calibrated to the actual test.
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Topic familiarity is the preparation advantage
Students who've seen a ratio chain before know the setup. Students who've solved a "most valuable token" conversion problem before recognize the structure. Students who've answered 40 Central Idea questions are faster at eliminating the three distractors on question 41 because they've already learned the patterns the test uses to mislead.
That familiarity isn't test-taking tricks. It's the natural result of deliberate practice. The SHSAT tests 30 specific skill areas — and the students who have drilled all 30 of them to fluency are the ones who score at or above the cutoff for their target school.
The free SHSATlab diagnostic covers all 30 of these topics across 114 questions and shows exactly where each student stands on each one. That's the starting point.