SHSATlab is a SHSAT prep app built for the digital test. It starts with a free diagnostic, builds a personalized study plan with Iko — an AI professor trained specifically on the SHSAT — and adapts every practice set from easy to elite. The beta is live June 1, 2026 at a $9.99/month Founding Member rate, on phone, tablet, and desktop.
Why SHSAT Prep Needed a Rebuild
The SHSAT decides admission to eight of New York City's specialized high schools — Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, Staten Island Tech, Brooklyn Latin, High School of American Studies, High School for Math, Science and Engineering, and Queens High School for the Sciences. The tools most families use to prepare for it look like they were built fifteen years ago.
Legacy SHSAT sites are dense, text-heavy pages designed for a desktop browser and nobody's attention span. Prep books reprint the same passages year after year. The apps that exist mostly wrap old worksheet content behind a login screen.
A student can spend a year inside those tools and never once practice in a way that resembles the actual test — or enjoy a single minute of doing it.
SHSATlab was built to fix both halves of that problem: the experience and the substance. The interface a student wants to open every day, powered by content that matches what the test actually rewards.
Start With a Free Diagnostic
Every SHSATlab journey starts with a free, full-length diagnostic. One test produces a score estimate, a section-by-section breakdown, and accuracy across all 30 SHSAT topics — then turns that into a plan.
No questionnaire, no guesswork. The diagnostic shows exactly where a student stands — not by subject, but by individual skill. A student who is strong in ELA overall but misses every Inference question has a specific, fixable problem. A single score never reveals that. The topic breakdown does.
Iko: An AI Professor Trained on the SHSAT
Iko is SHSATlab's AI professor. It runs on one of the most capable large language models available, tuned specifically on the SHSAT — its topics, its question styles, its traps — so the help a student gets is about this test, not test prep in general.
Iko reads each student's diagnostic and generates their study plan, chooses the next topic to drill, and shapes practice sets around the skills that are actually costing points. Generic AI can explain a math problem. Iko understands why the SHSAT wrote that problem the way it did — and what each wrong-answer choice is designed to catch.
Personalized Study Plans, Built Automatically
Iko turns diagnostic results into a week-by-week study plan with daily, timed sessions ordered by priority.
Each session targets one skill, runs for a set number of minutes, and is scheduled so the weakest, highest-impact topics come first. The plan refreshes as the student improves — finish a topic and the next one moves up. Parents see a calendar; students see today's focus and a single button to start. Nobody has to design a curriculum.
Adaptive Practice, From Easy to Elite
Every SHSATlab topic scales across four levels — Easy, Medium, Hard, and Elite — and adapts as the student answers. Get five correct in a row and the difficulty moves up.
This is the part that decides outcomes. The SHSAT is unforgiving near the top. In 2025, Stuyvesant's cutoff score was approximately 559, Brooklyn Technical High School's was around 513, and Bronx High School of Science's was around 518 — all within a range where a handful of additional correct answers separates acceptance from rejection. Practicing only at test level produces a student who can pass. Practicing above it produces a student who walks into the exam having already seen harder, and finds the real thing easy.
Topic Mastery Across All 30 Skills
SHSATlab covers all 30 SHSAT topic areas, each with its own unit, progress tracking, and practice path.
The topic map shows what's mastered, what's in progress, and what's recommended next — pulled straight from the study plan. Every unit practices in the exact format the skill appears in on the real exam, so students build the right habit instead of a paper one.
Every Test and Practice Set Is Timed
The SHSAT gives students three hours for 114 questions — roughly 90 seconds each. Knowing the material isn't enough if the clock runs out first. SHSATlab tracks time everywhere, so pacing becomes a trained skill instead of a test-day surprise.
Every diagnostic and practice test records how long it took — total time used and how much of the three-hour limit was left. The results screen shows it directly: time spent, average pace across tests, and a flag when a student finishes with almost nothing to spare. Topic and unit practice track solve time the same way.
That turns vague advice — "work on your timing" — into something specific a student can act on: where they spend too long, and where they rush. On the real test, time management decides as many points as content does. SHSATlab treats it as a skill to build, with feedback, like every other.
Built for the Digital Test
The digital SHSAT includes Technology-Enhanced Items — drag-and-drop, multi-select, grid-in numeric entry, inline dropdowns, clickable text, and number-line graphing. SHSATlab practices all of them in the formats students will actually face.
A student who meets an inline dropdown for the first time on test day loses 10–15 seconds just working out the mechanics. On a clock that allows roughly 75 seconds per question, that's real points left on the table. SHSATlab removes the surprise by making every format familiar long before October. (For a full breakdown of these formats, see our guide to SHSAT question types.)
Works on Phone, Tablet, and Desktop
SHSATlab runs on any screen. The diagnostic, the study plan, Iko, and every practice set adapt to phone, tablet, and desktop.
Students study on whatever's in front of them — a phone after school, a tablet on the couch, a laptop on the weekend — and get the same full experience on each. The diagnostic, Iko, the study plan, and timed practice all reflow to the screen in hand. That's the difference between an app a student opens once and one they reach for every day.
Parents Stay in the Loop — Automatically
SHSATlab keeps parents informed without anyone having to log in. When a student completes the diagnostic, the parent receives an automated email with a full breakdown — overall score, ELA and math, the child's strongest and weakest topics, and exactly where to focus next.
That loop continues as the student moves through study units and practice tests: results and progress land in the parent's inbox, so families can see achievements and momentum as they happen instead of asking "how's it going?" and getting a shrug.
For busy NYC parents, that's the difference between hoping the prep is happening and knowing it is.
The Beta Is Live — June 1, 2026
SHSATlab's beta launches June 1, 2026. Anyone can start with a free diagnostic. Full access — the personalized study plan, all 30 topic units, adaptive practice, and progress tracking — is the Student Plan at $9.99/month per child, the Founding Member rate during beta. It's planned to rise to $19.99/month afterward, and Founding Members keep $9.99 for as long as their subscription stays active. Cancel anytime.
The next SHSAT is roughly 130 days out. Students who start now have time to run a full plan, climb from Medium to Elite on their weak topics, and build fluency with every question format before test day. Students who wait until September start from the same place with far less runway.