I started building SHSATlab on a Saturday afternoon because I watched my son do something that broke my heart a little.
He was sitting at the kitchen table with an SHSAT practice test. He got a question wrong — a probability problem he'd seen variations of before. He flipped to the answer key, read "the answer is C," said "oh," and turned the page.
That was it. No understanding of why. No attempt to do another one. Just move on.
He'd been prepping for the Specialized High School Admissions Test for two months. He had a prep book, a schedule, and real effort behind him. And he was going to walk into that exam having done hundreds of problems — and still not having actually fixed the ones he kept getting wrong.
I knew this pattern. I'd seen it in my own studying years ago. And I knew that doing something about it was going to be harder than it looked.
What Most NYC SHSAT Prep Gets Wrong
The standard approach to Specialized High School Admissions Test prep in New York City goes like this: buy a prep book, work through the chapters, take practice tests, review wrong answers, repeat.
It's not wrong. It's just incomplete.
The part that's missing is the feedback loop. When a student gets a question wrong, reads the answer, and moves on — the brain registers that something happened, but it doesn't build the skill to do it right next time. The mental model that produced the wrong answer is still intact.
What changes a score isn't completing more practice tests. It's understanding each specific error well enough that the brain can't make it again.
That requires a different kind of tool than a prep book. And it requires a different kind of AI than a general chatbot.
What I Built and Why
I'm a software developer. I know what AI can and can't do. I knew I could build something that would close this loop — not just give my son more questions, but make sure that every wrong answer became a real learning moment.
The first version was rough. I used OpenAI's API to generate questions similar to the SHSAT, have my son answer them, and then generate an explanation for why he got it wrong — specific to his answer, not just the general solution.
It worked. Not perfectly at first — early AI-generated questions had real quality problems, including questions where the answer key was simply wrong. That became a months-long problem to solve (we wrote about that separately). But the core loop worked: attempt, miss, understand the exact error, try again.
Within three weeks, the topics he was consistently missing started moving. Not because he suddenly got smarter. Because he finally had enough reps — with immediate, specific feedback on each one — to actually build the skill.
Why Building for Your Own Kid Is Different
Every product decision has a different weight when your child is the user.
When a question has the wrong answer key, it's not just a bug. It's your kid learning something wrong for the test that determines which high school they'll spend four years in. You fix it fast. You build systems to catch it before it happens.
When the practice session is boring, it's not just a churn problem. It's your kid picking up their phone instead of practicing for a test that's 90 days away. You add sound. You add streaks. You add the trophy fanfare when they hit a mastery level — because a 7th grader needs to feel the win, not just log the completion.
When the study plan is generic, it's not an onboarding problem. It's your kid wasting time drilling topics they already know instead of fixing the ones that are going to cost them points. You build a diagnostic. You connect the results to a real, prioritized plan.
I didn't build SHSATlab to compete with Kaplan. I built it because I sat at that kitchen table and saw exactly what was missing — and I happened to have the skills to build the thing that was missing.
Where We Are Now
SHSATlab is in early access for New York City families preparing for the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Every question has been verified — twice by AI, once by a human. The practice loop works the way I described it to my son at that kitchen table.
The students who score highest on the SHSAT aren't the smartest kids in the room. They're the most prepared. They've seen the patterns, they've built the skills, and they've fixed every error that used to repeat.
We built the platform to get your child there.
If you're an NYC parent with a child prepping for the Specialized High School Admissions Test, I'd be honored to have your family try it. Join the waitlist below.