How to use a
grade 8 State Test practice paper

What this exam actually asks of you

The grade 8 New York State Test is 94 questions over four sessions on four days, worth 110 credits, and 16 of those questions are written answers rather than multiple choice. It is untimed, and both of those facts change how a practice sitting should be run.

The mistake that ruins the result

Treating it as an admissions rehearsal. The specialized high schools admit on the SHSAT alone and Catholic high schools use the TACHS or the HSPT, so nothing about this result reaches an admissions office.

How to sit it

One session per sitting, on separate days, the way the real week is structured. Do not run all four in an afternoon: a child who does has practiced something the test will never ask of them. Leave the clock off.

What to do the day after

Watch for under-writing. A grade 8 student who has been drilling SHSAT multiple choice has spent months being trained to pick rather than explain, and it shows in the written answers first.

What a practice test owes you

Grade 8 results come back as a level from 1 to 4, months after the test, by which time your child has a new teacher. A practice sitting is the only version of this information that arrives while you can still act on it.

Our New York State Tests bank holds 832 questions and 2,496 wrong answers, and every one of those wrong answers carries its own sentence saying what a student who picked it was probably thinking. Not one is left bare, and a build of our site fails if that stops being true. In grade 8 that matters most on the 16 written answers, where a mark alone cannot tell a child whether the idea was wrong or simply never written down.

We also measure whether the paper can be beaten without being read. On our New York State Tests exams the best any length-based strategy scores is 36%, against the 25% that pure guessing gives. A practice test where picking the longest option beats guessing is measuring the person who wrote it, not your child.

By itself the grade 8 test decides nothing, which is exactly what makes it a clean read in a year when everything else has consequences attached.

Where to sit one

Our grade 8 practice tests run all four sessions, one per sitting, and mark the written answers against the state's own rubrics rather than skipping them. A free sample is on the samples page, and it needs no account.

More on this exam: the full grade 8 guide, what is on each session, how it is scored.

Common questions

How long should a grade 8 State Test practice test take?

Four sessions of 94 questions in total, one per sitting on four separate days. There is no time limit on any of them.

Should a grade 8 State Test practice test be timed?

No. The real New York State Test is untimed, so putting a clock on a practice paper rehearses a pressure that does not exist and teaches a child to rush.

Is the score the useful part of a grade 8 State Test practice test?

No, the reasons are. Every one of the 2,496 wrong answers in our New York State Tests bank carries a sentence saying what a student who picked it was probably thinking, and for grade 8 State Test that is what turns a list of misses into a plan.

How often should we sit a grade 8 State Test practice test?

Once a year is plenty in grade 8. The content is what the classroom covers, so a second sitting weeks later measures the teaching rather than the practice.