Sitting the HSPT and
the SHSAT in one fall.

Why families do both

The SHSAT is the only route into New York City's eight testing specialized high schools. The HSPT opens a set of independent Catholic schools, several of which attach scholarships to it. Applying to both is a hedge, and the exams are usually a few weeks apart in the same autumn.

What transfers

Most of the content. Reading comprehension is reading comprehension. Mathematics topics overlap heavily — ratios, percentages, algebra, geometry. Vocabulary work helps both, though it matters far more on the HSPT.

A student preparing seriously for one is doing perhaps two thirds of the work for the other.

What does not transfer, at all

These are opposite tests to sit. The SHSAT gives a student nearly two minutes to think about a hard question; the HSPT verbal section gives sixteen seconds and punishes thinking. A child who practices only one and then sits the other will mismanage the clock badly.

How to schedule it

Do the content work jointly through the summer — there is no reason to separate mathematics revision by exam.

Separate the formats in the final month. Alternate: one full-length SHSAT one week, one full-length HSPT the next. What is being practiced by then is not knowledge but pacing, and pacing has to be practiced in the format it will be used in.

Do not sit a practice exam for the wrong test in the last week before either one.

If TACHS is on the list too

It often is. That is a third format again, with fifty abstract reasoning questions that neither of the others rehearses. Read TACHS or HSPT for which schools use which.

We sell exams individually rather than bundled by course, which is what makes mixing formats affordable. ten free questions cover every exam we make.