TACHS or HSPT?
They are different exams.

The rule of thumb

Most Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens use the TACHS. A number of independent Catholic schools — among them Regis, Xavier and Fordham Prep — use the HSPT instead.

That is a rule of thumb and not a guarantee. Check with each school on your list, because schools change which exam they accept, and a family that assumes wrongly finds out too late to fix it.

How the exams differ

What actually differs in the experience

The TACHS includes fifty abstract reasoning questions that test nothing taught at school. The HSPT has none, but compensates with brutal timing: its verbal section gives sixty questions in sixteen minutes, which is roughly sixteen seconds each.

A student can be well suited to one and struggle with the other. A careful, methodical child often does better on the TACHS; a fast, decisive one often does better on the HSPT.

If your child needs both

This is common and entirely manageable — the dates are usually a few weeks apart. The content overlaps heavily in reading and mathematics, so most preparation counts twice. What does not transfer is the pacing, which is completely different, and the TACHS ability sections, which have no HSPT equivalent.

Practice both formats separately in the last month. We sell exams individually rather than as a bundle for exactly this reason.

Sitting the SHSAT too?

Many students do, in the same autumn. The SHSAT is a third format again, and from fall 2026 it is computer-adaptive. Start with ten free questions to see how each one reads.